Making the transition from leading man to character actor is fraught with difficulty and very few have managed to pull it off. In the case of Jean-Paul Belmondo his fan base had dwindled even before his debilitating stroke and following an hiatus of seven years he has chosen to return to the screen in what turned out to be a lacklustre remake of Vittorio de Sica's classic 'Umberto D'.
It has been adapted from master screenwriter Cesare Zavattini's original whilst the score of Philippe Rombi is as poignant as that of Alessandro Cicognini but director Francis Huster is alas no de Sica and whereas the sentiment of the earlier film had been tempered by de Sica's subtlety and finesse, here it is laid on with a trowel. We sympathised with Umberto as played by the unknown, non-professional Carlo Battisti whose elderly character finds himself on the scapheap of society but here one finds oneself pitying not so much Charles but the iconic, stricken Belmondo.
Huster has filmed his star exclusively from the left side for obvious reasons, his close-ups are unforgiving but we are treated to the trademark roguish grin without which no performance of his would be complete. He is supported by some splendid actors in cameo roles, notably Emmanuelle Riva, Micheline Presle and Max von Sydow with whom he has an especially fine scene.
It was Belmondo's intention to give encouragement to stroke victims but this sad spectacle would be more likely to have the opposite effect. Whether his appearance in this is courageous or misguided is of course down to the individual viewer but the film's poor reception, both critical and financial, must have been a great disappointment to him.
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Belmondo had been a pugilist in his earlier days and remained a boxing aficianado so he might well have found appropriate the words of Sugar Ray Robinson: "Time is the undefeated champion of us all".
