The actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, legend of French cinema, died on Monday at the age of 88.
In sixty-four years of career, Jean-Paul Belmondo has shot no less than 88 films, alternating arthouse cinema and great popular successes.
Return on the different facets of the filmography of this sacred monster.
A chameleon actor.
Jean-Paul Belmondo, sacred monster of French cinema, died on Monday at the age of 88.
In sixty-four years of career, Jean-Paul Belmondo has shot no less than 88 films, alternating arthouse cinema and great popular successes.
A look back at a multifaceted career.
The young first of the New Wave
Jean-Paul Belmondo was 25 years old, when Jean-Luc Godard, then critic for
Cahiers du cinema
, offered him to play in a short film,
Charlotte et son Jules
.
The actor hesitates, but accepts under the insistence of his companion, Renée Constant, known as Élodie Constantin, a dancer with whom he married in 1959.
Claude Chabrol suggested that he shoot
A double tour
, after seeing it in the short film by his friend Jean-Luc Godard.
gave him his first major role in 1960, alongside Jean Seberg, in
Breathless
, the story of a killer on the run, in love with a girl in Paris.
A critical and public success, considered the manifesto of the New Wave.
If behind the camera, Jean-Luc Godard imposes a new way of directing, Jean-Paul Belmondo revolutionizes the way of playing by imposing a naturalness and a modernity that has never been seen before. With Jean-Luc Godard, he still shoots
Une femme est une femme
(1961) and
Pierrot le fou
(1965), an odyssey in which he meets Jean Seberg.
Jean-Pierre Melville, admired by cinephiles but ignored by the public, decides to engage the two emblematic figures of the New Wave, Emmanuelle Riva (
Hiroshima mon amour)
and Jean-Paul Belmondo for his film
Léon Morin priest
, in which the actor , masterful, put on the cassock.
In 1969, he shot
La sirène du Mississipi
with another great figure from the New Wave, François Truffaut.
The charming stuntman of adventure films
Tak tak badaboum!
Jean-Paul Belmondo is also a very physical actor, adoring to do his own unlined stunts, at the beginning of the 1960s, Jean-Paul Belmondo also emerges as a backfiring hero of adventure films with the film of cape and d sword of Philippe de Broca,
Cartouche
.
A great popular success of the year 1962 which attracts some three million spectators in theaters.
He reunited with the director for a few other big resounding successes, the chase films
The Man from Rio
(1964),
The Tribulations of a Chinese in China
(1965),
The Magnificent
(1973) and
The Incorrigible
(1975) ).
With Gérard Oury, he made a break in
Le Cerveau
(1969) and became an outstanding pilot in
L'As des as
(1982) for Gérard Oury.
The page of the New Wave is turned, Bebel is n ° 1 at the box office.
With Georges Lautner, he played
Flic ou voyou
in 1979, then secret agents in
The Professional
in 1981.
The recipe is always the same: action scenes, stunts, fights, humor and a pretty woman who falls under his spell ... At that time, we wait for the next Belmondo as we expect nowadays the next James Bond.
The policeman in capital works
Jean-Paul Belmondo has also distinguished himself in many thrillers.
He tackled the genre in 1963 with two major thrillers signed Jean-Pierre Melville,
The elder of Ferchaux
and
Le Doulos
, both released in 1963).
He continued with
Borsalino
, in which he shared the bill of the other great male star of the time, Alain Delon (Jacques Deray, 1970), but also notably
Le Corps de mon ennemi
(Henri Verneuil, 1976), and the cult
Fear of the city
(Henri Verneuil, 1975).
The aging hero
In
A monkey in winter
by Henri Verneuil in 1962, the aging Jean Gabin said to the character played by Jean-Paul Belmondo: "Come that I kiss you, you're my 20 years old".
In the 1980s, the public got tired of Bébel's Tak tak badaboum. "For the Parisian intelligentsia, I had become a stuntman", will analyze the interpreter of
Marginal
more and more
Solitaire
, his first big commercial failure in 1987. "The thriller too many. I was fed up and the public too, ”confessed the actor.
The swan song of an aging Belmondo will be staged by Claude Lelouch in
Itinerary of a spoiled child
in 1988, then in
Les Misérables
in 1995. Jean-Paul Belmondo then returns to his first loves, the theater, where he endorses big roles like Cyrano de Bergerac in 1990. His health problems kept him away from the studios in 2001. While we no longer think of seeing him on the screen, each new attempt is more cruel, as in
A man and his dog
(2008) by Francis Huster.
Ironically, the story of an old man whom society rejects.
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