We ask him the question and the answer is slow in coming. Françoise Fabian does not really want to mention Jean-Louis Trintignant, her partner in My night at Maud’s. “I spoke about it once in the past. I will not repeat myself. » In Eric Rohmer’s film, holding the title role, the actress says to this man who hesitates to sleep with her for fear of derogating from his principle of fidelity: “I like people who know what they want. » There, on the phone, she knows what she wants: not to speak. Françoise Fabian let go despite everything, before hanging up: “I’ll tell you, Jean-Louis, I can’t quite understand it. Besides, he’s not trying to be understood, I think. »
May 8, 1969, opening day of the 22e Cannes Film Festival, Jean-Louis Trintignant settles with his wife, Nadine, in a suite at the Carlton hotel. The French have hardly the head in the cinema, since the resignation, a few days earlier, of the president of the Republic, Charles de Gaulle. It may be that this Festival, canceled a year earlier due to the events of May 68, will once again be confiscated by history. Trintignant does not have his head in Cannes either. The situation of the actor is however exceptional, unprecedented even: he is showing three films in competition – Z, of Costa Gavras, Let’s say, one evening at dinnerby Giuseppe Patroni Griffi and My night at Maud’s.
Z is a political film which echoes the dictatorship of the colonels, which in 1967 plunged Greece into lead. Released on the screens more than two months before Cannes, having already brought together nearly four million spectators, the film seals the status of Trintignant as a popular actor. My night at Maud’s is of a completely different register, intimate, and undoubtedly Rohmer’s greatest film. As for Let’s say, one evening at dinnerit fleshes out a little more the Italian career of a Trintignant who has just spent more time in Rome than in Paris (five films in two years).
The actor who goes down to Cannes is therefore on top of the world. This status gives him the right not to show himself. He hangs the panel ” Do not disturb “ on the handle of his Carlton room and asks the concierge not to make any calls to him. Trintignant comes out of his lair, one first evening, to climb the steps of My night at Maud’s. But since the screening is preceded by a short film of about thirty minutes, in black and white, with a cat that walks on an organ and makes the notes vibrate, and that My night at Maud’salso in black and white, begins with a mass, spectators, no longer distinguishing between a mediocre short film and the masterpiece that follows, come out one after the other.
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