Jean-Paul Belmondo: “It was very pleasant to shoot with Truffaut, he loved the actors”

In 1992, the star spoke about The Mississippi Mermaid (this Monday on Arte) in Première.

This river interview that Jean-Paul Belmondo had granted to First in 1992 was republished within the 3^e number of Premiere Classics.

Summary of Première Classics n°3: 2001 A Space Odyssey, In the mood for love, Crystal Trap, The Name of the Rose, Death on the Trail…

Here's an excerpt in which he talks about the negative critical reception of The Mississippi Mermaid, a crazy love story by François Truffaut, released in 1969, in which he shared the poster with Catherine Deneuve, and which will return this Sunday on Arte. Bebel admitted to having kept good memories of this experience, and especially of the support of his director, François Truffaut.

“After The Mississippi Mermaid, when I went to boxing matches – there were still some good ones in Paris – the guys would say to me: 'But what! You're being tortured by this chick! You should strangle her the end, and you don't move…' They were furious.

Where I could play a coward was in The Thief. But it was also a failure. Even if he is today cited as one of my best… Personally, he is a character that I really like. But I was criticized for his passivity. When I act like a puppet, people say that I'm doing too much, and when The Thief came out, Jean-Louis Bory, the famous critic of Nouvel Obs, said that I was sleeping!

The Mermaid… was also massacred by critics. Truffaut, Deneuve, Belmondo: they had a blast! But it was very pleasant to shoot with Truffaut, he loved the actors. After the film failed, he wrote me a letter – I know he wrote a lot of letters – apologizing for dragging me into this.”

Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo love each other on the poster of the 71st Cannes Film Festival