when Jean-Louis Trintignant left Gard at the age of 19 where he breathed his last

Jean-Louis Trintignant (1930-2022) grew up in Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard department: “I’m from the South, but from the South a little austere, a little Protestant. I’m not Protestant, but I have a Protestant influence, yes”he confided during a television interview in which he specified that he had been brought up in a way “fairly strict, moral”.

In the neighborhood of his childhood, the street that bears the name of his father, former resistant, mayor of the city from 1944 to 1947, close to the bourgeois house where the future actor lived: “I felt a little cramped in the provinces. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t very happy. I needed to breathe more widely.” Between boredom and daydreams, the child escaped as best he could…

On a sepia photo never shown before, Jean-Louis appears in costume, at the age of 8, for the flower parade of Pont-Saint-Esprit. His classmate, the painter Roger Fréneix, remembers for the magazine “1:15 p.m. on Sunday” (replay): “Madame Trintignant organized flower parades before the war which were wonderful. It was the big party…” Jean-Louis’ mother makes him live his first scenes… and the rest is built little by little.

Coming back from school, “He took his satchel which he folded to make like two pockets and followed us as if he had a camera recording. He already had the microbe…” says Roger, who one fine day saw his friend leave without looking back. Trintignant was 19 when he left the Gard, alone. Direction Paris to realize his dream: to become an actor and director. Jean-Louis Trintignant died on June 17, 2022, in the Gard department, at the age of 91 year.

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