Jean-Paul Belmondo, forever…

Incredible life!
How to talk about yourself without evoking your smile. Because it is your smile that remains with us today and your talent that you gave in the camera of great filmmakers, and with your actor friends.

You embody this popular happiness in the noble sense, you are this always reassuring character who oscillates between the clown, the dreamer, laughter and drama. You have touched most of us with your free spirit and your love of life.

For happiness you have given us; in Pierrot le fou, Le Magnifique, Le professionnel, L’as des as or À bout de souffle by Godard, which finally gave birth to you in French cinema and beyond our borders.
From Audiard to Edmond Rostand via Kean, your playing was always fair, remarkable, generous, funny, singular.

Not to mention the cult scene of Itinéraire d’un enfant gâté where the transmission from father to his son or from actor to nascent actor bursts the screen with so much truth.
How to say “Hello” and learn never to be surprised, a lesson!
I was 15 years old, but only one sentence, pure and an authentic truth to mark our mind and our heart. This is called a gift, but above all great Art!

Between the “toc toc badaboum”, the well sent “slaps”, and your stunts on the roof of a metro car or hanging on a rope of a helicopter above Paris, your gestural and bombastic romances remain like an indelible imprint but well more than that still; a soul.

Love for the job, love for people, but above all love for far away, was that, it’s all there. Your father, Paul, sculpted bodies, faces, curves. Your heritage is not very far away, you sculpted French cinema forever and in passing our hearts too.

Thank you Sir.

Barbara Sensey
Photo: Jean-Paul Belmondo, 1971

Movies and Theater:

Movies:
1960: À bout de souffle, Jean-Luc Godard – 1962 : Cartouche, Philippe de Broca – 1962: Un singe en hiver, Henri Verneuil -1964: L’Homme de Rio, Philippe de Broca -1964: Cent Mille Dollars au soleil, Henri Verneuil -1965: Pierrot le Fou, Jean-Luc Godard – 1965: Les Tribulations d’un Chinois en Chine, Philippe de Broca – 1966: Paris brûle-t-il ?, René Clément – 1968: Ho! , Robert Enrico – 1969: Le Cerveau, Gérard Oury – 1970: Borsalino, Jacques Deray -1971: Le Casse, Henri Verneuil – 1973: Le Magnifique, Philippe de Broca – 1975: Peur sur la ville, Henri Verneuil – 1975: L’Incorrigible, Philippe de Broca – 1976: Le Corps de mon ennemi, Henri Verneuil – 1979: Flic ou Voyou, Georges Lautner – 1981: Le Professionnel, Georges Lautner – 1982: L’As des As, Gérard Oury – 1983: Le Marginal, Jacques Deray – 1984: Joyeuses Pâques, Georges Lautner – 1987: Le Solitaire de Jacques Deray – 1988: Itinéraire d’un enfant gâté, Claude Lelouch – 1995: Les Misérables, Claude Lelouch – 1998: Une chance sur deux, Patrice Leconte – 2000: Les Acteurs, Bertrand Blier – 2011: D’un film à l’autre, Claude Lelouch.

Theater:
1954: Le Malade imaginaire, Molière – 1954: Les Précieuses ridicules, Molière – 1955: Fantasio, Alfred de Musset – 1956: L’Hôtel du libre échange, Georges Feydeau – 1957: La Mégère apprivoisée, William Shakespeare – 1987: Kean, Jean-Paul Sartre of Alexandre Dumas – 1989-1990: Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand – 1996-1997 : La Puce à l’oreille, Georges Feydeau.