Gilles Jacob Speech for Jean-Paul Belmondo

Speech given by the President of the Festival on 17 May 2011 for the Palme d’Honneur awarded to Jean-Paul Belmondo in recognition of his career.

“If you don’t like the sea, if you don’t like the mountains, if you don’t like the city, go to Hell!” It was with these words, written by Godard, that you made your entrance into the history of cinema, dear Jean Paul Belmondo. 

You see, I have understood your wish that I am not allowed to flatter you. No tributes, no praise, nothing. Just your friends around you. So I will talk about friends. About some of your friends who could not come today and also about some who are here. I will talk to you about some of the best French actors of all time, actors like Michel Simon, Gabin, Brasseur, Fernandel, de Funès, Raimu, all of whom have asked me to embrace you on their behalf, to tell you how happy they were to belong to the same family of actors as you. They are the ones who will speak, all right? I will say nothing. What is there inside an actor like you? Strength, energy, modernity, balance, a way of moving, talking, walking down the Champs Elysées like a prince when you are playing a small-time gangster, being just as believable playing a boxer or a big boss as playing a failed writer. Being as thrilling in Léon Morin, Priest as in That Man from Rio, as convincing in the role of an intellectual as when you play a clown. That is what is known as being a champion in every category.

I can’t imagine Gabin – who wouldn’t even take a plane – swinging back and forth as he hung from a helicopter, or de Funès having a gorgeous creature fall for him on account of his muscular physique. That is you, with this crazy exuberance, this insolent vitality, which have given you instinctively the kind of relaxed presence that other actors take years to acquire, if they ever succeed. Like Clark Gable in another era, but with more versatility than he had, you have created new codes of seduction based on magnetism, an appealing animalism, and also a tenderness that you can never quite disguise.

You turned everything upside down by appearing on the scene with your tough guy saunter and your crooked nose, always between two spins, two workout sessions, two jokes for your buddies. But right away, as soon as real power is called for, you were serious. What is striking about you is your ease, your mockery, the false appearance of not giving a damn, and the deliberate play-back. You play tragedy in a comic mode, and comedy as if it were high drama. When the art of the theatre makes its way into film with such precision, a jubilant outcome is guaranteed.

It is also achieved when a tightrope gymnast plays with the kind of physicality we see in the great American actors.
I am not telling you this, it is all coming from Newman, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, and after all, they call him Bogey the way you are called Bébel.

One more thing: you remember what Godard called your character in A woman is a Woman: Alfred Lubitsch! Alfred as in Musset, Lubitsch like in the Lubitsch touch, composed, like life itself, of laughter, haste and melancholy!

The years have passed before us, dear Jean Paul, and with them comes suffering, physical change, vulnerability… Which leads to my last question: how do you manage to stay so good looking?

Gilles Jacob