The terrifying feats of French movie legend Jean-Paul Belmondo

Many years earlier than Tom Cruise was making audiences gasp, the Gallic star was getting as much as much more hair-raising exploits on display screen – generally with few security measures.

One among trendy Hollywood’s nice main males, Tom Cruise, is to obtain a fellowship from the British Movie Institute this Might, alongside a season celebrating his profession. Cruise is described by the establishment as a “daredevil motion star”, and somebody with a “dedication to reinventing the cinema spectacle” – traits exemplified most of all by his function within the Mission: Unimaginable collection, the most recent of which, Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Unimaginable – The Ultimate Reckoning, is out this month. Nevertheless, whereas it is tough to suppose a star of comparable stature who performs such awe-inspiring stunts right now, Cruise has a forebear who’s simply as daring, if no more so. That star is Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Belmondo, or Bébel as he’s generally identified, is acquainted to many as a determine of Nineteen Sixties French New Wave cinema. Although starting his profession within the early Nineteen Fifties with work at Paris’s Théâtre de l’Atelier, he quickly started appearing in movies. Nouvelle Obscure classics reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (1966), Une Femme est une Femme (1961) and Breathless (1960) confirmed Belmondo working with ease in arthouse cinema, reflecting his mental background: his father was a sculptor and his mom an artist. Nevertheless, Belmondo had an extremely big selection.

In the identical interval as he was appearing in Godard’s avant-garde movies, Belmondo labored on many alternative sorts of movie, from French noirs reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos (1962) and Claude Sautet’s Classe tous risques (1960), to straight dramas reminiscent of Melville’s Léon Morin, Priest (1961) and, most significantly, Un Singe en Hiver (1962) by Henri Verneuil. Because the years glided by, it could be Verneuil who would form Belmondo’s later profession because of his underrated thriller Peur sur la ville (1975). The movie turned the actor right into a proto-Cruise determine whose bodily prowess and fearless stunt work would in the end outline him for French audiences.

Celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this 12 months, and identified in English-language territories as each Worry Over the Metropolis and The Night time Caller, Verneuil’s movie is comparatively easy by way of narrative. Belmondo performs Letellier, a Parisian police commissaire who, very like Clint Eastwood in Don Siegel’s Soiled Harry (1971), would not play by the foundations. He is haunted by a deadly incident through which prison Marcucci (Giovanni Cianfriglia) managed to flee after a financial institution heist. Nevertheless, Letellier and his sidekick Moissac (Charles Denner) are confronted with one other downside: a serial killer stalking and murdering girls throughout Paris. It would not take lengthy for the 2 instances to change into intertwined as Letellier relentlessly pursues each villains throughout town, with a lot derring-do and lots of gobsmacking stunts alongside the way in which.

Peur sur la ville was not well-received by the critics on the time, who had been sad with Verneuil following American tendencies in depicting cops as cowboy-ish gunslingers breaking the foundations to scrub up cities. “Via some odd work with the trans-Atlantic scissors,” wrote Richard Eder of The New York Occasions, “the Franco-Italian manufacturing Night time Caller by Henri Verneuil appears to be two fully completely different motion pictures, neither of them as much as a lot.” Eder did say that Belmondo’s stunts had been entertaining, although; typically, this was the one side that was reviewed positively. Equally, French movie criticism pulled no punches. Movie journal Positif prompt that the movie “evoked the worst of American police movies”, specifically in its “complete absence of social background”. What it did have in abundance, nevertheless, was Belmondo appearing as if he had a loss of life want. And audiences liked it.

His shift from arthouse darling to motion star was thought-about uncommon on the time by some – although it wasn’t fairly as stark because it appeared. “Once I was younger, I did stunts for my very own pleasure,” Belmondo as soon as admitted. “Once I was on the conservatoire, I hung from the balconies. I all the time had a style for stunts.” Professor Lucy Bolton, a senior lecturer in movie research at Queen Mary College of London, says Belmondo’s need for bodily roles made sense, given his background. “He was very bodily, very sporty, and had a brief profession as an newbie boxer,” she tells the BBC. “Apparently, he stopped as a result of he did not like his face getting so rearranged!”

Muriel Zagha, critic and co-host of French tradition podcast Garlic & Pearls, agrees that there have been seeds of Belmondo the daredevil in his earlier profession. “In fact, Belmondo was criticised for that shift,” she tells the BBC, “which will need to have appeared to some incomprehensible. However, in hindsight, I see continuity between these two phases of his profession. Belmondo stated in interviews that there was no distinction between the ‘pinch’ (pincement) of apprehension he felt earlier than doing a stunt and the stage fright he felt earlier than strolling on stage. They usually had been each emotions he loved.” Peur sur la ville very a lot embodies the previous pinch reasonably than the latter.

Despite the criticism, Verneuil’s movie was an enormous success. Launched on Belmondo’s forty second birthday, the movie stayed on the high of the French field workplace for 2 months, solely falling to Ken Russell’s rock opera collaboration with The Who, Tommy (1975). It was the second-most widespread movie in France that 12 months, too, simply trumped by John Guillermin’s equally stunt-filled The Towering Inferno (1974). Clearly, the general public didn’t share the critics’ dismissiveness, and Belmondo’s stunts performed an enormous function within the movie’s word-of-mouth unfold.

For Peur sur la ville’s energy as a movie lies not a lot within the drama of its narrative because it does within the authenticity of its motion. As Belmondo stated in an interview in regards to the movie on the time, “I am positive that after I do a stunt for Henri, I will be very effectively filmed. Individuals will see it is the actor doing it and it could damage it in case you could not see that.” Initially, the movie lulls the viewer into considering that it might be one other simple procedural, nevertheless it is not lengthy earlier than the motion cranks up a notch, and the actor is climbing precariously over the balcony of a flat. Zoom in on the sequence, and you’ll see how restricted the security measures had been. Behind-the-scenes pictures taken throughout filming by photographer Michel Ginfray present one rope hooked up to Belmondo, however even that is seen solely within the pictures the place he’s climbing over the balcony; his preliminary strategy to it, sidling alongside a ledge, appears to be finished with none precautions.

Peur sur la ville is a movie haunted by heights, proper from its opening montage of Paris’s rising enterprise quarter. Constructing on a few of the tendencies unfolding in American cinema of the interval, specifically the sense of being surveyed from the brand new, trendy towers of glass and metal in movies reminiscent of Soiled Harry and Alan J Pakula’s Klute (1971), Verneuil fills his display screen with vertigo-including pictures. Nevertheless, because the movie progresses, the important thing purpose for this deal with high-rises turns into obvious: they’re actually a harmful impediment course for Belmondo’s Harry Callahan-esque Letellier to deal with. As his character says to a witness early on, “You will need to see plenty of motion in these towers…” It is a forecast for the remainder of the movie, particularly its finale through which Belmondo is lowered from a helicopter all the way down to a high-rise window with the intention to break in.

The movie’s most memorable stunts, nevertheless, happen in a surreal chase which brings the 2 central storylines collectively. The primary half of the sequence is a tense dash throughout the rooftops of Paris close to Opéra and Galeries Lafayette, through which Letellier hunts the movie’s most important killer after he has claimed one other sufferer. However this chase merges with the hunt for Marcucci after he’s noticed driving in one other a part of town by certainly one of Letellier’s colleagues, main Letellier to embark on a death-defying race by the Parisian Métro in pursuit of the robber.

The primary half of this 15-minute sequence alone could be a set piece worthy of any motion movie. Belmondo tends to run with startling gusto in the direction of the very fringe of roofs, generally stopping to look down, different instances leaping the hole to an adjoining ledge. It was on this a part of the chase that the actor genuinely harm himself, scarring his hand badly after the character misses his bounce between the tiled roofs, grabbing a metallic gutter à la James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1957). The peak on this occasion is an phantasm, with the digicam angle hiding a small balcony causeway beneath this specific hole. Nonetheless, Belmondo’s hand was significantly lower by the gutter. Later, he crashes by the home windows of a flat, the falling pretend glass additionally reducing the actor. Nevertheless, the true death-defying moments happen exterior.

In a single scene, the place Letellier loses management of his stepping beneath gunfire, he slides down a sloping roof. On this temporary shot, a security rope can simply be seen round his waist. However reasonably than taking the viewer out of the drama, it is extra prone to shock them as they suppose, “Is that it?!” It appears a paltry security precaution, and does little to guarantee the viewer that the actor is absolutely protected, particularly as bits of tile come away chaotically with him every time he tries and fails to climb again up.

If this wasn’t sufficient, the second half of the sequence includes a distinct form of hazard. Clearly taking cues from William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971) and its personal chase scene throughout New York, Verneuil shoots a pursuit round Paris’ Métro system. Not like Friedkin’s scene, through which Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle is behind a wheel, first following a automobile, then a practice, Verneuil’s chase is performed on foot. As Letellier closes in on Marcucci, he takes ever extra dangers, to the purpose the place he jumps onto the again of a shifting Métro practice because it leaves the station, and from there proceeds to climb onto its roof. Whereas a number of sequences of this scene are evidently filmed within the studio with a projected backdrop, a number of others are very a lot actual, filmed when the practice was travelling at round 35mph (55kmh). Belmondo runs alongside every carriage rooftop earlier than leaping down flat to keep away from the approaching tunnels, after which rigorously walks throughout the practice roof because it trundles over the Pont de Bir-Hakeim. It is totally hair-raising. As Eder wrote for The New York Occasions, “Maybe it’s an commercial for the brand new high-speed Paris subways.”

Simply so as to add to the obvious hazard, Belmondo is leaping and scampering round rooftops and trains in less-than-suitable Seventies apparel: a wide-lapelled blazer and flared trousers, patent leather-based penny loafers, and a Rolex Daytona 6263 so priceless that, in 2013, it was bought by his F1 driver son Paul Belmondo at Christie’s for €165,000 (£140,000). Nevertheless, Belmondo was greater than ready for the challenges of the movie, having been put by his paces by one of many trade’s high stuntman, Rémy Julienne.

Julienne had been within the stunt world for a while earlier than Peur sur la ville. He was a specialist in automobile stunts greater than anything, having been knowledgeable motocross rider. He was Michael Caine’s stunt double in Peter Collins’ The Italian Job (1969), as he went on to do an array of stunts for the James Bond franchise, beginning with John Glen’s For Your Eyes Solely (1981) and its automobile chase involving Roger Moore’s iconic, disintegrating yellow Citroën 2CV. “I all the time wish to have an accelerator,” Julienne as soon as instructed a French TV present, “and all the time brush towards the boundaries”. Julienne labored prolifically all through the Seventies in French and Italian crime and motion cinema as effectively, and that is when he first met Verneuil and Belmondo.

In 1971, Julienne labored with Belmondo and Verneuil on Le casse (The Burglars), which additionally starred Omar Sharif. It was a testing floor for Belmondo’s daring, with a number of equally gobsmacking stunts together with an extremely aggressive automobile chase across the cramped streets of Athens and a exceptional stunt through which Belmondo is rolled out of a lorry’s tipper down a steep cliff edge adopted by an avalanche of particles. It was the start of a fruitful working relationship, with Belmondo and Julienne collaborating on 14 different movies.

Belmondo’s technical ability with stunts and his propensity for hazard really feel greater than a little bit proto-Cruise. On the identical time, it is unimaginable to think about Cruise agreeing to work beneath such dangerous circumstances, even when trendy well being and security measures allowed him to, an element which makes Belmondo’s stunts much more thrilling. However Cruise is undeniably his closest successor. “[Belmondo had a] Cruise degree of stunt bravery,” says Bolton. “He liked police procedurals, motion motion pictures and comedies as a lot as status productions, and appeared untrammelled by any expectations or calls for. He was, nevertheless, resolutely French, all the time resisting advances from Hollywood, and so his affect is extra nationwide than worldwide.”

Verneuil directed solely two movies with Belmondo after Peur sur la ville , however the spirit of their collaboration lived on in an array of French motion policiers. Movies reminiscent of Georges Lautner’s The Skilled (1981), and Jacques Deray’s Le Marginal (1983) and The Loner (1987), additional cemented his place in French widespread tradition. “He’s endlessly the insolent younger prison from Breathless,” Bolton concludes, “however he undoubtedly got here to be one of many greatest, most versatile and enduring stars of French cinema.” The connection that basically mattered was Belmondo and Julienne’s; the stunts they conjured up collectively outlined Bébel’s profession.

Celebrating their collaboration now feels particularly apt contemplating the Academy’s current accepting of stunt work as a artistic a part of cinema, through its choice to create a brand new Oscars class beginning subsequent 12 months. Julienne and Belmondo would have virtually actually gained such an award, had stunt work been acknowledged as an artform of their day.

Whereas Belmondo is remembered in some circles right now for his arthouse cinema, in the end it’s his daredevilry that cemented him as a cultural establishment in France. “My sense is that his Nouvelle Obscure incarnation is one for cinephiles in France,” says Zagha, “however that for almost all of French individuals he was – and stays within the collective reminiscence – an enormous star of motion movies. These are what made him a monument, a nationwide treasure.”

The post-Peur sur la ville profession of this nationwide treasure is greatest summarised by the movie’s ultimate change. “Bravo! What you probably did was marvellous!” enthuses Letellier’s chief (Jean Martin) after the cop has been lowered from a helicopter, smashed into the window of a high-rise block and defeated the serial killer by repeatedly ramming him towards a desk. “Nah,” he quips again. “No brains, all muscle.” Belmondo undeniably had each and was some of the adept actors of his period. However his versatility is rightly remembered as a bodily one within the minds of an entire era of viewers, and his stunts have the facility to go away us breathless to this present day.