Jean-Pierre Léaud, from Antoine Doinel to Louis XIV
Jean-Pierre Léaud is to the French New Wave what Anna Magnani was to Italian Neorealism and what John Wayne was to American westerns: its spirit, its emblem, its avatar. The actor, who last year received the Cannes Film Festival’s Honorary Palme d’Or in recognition of a career spanning nearly 60 years, first broke through as François Truffaut’s on-screen surrogate Antoine Doinel in 1959’s The 400 Blows, and he won Best Actor at the 1966 Berlin Film Festival for Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin féminin. Since then he has worked with French masters Jacques Rivette, Jean Eustache, Philippe Garrel, Bertrand Bonello, and Olivier Assayas, and such key international filmmakers as Tsai Ming-liang, Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Aki Kaurismäki, Raúl Ruiz. On the occasion of the release of Albert Serra’s The Death of Louis XIV (NYFF54)—in which he delivers a magisterial, career-capping performance as the longest-reigning French monarch during his final days—the Film Society is proud to pay tribute to the prolific actor’s irresistible presence and undeniable legacy.
**Please note: Screenings on April 3 & 4 have been moved across the street to the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.
Organized by Florence Almozini and Dan Sullivan. Special thanks to Amelie Garin-Davet and Mathieu Fournet, Cultural Services of the French Embassy; Tomek Smolarski, Polish Cultural Institute NY; Camilla Cormanni and Marco Cicala, Luce Cinecittà; Philippe Garrel and Caroline Deruas; Luc Moullet; Royal Cinematheque of Belgium.
Jean-Pierre Léaud is to the French New Wave what Anna Magnani was to Italian Neorealism and what John Wayne was to American westerns: its spirit, its emblem, its avatar. On the occasion of the release of Albert Serra’s The Death of Louis XIV (NYFF54), the Film Society is proud to pay tribute to the prolific actor’s irresistible presence and undeniable legacy.
Please note: April 3 & 4 screenings have been moved just across the street to the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.
See more and save with a 3+ Film Package or $99 All Access Pass!
The Antoine Doinel Films
The 400 Blows
Introduction by Russell Banks and Serge Toubiana
When film critic François Truffaut was challenged to put into practice what he’d been preaching, he chose to tell the story of Antoine Doinel, a 13-year-old wild child in Paris whose adventures were based on his own adolescence.
Antoine and Colette + Stolen Kisses
The second and third chapters in the irrepressible Antoine Doinel’s cinematic life: Truffaut’s doppelganger falls for a music student in Antoine and Colette, and is dishonorably discharged from the army and courts an old girlfriend in Stolen Kisses.
Bed & Board
Truffaut’s alter ego Antoine Doinel further matures in this comedy about marital intimacy and infidelity, with he and Christine adrift in the matrimonial sloop, amid often stormy seas.
Love on the Run
In the final chapter of Antoine Doinel’s story, Antoine and Christine have separated, and he is seeing a new woman when Colette (Marie-France Pisier) re-enters his life, and encourages him to write a novel.
Beyond Doinel
The Birth of Love
Introduction by film critic Jean-Michel Frodon on April 5
Two young screen icons of a previous generation—Jean-Pierre Léaud and Lou Castel—turn in vivid performances as men who may be mature in years, but are perhaps more than a little emotionally arrested in Philippe Garrel’s film about the ecology of family life.
La Chinoise
Jean-Pierre Léaud is one in a small group of French students who passionately debate the impact of Mao’s cultural revolution and what chance terrorism might have in triggering comparable radicalization in the West in Godard’s dazzling lightshow of slogans, posters, and revolutionary images.
La Concentration
Confined to a room for 72 hours, Jean-Pierre Léaud and ’60s icon Zouzou enact a psychodrama of sexual, psychic, and physical violence in what director Philippe Garrel called an “exorcism in front of the camera.”
Day for Night
Please note that this screening has been moved to the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Truffaut’s joyous love letter to the art of cinema is one of the finest films about the magic of moviemaking, and remains especially poignant for the onscreen relationship shared between Truffaut and Léaud.
The Death of Louis XIV
The great Jean-Pierre Léaud delivers a majestic performance as the longest-reigning French king during his final days. Filled with ravishing candlelit images and painstaking details from historical texts, Serra’s elegant, engrossing contemplation on death and its representation is as darkly funny as it is moving.
Le Départ
A hairdresser (Jean-Pierre Léaud) becomes obsessed with the idea of driving his boss’s Porsche in an upcoming rally in this breathless romp, teeming with burlesque and poetic expression.
Détective
Please note that this screening has been moved to the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
“I’m a renaissance painter looking for commissions,” said Godard of this project, which began as a gleam in producer Alain Sarde’s eye: Paris, pulp fiction, Claude Brasseur, Nathalie Baye, Johnny Halliday, and an aging Jean-Pierre Léaud (in various disguises).
A Girl Is a Gun
Please note that the April 4 screening has been moved to the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Léaud is bandit Billy the Kid in this psychotropic western, which plays like Duel in the Sun directed by a French outsider artist. Screening with: Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes (Jean Eustache, 53m).
Irma Vep
Jean-Pierre Léaud plays an unstable, aging New Wave director struggling to update Louis Feuillade’s Les Vampires in Olivier Assayas’s wildly inventive valentine to movies and moviemaking.
Made in U.S.A.
Please note that this screening has been moved to the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Jean-Pierre Léaud is featured as a slapstick tough guy named Donald Siegel in Godard’s harsh goodbye to ex-wife Anna Karina—a looney adaptation of Donald Westlake’s Richard Stark novel The Jugger, reshaped by the details of the Ben Barka affair.
Masculin féminin
Parisian youths play at sex and politics in Godard’s freewheeling portrait of “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola,” starring Léaud as a young, self-styled radical-intellectual.
Out 1: Spectre
Jacques Rivette’s radical scrambling of his 13-hour magnum opus is both a fascinating companion piece and a singular, sinister, stand-alone masterpiece. The film will include a 10-minute intermission.
Porcile
Please note that this screening has been moved to the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Pasolini intertwines medieval and present-day stories about two young men (Jean-Pierre Léaud and Pierre Clémenti) ritually done in by their respective societies.
Two English Girls
Free screening!
Based on a novel by Jules and Jim author Henri-Pierre Roché, Two English Girls plays variations on François Truffaut’s earlier film’s ménage à trois: a young writer (Jean-Pierre Léaud) falls in love with two beautiful sisters (Kika Markham and Sylvia Marriott) at the start of the 20th century.Tickets on sale now!
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3+ Film Package – Minimum of 3 films required. Tickets just $8 Members / $9 Students & Seniors / $11 General Public. Please note this package does include The Death of Louis XIV.
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