Remembering Jean-Paul Belmondo, the Suave French Film Icon Who Inspired Spielberg and Tarantino Alike

If Jean-Paul Belmondo had gotten his way, he would have been a stage actor.

He applied to the Conservatoire de Paris three times before the illustrious drama school accepted him and spent the 1950s trying to launch a theater career.Lucky for world cinema, Belmondo had greater success on screen, thanks to his role in 1960’s “Breathless,” the movie that launched the French New Wave — and instantly rendered everything Hollywood had been doing old-fashioned.

In “Breathless,” Belmondo wasn’t playing a gangster so much as someone who had seen too many gangster movies, a self-styled tough guy who took Humphrey Bogart as his model.

His crime spree feels more improvised than scripted, while his doesn’t-care, screw-society attitude effectively thumbed its nose at all the good reasons on-screen criminals had used to justify their actions before.Godard’s film made Belmondo the face of the New Wave — a handsome mug

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