Jean-Paul Belmondo has died at the age of 88, taking the last authentic "salles gosses" of French cinema with him. Born on April 9, 1933 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, this former dunce (he was expelled from the prestigious Alsatian School) and theater lover - for whom Pierre Dux, then teaching at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique, predicted a career of playing supporting roles - leaves behind an indelible mark, full of cheeky Parisien humor and wit, in the history of the seventh art.
The star of French popular cinema
The star was introduced to the theater in the 1950s, and it was during this time that he met Jean Rochefort, Jean-Pierre Marielle, and Bruno Cremer, with whom he formed the famous "Bande du Conservatoire". After a few failures on stage, he was spotted by Jean-Luc Godard - a then critic at "Cahiers du cinéma" - who offered him a role in Breathless, which would turn out to be a decisive role for the rest of his career. Belmondo collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Sautet, François Truffaut, Louis Malle and Claude Lelouch, sharing the screen with Anna Karina, Françoise Dorléac, Lino Ventura and Jean Gabin in A Monkey in Winter, making him one of the major figures of the New Wave. From That Man from Rio to the The Professional, through Pierrot le fou, he embodied the mixture of reverence and provocation, which was desired among actors of the time. Polite, but not overly so, he was able to rewrite his dialogues and make his own stunts, as he did by hanging from a helicopter into the void, in Fear Over the City. Jean-Paul Belmondo was one of those actors who dared to do anything, both on-screen and in real life. His gangster mimics along with his irresistible pouts will remain engraved in our collective memory as symbols of his time as one of the most prolific careers of French cinema, that of a great, mischievous child to whom we have never ceased to pay tribute.
Translated by Abdel Benakki
