Fear in the city : Jean-Paul Belmondo as a policeman
Often directed by famous authors and La Nouvelle Vague, Jean Paul Belmondo begins a turning point in his career after the failure of Stavsky (1974) by Alain Resnais. A film avoided by the press and the public during its release in theaters. The actor returned the following year to the more popular cinema with Fear in the city (1975) by Henri Verneuil. An American-style thriller in which he plays a police officer for the first time and, as often happens, performs impressive stunts. The feature film is particularly dark, far from the cheerfulness with which we tend to associate Bébel.
In Fear in the cityJean-Paul Belmondo plays the chief inspector Jean Letellier, who has to investigate a case that does not fascinate him: the death of a woman who fell from a balcony. Because the policeman knows that the gangster Marcucci is back in Paris. If two years earlier he had escaped and killed one of his colleagues, this time Letellier intends to stop him. Only a man contacts the policeman by calling himself Minos. He claims to be responsible for the murder of the woman on the balcony and that he will attack all unfaithful and slightly too libertine women. Letellier will have no choice but to focus on tracking him down serial killer.
We find inside Fear in the city an atmosphere of American detective films of the time. More specifically those of the saga Inspector Harry (1971-1988) worn by Clint Eastwoodwhose codes Henri Verneuil transposes. We therefore have a policeman with summary methods opposed to a very disturbing serial killer (Scorpion in the first Inspector Harry film). Also, coincidentally, Belmondo turned Fear in the city at the same age as Clint Eastwood (41 years old) when we discovered him in Harry Callahan in 1971.
The subway waterfall
As Guillaume Evin writes Belmondo, the book knocks, knocks, badaboum!at that time, “Henri Verneuil is the most Hollywood-like of French filmmakers, the only one in those years who knew how to put together a team a shocking action movie that is not an imitationThe proof, with one of Jean-Paul Belmondo’s craziest stunts directed by the director. In pursuit, Letellier finds himself on the roof of a subway train. For Belmondo this is the opportunity to play Tom Cruise way before his time.
No visual tricks were used. Only the sound was changed to match the noise of a train traveling at more than 60 km/h. The danger was therefore real for Jean-Paul Belmondo, flattened in a tunnel with only ten or twenty centimetres of space above your head, and a train that travels at more than 50 km/hThe actor explained in this regard:
You’re hanging there, the subway pulls into the station and there, in a split second, I had to get up, run to the roof of the train, jump into the other carriage, then the subway starts up again and I dive in again.”
The other difficulty for Jean-Paul Belmondo in this scene is that he had to place himself in the middle of the trainotherwise a gust of air would have risked blowing away his arms or legs. Despite all the precautions, the actor did not come out unscathed wounded in the arm. It was also with a cast that re-shot this sequence and the rest of the film. But in the end, Fear in the City was a success almost 4 million entries.
Source: Cine Serie
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