Six Definitive Films: The ultimate beginner’s guide to Jean Pierre Léaud
Jean-Pierre Léaud might be best known for his performance aged 14 in Francois Truffaut’s debut feature, The 400 Blows; however, the actor has since had an exceptional career, starring in over 100 films spanning more than six decades. In the 1960s, Léaud’s continued collaborations with Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard made him a key face of the French New Wave alongside actors such as Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jean-Louis Trintignant.
After Truffaut auditioned several hundred children for the (largely autobiographical) role of Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows, the director knew he had found the perfect fit in Léaud. A rebellious child, Léaud was described by his teacher as an “unstable boy” who had been “caught leafing through pornographic pictures in the dorm,” yet one that was “extremely cultured for his age” and “very good at writing.”
Truffaut took Léaud under his wing, taking the young boy to see the rushes of Godard’s Breathless every evening, which was also in production. Léaud described the director as the first person he ever admired, saying: “[he] spoke to children like they were adults. He realized that children understood things better than adults did. He was purely intuitive. We operated in a sort of complicity.”
After Léaud’s living situation crumbled, Truffaut rented the teenage Léaud an apartment and gave him assistant work on the set of some of his films, such as The Soft Skin. Since then, Léaud’s acting career has seen him work with some of cinema’s most groundbreaking and influential directors, including Catherine Breillat, Agnès Varda, Jean Cocteau, Olivier Assayas, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Jacques Rivette. In fact, Léaud probably has one of the most impressive filmographies of all time.
Jean Pierre Léaud’s six definitive films:
The 400 Blows (Francois Truffuat, 1959)
Truffaut’s tender debut remains one of the greatest coming-of-age films of all time. Léaud plays the mischievous yet misunderstood schoolboy Antoine, who finds himself at odds with his parents and teachers. The 400 Blows is a complex portrait of a boy struggling to navigate a complicated home life. Despite often well-intentioned behaviours, Antoine constantly finds himself in trouble, leading to his placement in a juvenile detention centre.
Léaud’s performance is magnificent, perfectly capturing the innocence of childhood whilst also encapsulating the fragility of youth and the complex emotions that accompany growing up. The actor reprised his role as Antoine in four more films that followed him throughout marriage, fatherhood, and divorce: Antoine and Colette, Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, and Love on the Run.
Masculin Feminin (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966)
One of eight collaborations between Léaud and Godard, Masculin Feminin sees Léaud take the lead as Paul, an aimless soldier who falls for an up-and-coming pop star. The film is a time capsule of 1960s French youth culture, and Léaud does a fantastic job of appearing both despondent and nervous and cocky and thoughtless.
Godard allowed Léaud to improvise many of his lines in keeping with his character, leading to one of the film’s standout scenes where Paul ponders the question, “what is the centre of the world for you?” Léaud displays a natural ability to add subtle movements to his performance that brings his character to life.
Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas, 1996)
Irma Vep is basically Olivier Assayas’ Day for Night, which makes it unsurprising that the director chose Léaud to play the unstable director of his imaginary remake of Les Vampires. The film follows Maggie Cheung playing herself as she navigates the French film industry from a foreigner’s perspective.
Léaud plays the demanding and frustrated middle-aged director incredibly well, and he undoubtedly channels his real-life experience of working with difficult directors into his performance. The obsessive director loses himself in his art – to the point of destruction – and Léaud’s moody demeanour is a far cry from the familiar image of Antoine in The 400 Blows.
The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973)
Eustache’s lengthy love triangle tale, The Mother and the Whore, (totalling 213 minutes), won the Grand Prix at Cannes, praised for its portrayal of the Sexual Revolution and post-1968 France. Léaud plays unemployed Alexandre, who involves himself with different women before emotional stakes reach boiling point.
As French films so often are dialogue-heavy, Léaud shines as Alexandre, combining vulnerability and indecisiveness with self-absorption and incessant rambling. As Léaud drives through monologues, it’s clear that he is truly skilled at embodying his characters and all of their idiosyncracies with great attention to detail.
Day for Night (Francois Truffaut, 1973)
The same year that Léaud starred in the award-winning The Mother and the Whore, he also played a large role in Truffaut’s Day for Night, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The film features a meta-narrative that sees Truffaut portray the film within the film’s director, and Léaud plays his actor Alphonse (also the name of Antoine Doniel’s son).
Day for Night is a celebration of cinema, yet Truffaut also encourages viewers to recognise its artificiality. Léaud’s character asks, “are women magic?” as he gets caught up in on-set relations with various women. He is both hasty and impulsive but also rather hopeless, paying homage to the characters Truffaut so often makes Léaud play.
The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra, 2016)
In what has been dubbed “the performance of his career,” Léaud plays the dying King Louis XIV in Albert Serra’s The Death of Louis XIV. Bathed in candlelight, Louis must await his slow death as the camera lingers by his deathbed. Once a vision of youth and a new wave of cinema, Léaud now represents death, fading away before our eyes.
Filming took place when Léaud was 73, so there is no doubt that he was inspired by his own experience of ageing while channelling the King. He is simultaneously mysterious, tired, calm, and scared, effortlessly portraying the complexities and uncertainties that surround death. Léaud is truly remarkable as the colour fades from his face, and he finally slips away.
