Of the famous band of the Conservatory, Françoise Fabian remains, with Pierre Vernier, one of the last witnesses of the trips of these acrobats who around Jean-Paul Belmondo, in the mid-1950s, loved to live and remake the world.
The actor who has just died at the age of 88 was the leader of “La Bande du Conservatoire”, or “La Bande à Bébel”.
With its disappearance, this famous group of rebellious students of the Conservatory of the 1950s has just lost its last emblematic figure. In four years, Jean Rochefort (2017), Claude Rich (2017), Jean-Pierre Marielle (2019), Jean-Pierre Mocky (2019), Guy Bedos (2020) and, before them, Michel Beaune ( 1990) and Bruno Cremer (2010). The last survivors are Pierre Vernier and Françoise Fabian.
This group of friends eager for renewal and modernity in the aftermath of the war detonated, both on stage and in town, with their outbursts against the Conservatory of Dramatic Art, which they considered dusty. Laboriously admitted to the Conservatory, Belmondo was little appreciated by teachers because of his physique considered incompatible with the leading roles. Whoever becomes the new model of the young first in the cinema will even endure hurtful remarks like
"you would make a theater scream with laughter if you hugged a woman"
.
An anecdote has remained in the annals: in the competition of 1956, he won a simple accessit for a scene in the play
Amour et Piano
by Feydeau, which closed the door of the Comédie-Française, despite the ovation of his comrades from promotion. Carried in triumph by his band, he leaves the room, addressing a finger of honor to the jurors.
"It made a little scandal at the Conservatory,"
he recalled.
Core of this inseparable band, Belmondo multiplied jokes and gags against his friends, his teachers or even the people of the street or in the canteen of the Opera where they had lunch every day, recalled
Le Point
in 2017. He jumps on the hoods of cars, pulls down his pants in front of the ladies, starts fake fights on the sidewalk with Marielle or Cremer. They also made the 400 blows in the Latin Quarter or in Saint-Germain-des-Prés where his funeral will take place Friday, September 10.
“When Belmondo at the Conservatory played a scene, the warned rushed. [...] For some, we were in front of an error of vocation, for others, in front of the unconditional future, it recreates everything ”
, had written Jean Rochefort in his book
This kind of things
.
Read also Jean-Paul Belmondo: expelled from the Alsatian School, he bounces back at the Conservatory of dramatic art
Françoise Fabian, the unforgettable Aurore de
Raphaël or the debauchery
, the
Maud
de Rohmer accepted, despite the emotion that overwhelmed her, to evoke for France Inter and
Le Parisien
, the memories of her youth as an apprentice actress with this band happy kids who never lost an opportunity to eat life to the fullest.
Read also Belmondo "
collapsed
" after the death of Marielle, his
lifelong
accomplice
And today, she has not forgotten anything of those blessed years: “
... They took me under their wing, me, the poor little girl from her province, living in a maid's room.
I was their little friend, we met at
Chez Paulette
, a restaurant on rue Ordener in the 18th century.
We also met at the Dôme in Montparnasse, and there we remade the world.
"
"It's nothing important, it's cinema"
Jean-Paul Belmondo speaking to Françoise Fabian during the shooting of the film Le Thief by Louis Malle
The actress also remembers that she played with Jean-Paul Belmondo in
The Thief
by Louis Malle.
His relaxed professionalism, which made Quentin Tarantino say that he was “
the coolest man
”, did not fail to amaze him.
“He was constantly laughing between takes.
I said to him:
"Still, how do you do it, you don't need to concentrate?"
And he would reply:
“It's nothing important, it's cinema”,
”
she remembers.
Read alsoFrançoise Fabian: "
My songs are little romance novels
"
A bon vivant, an insatiable munch on life, Belmondo was of course all of that. But Françoise Fabian wanted to repeat to Dominique Besnehard on France Inter how much he was also a huge actor capable of playing everything.
“In addition to being sexy, he had a much wider range of play than people say. When you see
Le Doulos
, what an actor! To play the
Guignolo
, you have to do it: he managed, like the Italian actors, to go beyond the somewhat simple side, ”she
analyzes.
As a return to his roots and to please his father, the sculptor Paul Belmondo, who wanted him to exercise "
his real profession
", Bébel will return to the boards in 1987. He will be the
Kean
of Alexandre Dumas, adapted for the scene by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Under the benevolent rule of his friend Robert Hossein, this comeback will be a triumph.
In this absolute counter-employment - Kean is an actor who does not manage to be natural - Bébel will have been, once again, magnificent.
Jean-Paul Belmondo Le Figaro
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