Jean-Paul Belmondo makes swagger funny by letting us see how hard a man is working at it. We value the charm most when a director lets it wear thin and gives the uncertainty underneath time to show.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Jean-Paul Belmondo’s Michel Poiccard in Breathless (1960): the swagger takes effort, and he lets us notice. That is why the vanity is funny rather than simply tiresome, and why we can enjoy his company without accepting his opinion of himself. He plays a man trying to look at ease, while keeping his own performance relaxed. We rate him highly here because the charm never quite excuses the selfishness.
Breathless was his breakthrough and associated him with the French New Wave. Crime roles with Jean-Pierre Melville included Silien in Le Doulos (1962), while That Man from Rio (1964) put his stunt work into adventure-comedy. He returned to Jean-Luc Godard for Pierrot le Fou (1965), as his work was turning towards commercial action, adventure and comedy. That shift made use of his comic timing as well as his willingness to perform his own stunts. The Professional (1981) belongs to the later action-hero phase.
In Breathless, Godard gives him Jean Seberg’s Patricia Franchini, whose reserve prevents Michel from controlling every exchange. In the long bedroom scene, their conversation keeps going without bringing them much closer to understanding each other. We were moved by the loneliness that becomes apparent as they talk, once his charm has begun to wear. Belmondo needs Seberg’s resistance: her limited outward response makes us watch their exchanges more carefully, and Godard gives their uncertainty time to emerge.
Belmondo’s humour matters as much as the tough-guy confidence. In Breathless, we can laugh at Michel because the actor lets us see how pleased this man is with himself; the later adventure films had a ready use for that comic timing. There are limits to its usefulness, and the clever conversation in Godard’s film sometimes wears thin despite the performers. Start with Breathless, paying Seberg as much attention as him, then try That Man from Rio for the stunt work.
Biography
Jean-Paul Belmondo was a French actor. Born on 9 April 1933 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, he trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique in Paris before making his screen debut in the late 1950s.
He rose to prominence with his performance as Michel Poiccard in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960). Belmondo appeared in further New Wave films including A Woman Is a Woman (1961) and Pierrot le Fou (1965), and later in popular action and comedy films such as That Man from Rio (1964), The Professional (1981) and Ace of Aces (1982). He won the César Award for Best Actor for Itinéraire d'un enfant gâté (1988) and received BAFTA nominations for Léon Morin, Priest (1961) and Pierrot le Fou (1965). Belmondo died on 6 September 2021 in Paris.
