Jean-Louis Trintignant Quotes

Jean-Louis I shock you, I know. I've had affairs with girls I loved and thought of marrying. But I've never just slept with a girl; that simply doesn't appeal to me.

Vidal Yes, but let's suppose you met a lovely girl you knew you'd never see again. There are circumstances in which it's difficult to resist.

Jean-Louis Fate, I won't say God, has kept me from such circumstances. I was never lucky with brief encounters. Remarkably unlucky.

Vidal Just in that respect I have been lucky. Once in Italy with a Swedish girl. In Poland with an English girl. Those two nights are perhaps the happiest of my life. I'm all for affairs on journeys or at conferences. At least they avoid the clinging, bourgeois element.

Jean-Louis In principle, I'm against. But since such a thing never happened to me...

Jean-Louis Although it's less enforced now, one thing I dislike about the Church is balancing sins against good deeds. Purity of heart is more important.

Jean-Louis I'm happy around you. If I'm happy with you, it's because we'll never meet again. The thought of the future needn't depress us, since we have none.

Examining Magistrate Any convictions?

Vago Yes, four.

Examining Magistrate Four?

Vago Yes, four. Illegal possession of a weapon, abuse and slander, theft - and rape.

Examining Magistrate Rape?

Vago It wasn't really. I was a Boy Scout camp counselor.

Maud Your lips are cold.

Jean-Louis So are yours. They're nice.

Maud Cold, like your feelings.

Attorney General So you'd indict the chiefs of police and security?

Examining Magistrate It's inevitable.

Attorney General Only events dictated by divine will are inevitable.

Jean-Louis Mathematics distract from God. A useless, intellectual diversion - worse than other diversions.

Maud Why worse?

Jean-Louis Because its completely abstract and thus inhuman.

Jean-Louis Are you still a Marxist?

Vidal Absolutely. For a Communist, ] is very relevant today. Personally, I very much doubt that history has any meaning. Yet I wager that it has, so I'm in a Pascalian situation. Hypothesis A: Society and politics are meaningless. Hypothesis B: History has meaning. I'm not at all sure B is more likely to be true than A. More likely the reverse. Let's even suppose B has a 10% chance of being true and A has 90%. Nevertheless I have no choice but to opt for B, because only the hypothesis that history has meaning allows me to go on living. Suppose I bet on A, and B was true, despite the lesser odds. I'd have thrown away my life. So I must choose B to justify my life and actions. There's an 90% chance I'm wrong but that doesn't matter.

Jean-Louis Mathematical hope. Potential gain divided by probability. With your hypothesis B, though the probability is slight, the possible gain is infinite. In your case, a meaning to life. In Pascal's, eternal salvation.

Vidal It was ], ] or maybe ] who said about the ] that the situation forced them to choose the one chance in a thousand. Because hope became infinitely greater if you took that chance than if you didn't take it.

Jean-Louis You come here a lot?

Vidal Almost never. And you?

Jean-Louis I've never set foot in here before.

Vidal And yet our paths cross right here. How strange.

Jean-Louis On the contrary. Our ordinary paths never cross. Therefore, the point of intersection must be outside those ordinary paths. I've been dabbling in mathematics in my spare time. It would be fun to calculate our chances of meeting in a two-month period.

Vidal Can it be done?

Jean-Louis It's a matter of data and how you handle it. Provided the data exists. Obviously, if I don't know where a person lives or works I can't work out the odds of running into them.

Jean-Louis As a Christian I say it's evil not to acknowledge what is good.

Jean-Louis Women have taught me a lot, morally speaking. That sounds...

Maud A little vulgar.

Jean-Louis Yes. It would be silly to generalize about particular cases but each girl revealed a new moral problem which I had never faced up to before. It would be good for me to be shaken out of my moral lethargy.

Maud You could have ignored the physical aspect for the moral.

Jean-Louis Yes, but, the moral aspect would never have arisen if - Well, I know it's never impossible but the physical and moral are inseparable, let's face it.

Maud Perhaps it was the trick of the devil?

Jean-Louis Then I was caught. Yes, in a way, I was caught.

Anne It's beautiful.

Georges What?

Anne Life. So long.

Maud Don't you want to be a saint?

Jean-Louis Not at all.

Maud You do shock me.

Jean-Louis So you've said.

Maud You're the most outrageous person I've met. Religion has always left me cold. I'm neither for nor against it. But people like you prevent me from taking it seriously. All that really concerns you is your respectability. Staying in a woman's room after midnight is dreadful. It would never occur to you to stay because I'm lonely. To establish a slightly less conventional relationship even if we should never meet again. This I find stupid - very stupid and not very Christian.

Jean-Louis It's nothing to do with religion. I just thought you might be tired.

Maud Do you still think so?

Valentine Do your ] come ]?

The Judge It's been years since I dreamt something nice.

Examining Magistrate What did you do the day of the murder?

The General I'd decided to attend the Bolshoi. Not out of love for dance. I'm no pervert, thank God. But it was a chance to spot sympathizers.

Jean-Louis Religion adds to love, but love adds to religion, also.

Anne What would you say if no one came to your funeral?

Georges Nothing, presumably.

Jean-Louis There can't be real love unless it's shared. That's why I believe in a certain predestination.

Jean-Louis Ideally, one should never have to leave people. One shouldn't have to forget people. There should be one love, no other - not even platonic.

Maud Especially not platonic.

Maud Don't be childish. Lie beside me. Outside, or inside - if I'm not too repulsive.

Jean-Louis I'll take the armchair.

Maud You'll get a cramp. Are you afraid? Of yourself? Of me? I swear I won't touch you, and you I thought you had self-control.

Examining Magistrate You're a Communist.

Vago Me?

Examining Magistrate You and Yago. You're friends. It was something you let slip out: "A rich man catches a cold, we poor still have to work or we die." Then you caught yourself and stopped.

Vago I hate Communists!

Examining Magistrate Not words. I want proof! Only a Communist would say that.

Vago I belong to an anti-Communist group!

Examining Magistrate And Yago?

Vago Yago too.

Examining Magistrate Which one?

Vago CROC! Christian Royalist Organization against Communism.

Jean-Louis My Christianity and my affairs are different, conflicting matters.

Vidal Yet they co-exist in you.

Jean-Louis In a warlike fashion. Now I may shock you once again but pursuing girls does not estrange one from God any more than pursing mathematics, for example.

The Judge I want ].

Valentine Then stop ].

The Judge Good ].

Vidal She's - very beautiful.

Jean-Louis Marry her.

Vidal No, we've gone into all that. We don't get on with each other, day in, day out. But we're the best of friends. I asked you to come because otherwise I know she and I will make love.

Jean-Louis I won't come.

Vidal But we would only do it to pass the time and that's no solution, for her or me. I'm a puritan, as you know.

Jean-Louis More than me?

Vidal Much more.

Georges ... some banal romance or other about a nobleman and a lower middle-class girl who couldn't have each other and who then, out of sheer magnanimity, decide to renounce their love - in fact, I don't quite remember it any more. In any case, afterwards I was thoroughly distraught, and it took me a bit of time to calm down. In the courtyard of the house where grandma lived, there was a young guy at the window who asked me where I'd been. He was a couple of years older than me, a braggart who really impressed me. "To the movies", I said, because I was proud that my grandma had given me the money to go all alone to the cinema. "What did you see?". I started to tell him the story of the movie, and as I did, all the emotion came back. I didn't want to cry in front of the boy, but it was impossible; there I was, crying out loud in the courtyard, and I told him the whole drama to the bitter end.

Anne So? How did he react?

Georges No idea. He probably found it amusing. I don't remember. I don't remember the film either. But I remember the feeling. That I was ashamed of crying, but that telling him the story made all my feelings and tears come back, almost more powerfully than when I was actually watching the film, and that I just couldn't stop.

Anne There's no point in going on living. That's how it is. I know it can only get worse. Why should I inflict this on us, on you and me?

Georges You're not inflicting anything on me.

Anne You don't have to lie, Georges.

Georges Put yourself in my place. Didn't you ever think that it could happen to me, too?

Anne Of course I did. But imagination and reality have little in common.

Georges But things are getting better every day.

Anne I don't want to carry on. You're making such sweet efforts to make everything easier for me. But I don't want to go on. For my own sake, not yours.

Georges I don't believe you. I know you. You think you are a burden to me. But what would you do in my place?

Anne I don't want to rack my brain over this. I'm tired, I want to go to bed.

Maud What I have against you is your lack of spontaneity.

Jean-Louis I open my heart to you. What more do you want?

Maud I don't like your love with conditions attached.