JEAN-PAUL BELMONDO

Grief’s stupid,” muttered Jean-Paul Belmondo’s hood Michel Poiccard in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960), the film that brought the French New Wave to international attention. But such was the impact of Belmondo on cinema and culture, there was no stemming the tears when the charismatic French star died on 6 September, aged 88.

Born in Paris to a sculptor father and a painter mother, Belmondo had a brief spell as an amateur boxer before studying drama at the Paris Conservatory. A stage actor, he graduated to small roles for directors Marcel Carne (Les Trickers, 1958) and Claude Chabrol (À Double Tour, 1959) before Godard made him the face of the Nouvelle Vague, his sharp-suited car thiefturned-cop killer mimicking Bogart as he sucks on a Gauloise. Five years later, Belmondo reteamed with Godard for another playful crime classic, Pierrot Le Fou (1965). In between, he made three films for Jean-Pierre Melville – Léon Morin, Priest (1961), Le Doulos (1962) and Magnet Of Doom (1963) – who called him “the most accomplished actor of his generation”.

Though Belmondo worked with other great filmmakers such as Vittorio De Sica

(Two Women, 1960), Francois Truffaut (Mississippi Mermaid, 1969) and Alain Resnais (Stavisky…, 1974), he spent much of his career in undemanding mainstream movies that were a hit in France but failed to travel. He did not speak English, which kept him out of Hollywood despite garnering comparisons to Marlon Brando, James Dean and Paul Newman for his naturalistic portrayals of tough-buttender antiheroes. His last great role was for Claude Lelouch as Henri Fortin/Jean Valjean in Les Misérables (1995).

Now, it is impossible not think of Belmondo’s knowing smile as his iconic gangster passed away at the end of Breathless. JG