Star Review
Jean-Paul Belmondo made his name playing a hood with a fondness for Bogart in A Bout de Souffle. It couldn’t have been more appropriate, for surely no actor has a better claim to be the true heir to Bogie. Just like Bogart, he’s ugly-beautiful – twinkling eyes above a prize fighter’s nose – and there’s the same combination of charm and attitude. Not to mention the cigarette both men glued to their lower lip. Was the Bogart fetish in the script or was it (yet another) canny move by Jean-Luc Godard? If he’d cast Alain Delon, would the character worship, say, George Raft?
The earliest film here, A Double Tour, features Belmondo as an obnoxious boyfriend antagonising his prospective mother-in-law. It’s a supporting part, yet his star power is already on show and he walks away with the film. Ostensibly a murder mystery, Claude Chabrol is as interested in showing a bourgeois family unravel as he is in finding out whodunit. He films it with considerable style, especially the Hitchcockian murder and the innovative use of flashbacks.
Pierrot le Fou is a companion piece to A Bout de Souffle or maybe (for remember that this is Godard), the second part of the same film. Both are lovers-on-the-run stories but Pierrot… goes further off road. It’s a most playful work, maybe even Godard’s funniest. It is also a film of extraordinary beauty and remains utterly relevant.
After Pierrot… Belmondo concentrated on more mainstream movies. However, he was still willing to work with interesting directors. Stavisky is a big-budget collaboration with Alain Resnais, that dramatises a scandal of the 1930s, when a left-wing French government was bought down by an upmarket swindler. Belmondo is perfect as the charismatic conman, although those unfamiliar with L’affaire Stavisky might find the film occasionally opaque.
The most recent film here is also the least: Le Professional is a baggy thriller that briefly entertains with a striking car chase but otherwise just joins the dots. It is the weak link in a collection that shows off one of the truly great stars in some of his most characteristic roles.
James Oliver on 13th June 2007
View all 34 of James Oliver’s reviews
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Film Description
A fine selection of five films from one of the key faces of the nouvelle vague, who is also one of France's biggest box office stars and a recipient of France’s highest accolade, the Legion of Honour. The set mixes the familiar with the less well-known and contains: À Double Tour (Chabrol, 1959), À Bout de Souffle (Godard, 1960), Pierrot le Fou (Godard, 1965), Stavisky (Resnais, 1974) and Le Professionnel (Lautner, 1981).
À Double Tour, Claude Chabrol's first film in colour, is a characteristically suspenseful thriller and also a cruel portrait of bourgeois life. Henri Marcoux, a respectable middle-class man living in Provence with his wife and two children, is having an affair with a younger woman, Léda. His wife is determined to avoid a scandal at any price, even to the extent of breaking off her daughter’s engagement when she learns that her future son-in-law Laszlo (Belmondo) has been sympathising with her husband. Then the unthinkable happens – Léda is found dead. But who is the killer?
A bout de Souffle was the film that gave Belmondo his big break. As the petty criminal on the run in a film that was the epitome of cool, Belmondo entered cinematic immortality. Interestingly, the film united four of the initiators of the nouvelle vague - Godard (producer, director), Truffaut (writer), Chabrol (artistic director) and Melville (actor).
Pierrot le Fou, a sort of follow-uo to Breathless, is the story of a bored husband (Belmondo) who runs away from Paris to the South of France with an unpredictable but beguiling young babysitter (Anna Karina) after a corpse is found in her flat. After an idyllic time at the seaside they hit the road once more and get by on theft. Belmondo was nominated for a BAFTA for his perfomance in this tragic tale of a romantic couple who cannot escape fate no matter how far they flee.
Widely regarded as one of Alan Resnais’ finest films, Stavisky tries to shed some light on the eponymous, enigmatic Russian émigré who scandalised France. Stavisky (brilliantly portrayed by Belmondo) built an empire through a combination of subterfuge, fraud and false identity, becoming, as the more respectably titled Serge Alexandre, one of the most influential and powerful men in France in the period between the wars. As the investigations of Inspector Bonny reveal, his life was the perfect sham, which took in businessmen, financiers and politicians of all persuasions. Features a score from Stephen Sondheim.
Finally, Le Professionel is a hard-edged action thriller with a haunting Ennio Morricone score. Secret agent Joss Beaumont (Belmondo) is sent to Malawi to assassinate President N’Nala. At the last moment, the French authorities make a change of policy and betray Beaumont to the Malawi government. After two years in captivity, Beaumont escapes from the African state and returns to Paris to enact his revenge.
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Jean-Luc Godard Collection (Volume 1)
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Screen Icons: Jean-Paul Belmondo Collection
