In the film industry and the hearts of the French, Jean-Paul Belmondo retains a special place. Since his death last September at his home on the Quai d’Orsay in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, tributes have been raining down. The latest, that of the Cannes Film Festival, which honored “Bébel” by broadcasting its face-to-face with Jean Gabin, A monkey in winter (1962) by Henri Verneuil, on the beach of the Croisette, and by giving to admire an exhibition of photos of the actor at Eden-Roc, taken by Paris Match. Thursday, June 2, the magazine again confronted the eldest of its four children, Paul Belmondo, with the absence of his father, by questioning him on “post-Belmondo”. Following in the footsteps of his father, who adored his sculptor father and set out to rehabilitate his work by opening a museum in his name in the Château de Buchillot (Boulogne-Billancourt), Paul Belmondo explained that he was thinking about the design of a place in memory of the “Magnificent”. “We are working on it. I am attached to the fact that his memory endures, ”he confesses.
The structure erected will have to meet one criterion: be modest, like the man to whom it is dedicated. “We want to create a Jean-Paul Belmondo space within the museum dedicated to my grandfather, in Boulogne. My father was a modest person. He would never have wanted to encroach on the artistic work of his father, whom he revered. We will have to do something that would have pleased him, ”adds the son of the sacred monster of the seventh art.
Paul Belmondo says he categorically rejects the idea of a street being named after his father, because “he wouldn’t necessarily have liked it”. Same answer to the proposals of advertisers, wishing to reappear Jean-Paul Belmondo on screen and on paper: “My father always refused during his lifetime. He couldn’t stand it being done today. The tribute will therefore be made between the four walls of the Château de Buchillot, so precious to the Belmondo clan.
The Ace of Aces breathed his last at the age of 88. After an exciting and eventful life, the Breathless actor had been “very tired for some time,” his lawyer Michel Godest told Agence France-Presse.
