Jean-Paul Belmondo
“Jean-Paul Belmondo and Michael K. Williams in the same day … man, what loss”
“Jean-Paul Belmondo has passed away and cinema will never be quite as cool again”
“We’re sad to hear the news that celebrated French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo has passed away aged 88. He was the epitome of Gallic cool and a favourite actor of the French New Wave”
“This is a sad day for culture. A great actor and an icon of French and European cinema has left us. Repose en paix Jean-Paul”
In 1960 Jean-Paul Belmondo starred as a small time crook called Michel Poiccard in Jean-Luc Godard’s masterpiece Breathless a.k.a. A Bout de Souffle. Godard wanted a bit of chaos so didn't let the authorities know he was filming a movie about a killer on the run. According to legend this meant filming was disrupted when film real policeman turned up to arrest Belmondo for his suspicious behaviour. Belmondo’s character idolizes American tough guy Humphrey Bogart.
When Godard was asked if he liked Hollywood films he gave the curious response: “I have contempt for it. It is nothing. It does not exist. Thus I love it. I love it yet at the same time I have contempt for it.” As many others have pointed out over the years the credits for Breathless are like a Who’s Who of the French New Wave. Godard directed, Francois Truffaut contributed the original story, and Claude Chabrol was the production designer, but the golden boy was of course Monsieur Belmondo.
The late Philip French once wrote: “Breathless was the real thing. It was what we’d been waiting for, and it has taken its place alongside 20th-century works that have become familiar landmarks yet not lost their ability to shock and surprise: Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Eliot’s The Waste Land, Joyce’s Ulysses, Dali and Buñuel’s Un Chien andalou, Picasso’s Guernica, Welles’s Citizen Kane, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. They are what Ezra Pound was talking about when he said that “great literature is news that remains news”.
We at Le Document agree that Breathless remains a film you can watch over and over and that it still seems fresh after all these decades. There’s something about the way Belmondo smokes a cigarette that epitomised Gallic cool. His parents were both artists. Before he turned to acting he tried his hand at boxing. Presumably it was stepping into the ring one too many times that gave him such a distinctive nose. Belmondo made many other gangster films, war films and thrillers, and he always did his own stunts. Some critics didn’t know what to make of him. One reviewer of Breathless described him as being “hypnotically ugly” but Belmondo had what it took to attract many lovers including Ursula Andress. And, like James Dean and Marlon Brando, Belmondo he is someone that’s too good to be forgotten.
Jean-Paul Belmondo was born: April 9, 1933 and died: September 6, 2021. R.I.P.
Keep watching the films of Jean-Luc Godard and listen to this song ...
Le Document was founded in November 2019 by the artists Harry Pye and Chris Tosic. Le Document is the magazine for fantastic people. Please add your email and subscribe for free via the sign up button below.
