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The young Jean-Paul Belmondo - with a cigarette as a trademark
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ddp images
Jean-Paul Belmondo was one of the few actors who could give adolescents an exciting idea of what it could mean one day to be a man.
The scene of all scenes is the one in which Belmondo discovers a movie poster with Humphrey Bogart in "Out of Breath", takes the butt out of his mouth and rubs his thumb over his full lips: "Bogey".
Seldom has a change of staff between a traditional and a modern male image been brought to the point as clearly as Belmondo as the small entry in this incunabula of the "Nouvelle Vague" - shot with a dynamic hand-held camera and a budget that was hardly used for costumes in other films of the time would have been enough.
"Out of breath" by Jean-Luc Godard was the early hit on which the actor's fame is based to this day.
The defiant outsider, always with one leg in jail.
Attractive without being good-looking in the classic sense.
If there was one great man he was following in whose footsteps it was Jean Gabin.
And if there were any big ones he left footprints on, it was Jack Nicholson or Bruce Willis.
Responsible for this, however, were his later films, "Cartouche, the Bandit", "The Millions of the Hounded" and, above all, "Adventure in Rio" - with which he established himself as an authentic action star because he did his own stunts.
Against this huge audience success, "Out of breath" seems like a misunderstanding.
Because of his physique, Belmondo was cast by intellectual directors for the role of "rebel without a cause," if he didn't want to be an intellectual himself.
And that, although it was in a sense inherent in him.
As the son of the sculptor Paul and the dancer Madeleine Belmondo, it was common for him to meet people like Albert Camus at dinner.
The father awakened his son's interest in culture early on.
And what did the son do?
Learned boxing, which got him wrinkled face.
He was not a natural talent either as an actor, he learned the trade at the Paris Conservatory - only to wander through the provinces afterwards.
He just didn't look like a man should look on screen.
First came Claude Chabrol (“Steps Without a Trace”), like Godard a former film critic for the critical “Cahiers du cinéma”, then, in 1960: “Out of breath”.
Unlike his companion and eternal competitor Alain Delon, Belmondo stayed in France after initial successes.
No trips to Italian film artists, no real interest in Hollywood.
Instead, he beat, jumped, ran and raced through one action movie after another - and became more and more of
the
Belmondo in the process.
He could do comedy and thriller, soft and hard.
He was the happy daredevil, the fair winner.
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What he could not get small by hitting the edge of the hand, he charmed with his charm.
Ursula Andress, with whom he was with from 1966 to 1974, remembered that she once locked Belmondo out after an argument.
The man climbed the facade and came back in via the fireplace, like in the movie.
Action films dominated his career
His great success with adventure clothes such as "Der Greyhund", "Ein Crazy Guy" or "The Outsider", especially with the German audience, was primarily due to the anarchic dialogues of Reiner Brandt, who as voice actor also played the films by Terence Hill and Bud Spencer comedic masterpieces that they never were in the original.
Real masterpieces were the exception anyway - such as »Borsalino« (1970) or the more elegiac film »Stavisky« from 1974 (Alain Resnais), in which Belmondo put his charm into the service of the impostor he played. In his diary and in the cinema, action films dominated with Belmondo as the sporty Filou, sometimes this and sometimes beyond the law.
The success of the audience favorite has long been reflected in the audience figures. In 1981 he celebrated one of his greatest commercial triumphs with the agent thriller "Der Profi". But by then he was already approaching 50 and should gradually, similar to Sean Connery,
seem a little badly cast
in
one
role. A stunt injury to his head soon put an end to the daring part of his career at the age of 52. "I've hung up on helicopters over almost every European city," he said in 1989, and now he wants to make "other films" again. And on the stage.
In fact, he bought an old theater in Paris, refurbished it - and triumphed there as »Cyrano de Bergerac«, among others.
Theater again, like at the beginning, only this time at the top.
When he was to be awarded the coveted César film prize in 1989 for his age role in the dropout drama "The Lion", Belmondo stayed away from the award - because the artist of the sculpture had made derogatory comments about his father's art.
By then, the star had already earned more than just industry recognition: the awesome affection of an audience that no longer calls him Belmondo, but affectionately "Bébel".
In 2001 he suffered a severe stroke in Corsica, from which he is slowly recovering.
The consequences are still visible in 2008, when he stands in front of the camera for the last time in "A Man and His Dog".
In the late autumn of his life he devoted himself to spring again - and set up his own museum for his father, Paul Belmondo, filled with works of art from his estate.
The man whom Quentin Tarantino called a "god" appeared very rarely in public.
If he did, as at the funeral of his comedian friend Guy Debos, he was celebrated like an unearthly apparition.
Jean-Paul Belmondo died on Monday.
He was 88 years old.