Belmondo, his revenge on the boards<

(Articles originally published in 2016 in the special issue of Paris Match dedicated to Jean-Paul Belmondo)

Cyrano's nose was too big, Belmondo's too broken. But that of Pierre Dux, one of his teachers, will be singularly lacking in flair. At the beginning of the 1950s, no one saw Belmondo as a young leader, he did not fit into the standards of dark handsome people. The Jean-Paul is rather a tumultuous, a luminous one. His 18 years are a fireworks display that frightens the established dramatic order. So, we only open the door of the Conservatory to him, this sanctuary where the great actors of tomorrow are made. Admitted as a simple free listener, the fiery Belmondo only has the possibility of listening. It is forbidden to get on the boards, to give the slightest reply. He who, during all his young years, used his fists to assert himself, now he is being refused to go into battle! Spectator, it's not his job. When he thinks he's hung up the boxing gloves of his childhood dreams to trade them for stage costumes... But he's not going to let himself be knocked out by an institution of old jerks who don't even recognize the talent when you put it right in front of them. That damn nose again. One thing is certain, it is at the Conservatory that he will have broken it the most! After a year on the sidelines, the apprentice-actor finally manages to pass a scene in front of René Simon, his main teacher. The verdict is dealt to him like an uppercut: My boy, you are not made for this trade. We can't do anything for you." The shock is harsh.

To see: Jean-Paul Belmondo, his Match years

Imagine that after the revelation of her faith, a Bernadette Soubirous was refused entry to the church. All things considered, it's a bit the same thing that Jean-Paul Belmondo experienced. No, of course, he had no visions, saw neither the Blessed Virgin nor Molière appear to order him to burn the boards, but he was entitled to his enlightenment. He, the bad student, the dissipated, the undisciplined, he, not yet Bébel, but already rebellious, idealizes himself as Cerdan, imagines himself as Louison Bobet. To cerebral sports, the kid prefers physical effort, self-sacrifice... and blows. Surpass yourself to exist, to assert yourself. But at 16, the teenager finds himself … out of breath. A dirty primary infection, an antechamber of tuberculosis, tears him away from Parisian life. Here he is recovering in Allanche, in Cantal. Cut off from his urban roots, this not-so-robust rascal won't wither away or sink into depression. What put him on the path of his vocation were the fairs, these pastoral festivals where, in parallel with the bicycle races, various activities are offered. And, among them, contests of street vendors where the best chatter wins the bet. And for the Parigot, it's an opportunity to clown around. And people laugh. And these bursts of laughter come to his heart like shots of adrenaline. Forgotten with congested lungs, he inhales deeply, for the first time, the exquisite smell of success. Of course, he still doesn't know how to put this feeling into words, he doesn't know the power of his budding charisma, but what he knows, deep down, is that now he wants to be an actor. . To amuse the gallery, to be the center of interest, to provoke the emotion of the public, here is the only and healthy strong drug which it needs.

Inveterate role player, the actor Belmondo has endorsed them all, from the most humble to the most prestigious

He dreamed of boxing rings, the stage will be his, the most beautiful of all, where he will lead his greatest fights. Of course, it is on the screens that he will soon shine like a star, but he will admit later: "The cinema, for me, was only an accident of course."

In the meantime, we are still in 1951, and his dreams of glory are shattered on the door of this damned Conservatory... He will finally be admitted there, thus integrating an anthill of talents - Jean Rochefort, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Bruno Crémer, Claude Rich, Pierre Vernier... - whose friend he would become in life, in death, in the city and on stage. He did not leave this institution until 1956, giving the now legendary finger of honor to the jurors of the exit competition. His different game, his banter, his energy should have earned him a first prize. These judges from another artistic age will only grant him a contemptuous first accessit for his interpretation of a scene from "Love and piano" by Georges Feydeau, and a second accessit for his performance in an extract from "Fourberies de Scapin by Moliere. The spectators laughed so hard that the bailiff had to intervene to calm them down. Disappointed and revolted, his friends go on stage and carry their hero in triumph. A spontaneous way of awarding him a first prize... of camaraderie as the doors of the Comédie-Française are closing for him.

To read: Belmondo, the magnificent

Unlike the lone wolf Alain Delon, his great "competitor", Bébel will always remain a soldier, a gang leader. The good friend we all dream of. His protesting energy, his laughing and iconoclastic ardor already announce the beginnings of an innovative and liberating artistic movement. This creative tsunami that will sweep away everything in its path is the new wave. Raised on this crest by Godard and Chabrol, Jean-Paul Belmondo will become Bébel, the most “bankable” of French actors. But even with his head in the stars, the actor "who plays like we box" will always keep his feet on stage, the only place where he can live his passion, the theatre.

A high roller... of boards, an inveterate role player, he will have endorsed them all, from the most humble to the most prestigious. The dashing halberdier in "Gloriana will be avenged!" by Jean Toury, in 1952 at the Théâtre de la Huchette, it's him. The indescribable wife (!) of the concierge in "Crinolines et guillotine" by Henry Monnier, it's still him. Legionnaire in "Caesar and Cleopatra" by George Bernard Shaw, he crossed swords, thighs in the air, with François Chaumette. The rungs of the theater, Belmondo climbed them one by one, with a light but sure step. Funny tours with Guy Bedos, Annie Girardot, Michel Galabru trained him in the profession of acrobat. Its motto? “Making real theater for real audiences without nerd fly sodomizing.” For ten years, the young actor will chain the parts. From 1950 (it was his baptism on the stage, decked out as Prince Charming in a stage version of "Sleeping Beauty" by Charles Perrault), we will see him in 27 plays! Insatiable, he put himself at the service of Barillet and Gredy as well as that of Goldoni, Racine, Musset, Claudel, Sartre and even Shakespeare... One of his great regrets was to refuse to play

"Scapin's treachery" at the TNP, under the direction of Jean Vilar. His fear: being compared to the unbeatable Gérard Philipe. He will also be angry with himself for having said no to Pierre Dux who offered him – a little late, surely – to enter the Comédie-Française through the front door.

In Cyrano, he moves around the stage like a big beast that no cage can hold

It was on the stage of the modest La Bruyère theater that he saluted for the last time the spectators who had come to applaud him, in 1959, in Bernard Regnier's "Trésor Party". Then curtain. Nothing. The actor has turned his back on the boards in favor of the canvas of the screens. A chasm opened not below his feet, but above him. This abyss is the cinema which will end up engulfing it body and soul. Belmondo has given way to Bébel, his popular double, his alter ego that no other actor equals in the dizzying heights of a box office that keeps him prisoner. "When will you go back to your real job?" asks his father. "Which?" answers him, surprised, his son. “That of a theater actor, of course! I will die without having seen you in 'Cyrano'”, he would have added. What give a bad conscience to the infidel who recognizes: “Cinema made me a star but, deep inside me, the theater was buried. I was waiting for the right moment to come back.” The intermission will last twenty-seven years!

After more than a quarter of a century, Belmondo has finally decided to come and warm up his talent on the fire of the stage, fanned by the director Robert Hossein. "The limelight, me, it makes me look good... But my return to the theater, it's maybe a stunt that I'm going to miss", he confides a few days before the premiere. His problem is not stage fright: “Fright is not such an unpleasant thing. If I didn't like it, I would do something else." No, the hurdle to jump is to learn your role by heart. Because between swinging the lines of a film step by step, shot by shot, and releasing the text of “Kean”, one of the longest in the repertoire, the artist does not play in the same discipline. On one side, we run a short 100-meters in front of the camera, on the other, it's a match in 15 rounds, a marathon in front of the audience of the Marigny theater, with the risk of falling into a hole... of memory. But as he says himself, “one does not become, one is born an actor”. And he is a born actor. "Kean" will be the theatrical triumph of 1987. A springboard for the role of his life that he will create two years later. His father will no longer be there to see him, but Jean-Paul will have given him, all the same, the greatest gift: playing...nose Cyrano.

At the age of 56, the athlete of words embarks on the climb with bare hands and soul of the vertiginous masterpiece of Edmond Rostand. Lurking in the shadows, the ghosts of Talma, Frédérick Lemaître, Mounet-Sully, Coquelin hold their last breath. On stage, transformed by this pif, what am I saying, this peak, this peninsula, Belmondo is haunted by these giants. The interpretation is modernized, but the scope of the character, her desperate poetry, her infinite love for Roxane, played by Béatrice Agenin, are such that the spectators have the feeling of rediscovering both the play and the actor. On stage, he moves like a big beast that no cage can contain. His voice pulls on the vowels to make them the right size. As for the consonants, he envelops them, cherishes them to model them, adjust them to the excess of this magical text from which flow laughter drowned in tears. With Cyrano, Jean-Paul Belmondo managed to go after himself. “We play, he said one day, so as not to know each other and because we know each other too well”. After years of making the "Guignolo", this return to the boards will have been both his therapy and his passport to maturity. “The right to grow old, I owe it to the theater”, recognized this young madman who became a wise old man. Suddenly, we would have dreamed of seeing Shakespeare and Belmondo on the same poster. Imagine him under the crown of a King Lear...

After “Cyrano de Bergerac”, considering that he had just climbed the Annapurna of the theatre, the artist could afford to aim lower, but funnier. So it was Feydeau that he chose, bringing “Tailleur pour dames” into his personal repertoire. Between these two plays directed by Bernard Murat, he treats himself to madness by acquiring the Théâtre des Variétés. “Of course, I could have bought myself a yacht, he admitted with a smile. But I wouldn't have known the same joy." Without his initiative, the establishment would have become a car park. With this intrepid captain at the helm, the ship will go through many theatrical seasons, the sails swollen by the wind of success. Not only is the guy a great actor, but he is also a brilliant programmer. Would those who refused him access to the Conservatory still dare to tell him that he doesn't like the job? His happiness will be to play "La puce à l'oreille" in his own theater, nestled on the Grands Boulevards.

It was on the Marigny stage that he won his last theatrical battle in “Frédérick ou le boulevard du crime” by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. On March 27, 1999, Mr. Belmondo, whom no one would now dare to call Bébel, was acclaimed for nearly half an hour. The curtain will fall on his theatrical career. One last tour for the road and the biggest French star will leave the body of this extravagant Frédérick, player, seducer who looks so much like him. Putting yourself in the shoes of an actor for their latest role is what we call closing the loop. With elegance. Leaving the stage, Jean-Paul Belmondo entered, forever, into the legend of the theater.

Humiliation and triumph on leaving the Conservatory

by Ghislain Loustalot

The scene takes place at the end of 1956 at the Odéon theater which hosts the exit competition from the Conservatory, a launching pad for the best L students towards the Comédie-Française. The Holy Grail. In the room, are the members of the jury, directors, directors, critics, actors. Jean-Paul is confident. His ardor, his comic power and his friends encourage him to believe it. He embodies Scapin, his favorite character and the laughter bursts forth. After two hours of reflection, the verdict is in: sixth place, second runners-up. No first prize is awarded. His buddies, Michel Beaune and Dominique Rozan, obtained a joint second prize. Jean-Paul swallows his pride, thinks above all of the modern comedy test the next day. Its going all out. “Amour et piano” by Feydeau, scene VI, plus some personal additions: “Wagner? The pharmacist? The Toulouse pharmacist? The musician? Ah! Yes, Wagner. I heard about it... Yes, it seems that he makes music. Jean-Paul redoubles his energy in accordance with the text, he gives everything, and beyond. The public follows and feels it.

The public wears it and it takes off, transfigures Edouard, his character, it takes him to the firmament of provincial cunning and madness, “but, he says, the 16 gray men of the jury, in front, remain unmoved , perhaps because I pushed non-conformism to the threshold of provocation”.

The hopeful candidates are all lined up behind the red curtain, fear in their stomachs. Michel Aumont and Jean-Claude Arnaud take first prize. Roger Ferdinand, the director of the Conservatory, comes to Jean-Paul Belmondo and the decision is overwhelming: reminder of the first accessit of 1955. "An old moth-eaten reward dating from the previous year", says Jean-Paul, and he would like to die . But the machinists, behind the scenes, grab him, push him on stage. Michel Beaune, Dominique Rozan and Victor Garrivier lift it up and carry it in triumph. Jean-Paul flies on the boards, leaps, does a finger of honor in weightlessness. The room howls with joy and begins a bronca when the pachyderms of the jury beat a retreat. The public recognized it, acclaimed it, certainly, and it will always refer to the public. But grief overwhelms him. And the spirit of revenge wells up in this impetuous body, this rebellious spirit which only asks to be recognized, integrated, loved by its peers. A feeling that will gradually turn into rage and then healthy resentment “to show these Gentlemen of the Conservatory that they were largely lost on my subject...”. Finally, this humiliation may have been the chance of his life.