Belmondo Retrospective

Jean-Paul Belmondo was born in the middle-class Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1933. His father, Paul Belmondo, who was born in Algiers to a family of Italian origin, was a highly regarded sculptor and a professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts. His mother, Sarah (nee Rainaud-Richard), was a painter.

Jean-Paul Belmondo studied acting at the Paris Conservatory and became a star overnight in Godard’s Breathless (1960). The quintessential New Wave actor, Belmondo went on to work with most of the major directors of the 60s and 70s. He climaxed his Godardian phase with Pierrot le fou (1965), swashbuckled and globe-trotted in Philippe de Broca’s Cartouche (1962) and That Man from Rio (1964), wore a cassock and a trenchcoat for Jean-Pierre Melville’s Léon Morin, prêtre and Le Doulos (both 1961 and future Rialto Pictures releases), romanced Catherine Deneuve in Truffaut’s Mississippi Mermaid (1969), stood up to screen veterans Jean Gabin and Charles Vanel in Henri Verneuil’s Un Singe en hiver (1962) and Melville’s L’Ainé des Ferchaux (1963), and embodied one of the 20th century’s most daring swindlers in Alain Resnais’s Stavisky (1974).

By the late 1970s, Belmondo had abandoned art house films for action vehicles which shifted the dramatic emphasis from acting talent to acrobat prowess (Belmondo priding himself on being his own stuntman). By the mid-80s his popularity was on the wane, though he made a comeback of sorts in Claude Lelouch’s Itinéraire d’un enfant gaté (1988) and Les Misérables (1995). His other credits include Patrice Leconte’s Half a Chance (1998), Cedric Klapisch’s Peut-être (1999) and Bernard Stora’s made-fortelevision remake of L’Ainé des Ferchaux (2001), in which Belmondo reprised the role played by Charles Vanel in the 1963 version.

Owner of the prestigious Théâtre des Varietés in Paris, Belmondo made his stage comeback in 1987 and has portrayed Edmund Kean, Cyrano and Frédérick Lemaître (the brilliant ham actor of Children of Paradise fame) and starred in two Feydeau revivals. In 1999 and 2001, Belmondo suffered strokes that forced him into retirement. (Souce: Pressbook © 2003, Rialto Pictures LLC).

Jean-Paul Belmondo died on September 6, 2021 in Paris at the age of 88.

Friday, September 23, 7:00 pm at La Maison Française at the French Embassy | Une femme est une femme (1961), by Jean-Luc Godard | 84 min | France | in French with English subtitles

Monday, September 26, 7:00 pm, at AMC Montgomery 16 | A bout de souffle (1960), by Jean-Luc Godard | 90 min | France | in French with English subtitles

Wednesday, September 28, 6:30 pm, at Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Washington, DC | Le Doulos (1962), by Jean-Pierre Melville 108 min | France | in French with English subtitles

Friday, September 30, 7:00 pm, at The Ven Hotel at Embassy Raw | Léon Morin, prêtre (1961), by Jean-Pierre Melville | 117 min | France | in French with English subtitles

Tuesday, October 4, 6:30 pm, at NYU Washington, DC | Pierrot Le Fou (1965), by Jean-Luc Godard |110 min | France | in French with English subtitles

Thursday, October 6, 6:45 pm, at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center | La Sirène du Mississippi (1969), by François Truffaut |123 min | 35 mm | France | in French with English subtitles

Tuesday, October 11, 7:00 pm, at Alliance Française of Washington, Stavisky (1974), by Alain Resnais |117 min | France, Italy | in French

Friday, October 14, 7:00 pm, at La Maison Française at the French Embassy | Belmondo par Belmondo (2016), by Régis Mardon | 90 min | France | in French with English subtitles