Jean-Paul Belmondo, French New Wave’s ‘Breathless’ film icon, dead at 88
according to New York Times, though the cause was unreported.Like many of Hollywood’s leading men of the day, Belmondo embodied an unsentimental masculinity in his characters, such as the cavalier airman in “That Man from Rio” (“L’Homme de Rio”), who sets out to rescue his kidnapped fiancée — a role for which critics praised that Belmondo “outdid Douglas Fairbanks in agility, Harold Lloyd in cliffhanging, and James Bond in indestructibility.”Comparing the actor to James Dean, The Times’ critic Eugene Archer in 1965 said, “Belmondo is a later manifestation of youthful rejection — and more disturbing. His disengagement from a society his parents made is total.