Jean-Paul Belmondo, star of Breathless, dies aged
88
Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic made Belmondo a major
star and his craggy looks led to a stellar career in France and around the
world
Jean-Paul
Belmondo: the beaten-up icon who made crime sexy
Andrew
Pulver
@Andrew_Pulver
Mon 6 Sep
2021 15.32 BST
Jean-Paul
Belmondo, the French actor who shot to international fame in Jean-Luc Godard’s
revolutionary New Wave classic Breathless, has died aged 88. The actor’s lawyer
confirmed the news to AFP.
Belmondo –
nicknamed Bébel by French audiences – became one of the country’s biggest
box-office stars in the 60s and 70s, his battered-looking face a contrast to
the chiselled features of his rival and sometime-collaborator Alain Delon. Like
Delon, Belmondo was a key figure of the outstanding generation of European
film-making of the period, with the series of films he made with Godard – which
included A Woman Is a Woman and Pierrot le Fou – making an indelible mark.
Born in
1933 in the well-to-do Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, son of “pied-noir”
sculptor Paul Belmondo, Belmondo attended a string of elite private schools but
did poorly. He showed more interest in sport, and embarked on a brief amateur
boxing career as a teenager. After contracting tuberculosis, he became
interested in performing, and applied to the elite National Academy of Dramatic
Arts, eventually gaining a place in 1952.
After
graduation, Belmondo began acting in the theatre, appearing in plays by
Anouilh, Feydeau and George Bernard Shaw. He also secured a string of small
film roles: in one of them, Marc Allegret’s 1958 comedy Un Drôle de Dimanche,
he was spotted by Godard who was then still a critic at Cahiers du Cinéma.
Godard cast him in a 12-minute short, Charlotte and Her Boyfriend – billed as
“a homage to Cocteau”, it consists of Belmondo’s character ranting at his
girlfriend in a hotel room. (The voice was supplied by Godard himself, after
Belmondo was conscripted into the army to serve in Algeria.)
Before
Godard could get a feature off the ground, his fellow critic Claude Chabrol
cast Belmondo in his 1959 thriller A Double Tour (AKA Web of Passion), playing
the murder victim’s boyfriend. The character’s name, Laszlo Kovacs, would recur
in Breathless as a sly in-joke. But it was Godard’s film, shot in the late
summer of 1959, that secured Belmondo’s ascension as the louche face of the
French New Wave. Based on a treatment by François Truffaut and Chabrol,
Breathless was inspired by the real-life activities of killer Michel Portail.
Much has been written about Breathless’ unorthodox production, with Godard
writing new dialogue every day, and shooting without lighting to allow for
acting spontaneity; Belmondo responded brilliantly to Godard’s tactics, and the
film became a substantial commercial hit on its release in 1960.
Belmondo
also took more straightforward roles: in Classe Tous Risques, also released in
1960, he played a young gangster who helps an armed robber escape with his
children to Paris. However, the success of Breathless catapulted him into the
limelight and he quickly became an international star, appearing in Peter
Brook’s adaptation of Moderato Cantabile and playing opposite Sophia Loren in
Two Women, from Italian director Vittorio De Sica.
But – like
Delon – he preferred to concentrate on French cinema, extending his relationship
with Godard with the fourth-wall-breaking A Woman Is a Woman in 1961, and
developing another with Jean-Pierre Melville, a favourite of the New Wave
critics, and who had a cameo role in Breathless. Belmondo played an ambiguous,
sexy cleric in Léon Morin, Priest for Melville in 1962, following it up with
Melville’s Le Doulos in 1963, in which he plays a robber suspected of being an
informant.
Belmondo
specialised in playing gangsters and low-lives, although he scored a big hit in
1962 with Cartouche, playing a raffish 18th-century swordsman opposite Claudia
Cardinale. That Man from Rio – a spy spoof with Françoise Dorléac – was another
big hit with the same director, Philippe de Broca, and was more in tune with
Belmondo’s own populist tastes; describing Moderato Cantabile as “very boring”
he told the New York Times in 1964: “I really prefer making adventure movies
like Rio to the intellectual movies of Alain Resnais or Alain Robbe‐Grillet.”
Having
given up acting for a year in 1967-8, Belmondo returned to work but at a less
furious pace, making films for Truffaut (Mississippi Mermaid), Claude Lelouch
(Love Is a Funny Thing) and Jacques Deray (Borsalino) – although he fell out
with co-star Delon over billing in the latter film. Following Delon’s example,
Belmondo moved behind the camera, producing films by Chabrol (Dr Popaul), De
Broca (The Man from Acapulco) and – ironically – Renais, in the shape of the
1930s-set political drama Stavisky.
Belmondo
kept up a string of popular hits in France into the mid-80s, with comedies,
action films and crime dramas, but his output began to slow towards the end of
the decade, and he returned to the theatre, performing in Cyrano de Bergerac
and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Kean. His highest-profile film role of the 1990s was in
Lelouch’s adaptation of Les Misérables, while he reunited with Delon in Une
Chance Sur Deux in 1998, in which neither are sure which of them is Vanessa
Paradis’ father.
In 2001, he
was hospitalised with a stroke, and did not make any films until 2009’s A Man
and His Dog, which did not hide the effects of his condition. In June last year
he was seen attending the funeral of the comedian and screenwriter Guy Bedos in
Paris.
Mort de Jean-Paul Belmondo, le Magnifique du cinéma
français
L’acteur s’est éteint à l’âge de 88 ans, a annoncé ce
lundi son avocat. Une personnalité hors norme à la carrière
exceptionnelle disparaît.
Par Pierre
Vavasseur
Le 6 septembre
2021 à 16h23, modifié le 6 septembre 2021 à 16h30
Accroché à
l’hélicoptère qui accompagnait sa légende d’acteur casse-cou, Jean-Paul
Belmondo est monté au plus haut du ciel à l’âge de 88 ans, a annoncé son avocat
ce lundi. La planète cinéma perd une étoile et le firmament en gagne une.
Inutile de dire qu’il faudra du temps, ici, pour se faire à l’idée. Bébel,
notre As des as, notre Magnifique, notre Marginal, notre Tendre Voyou, notre
Animal, notre Pierrot le fou, n’avait pas besoin de coupole pour être immortel.
En guise de
consolation, disons-nous que l’histoire du septième art, mais aussi celle du
théâtre ne pourraient pas tenir debout sans lui. Belmondo, alias Bébel, un
surnom qui lui venait de Pépel, le personnage de Gabin dans « les Bas-fonds »
de Jean Renoir en 1936, laisse dans son étincelant sillage 80 films et 30
pièces, dont les triomphes de « Kean » en 1987, et Cyrano » deux ans plus tard.
Adepte des défis
Né à
Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine) dans une famille d’artistes, d’un père
sculpteur et d’une mère peintre qu’il révérait l’un comme l’autre, petit-fils
d’un forgeron piémontais dont il avait hérité carrure et biscotos, le môme
Belmondo n’était pas fait pour la méditation. Ni pour la concentration requise
pour les études. Mais pour se battre, en revanche, se pendre au balcon de
l’appartement familial du 5e étage, grimper sur les statues du jardin du
Luxembourg ou fréquenter les rings, il était le premier. Et jamais à bout de
souffle pour les facéties.
Prendre la vie au
sérieux, excepté dans les coups durs, le Guignolo n’a jamais su. Quand son
copain de Conservatoire, Jean-Pierre Marielle, l’a mis au défi de bondir des
cintres sur scène, Bébel s’est jeté dans le vide en s’accrochant au rideau.
C’est encore lui, sur le tournage de « l’Homme de Rio » au Brésil, qui jette du
talc dans les gaines de climatisation de l’hôtel ou garnit les baignoires des
chambres de bébés crocodiles.
Les coups du sort
ne l’ont pas épargné : la mort de sa fille Patricia dans un incendie en 1993 à
l’âge de 40 ans, puis l’accident cérébral en 2001 qui a bien failli faire de la
suite de sa vie un film sans paroles. Mais il s’en est remis… « Réussir, ne
cessera-t-il de répéter plus tard, c’est insister. » Dont acte. Bébel a
insisté.
Fou de sport
Voilà tout Belmondo. Faisant de l’existence une histoire
d’amour et d’humour. Une scintillante cascade. Sur ce plan, il aura donné de sa
personne. Les hélicos, les filins, les bagnoles, le toit du métro, les ailes
d’avion, rien n’aura jamais empêché cet oiseau d’aller plus vite et plus fort
dans le risque. Sportif accompli, il adorait la boxe, qui lui faisait enjamber
l’Atlantique pour assister à des matchs mythiques. Mais il adorait aussi le
cyclisme et le football, qu’il pratiquait dans les cages pour mieux s’envoler.
Enveloppé dans son franc sourire, sculpté jusqu’au bout
comme un héros — il ne se séparait pas de ses haltères —, l’homme qui nous
quitte n’avait pas d’ennemis. Ni de
clan. Avec lui le cinéma montrait ses deux visages. Intello et populaire. Il ne
faut pas oublier que c’est Jean-Luc Godard qui l’a révélé avec « A bout de
souffle » et pour 40 millions d’anciens francs.
Côté grand
public, il faut ajouter, au fil des cartons chez Melville, Oury ou Verneuil,
chez de Broca, Lautner et consorts, 148 millions de spectateurs. Bébel est
mort. Toc toc badaboum ! Ça va swinguer dans les nuées.
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