Omar Sharif Top Ten

 (I recognise this article is very English language focused)

1) Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

2) Dr Zhivago (1965) 

3) Genghis Khan (1965) - no kidding! Surprisingly good.

4)  Top Secret! (1984) - small role but he's very funny.

5) The Tamarind Seed (1974) - decent thriller. 

6) The Burglars (1971) - excellent as a villain in this Belmondo movie. 

7) Funny Girl (1968) - his third hit.

 8) The Last Valley (1971)

9) Mackenna's Gold (1969) - not a good film but he's strong. 

10) Oh! Heavenly Dog (1980) - look, I remember this fondly. 

Movie review - "Is Paris Burning" (1966) **1/2

 I think Paramount were hoping for their own version of The Longest Day, with this all star account of the liberation of Paris. Thing is, most of the stars were French, so the film was a hit in France but not America. Also, don't mean to be rude, but the battle wasn't that important militarility, more politically (hugely so) - and the film doesn't really go into that, the fact that France might've wound up in civil war. To be fair the film does allude to some of this  - there's no colonial troops though. Or British.

Still there are powerful scenes - the last train of prisoners being sent off to the camps, the massacre of young resistance workers, Orson Welles as the Swedish diplomat persuading Gert Forbe not to blow up the city. And many of the cast lived through the events so it has an authenticity that you just can't get now.

Kirk Douglas is Patton, Glenn Ford is Bradley, Anthony Perkins and George Chakiris are soldiers, Robert Stack is a general - but most of the stars are French: Leslie Caron, Jean Paul Belmondo, Simone Signoret, Bruno Cremer (a large role), Alain Delon, Charles Boyer, Michael Piccolo, etc.

Gore Vidal and Francis Coppola worked on the script. Vidal whined about it a lot.

Movie review - "Casino Royale" (1967) **

 It's not fun but it's like a colourful museum and every Bond fan should see it. And because there is so much happening with so many actors I like I got something out of it.

Where to start:

- Woody Allen has genuinely funny gags with the firing squad

- I liked Peter Sellars as a Bond type

- Orson Welles is a terrific Bond villain

- quite a few women have agency: Ursula Andress as Vesper, Barbara Bouchet as Miss Moneypenny, Joanna Pettet is the hero of her own segment

- Terence Cooper gets a big intro then disappears

- Deborah Kerr really really overacts

- I don't think David Niven was anything like Bond, in the books or movies

- Bouchet and Jackie Bisset should have been real Bond girls they are gorgeous

- there is a lot of genuine cleverness

- there is a lot more laziness

- it piles it on but then many 60s comedies did (The Great Race, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World)

- the music score is great - the theme and "The Look of Love"

- there's genuine emotional moments which could have (don't laugh) been more mined: Andress falling for Sellers, Pettet and dad Niven

Movie review - "Pierrot Le Fou" (1965) ***

Jean Luc Godard is reunited with Jean Paul Belmondo who plays a man who runs off with Ana Karina and they are chased by some gangster types.

Interesting credits, lush score, talk of Johnny Guitar, Sam Fuller makes a cameo to talk about cinema ("A film is like a battle ground - love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word - emotion"), satire of commercialism (ditzes talking about hair and Alfa Romeos), a beautiful love object to rejuvenate a married man, women singing randomly, dance numbers, splatterings of violence, kabuki theatre, yellow face, torture, death.

It is bright and colourful and Karina is charming - Godard clearly adores her. Belmondo is miscast to play a married office worker but he's always entertaining to see - Godard used stars well however Marxist he was. I enjoyed the playfulness of this time. It's a young man having fun.

Movie review - "Les Doulos" (1962) *** (warning: spoilers)

Jean Pierre Melville crime film about a crook who gets out of prison, and is about to go back into crime. You think the film is going to be about this guy, Serge Reggiani (presumably they couldn't get/afford Jean Gabin or Lino Ventura) but then it becomes more about his fellow crook Jean Paul Belmondo, who works for the police.

There's a lot of plot going on - twists and turns and what not. I lost track of what was happening several times and had to keep double checking the synopsis. Belmondo seems to be an informer but is actually keen to get out of the life. It comes together quite satisfactorily at the end (a rainy, windswept shootout) but was a bit of a slog until then. Lots of talk and I had trouble telling people apart.

Quite a racy sex scene with Belmondo and his topless ex. Like so many French gangster films though it's clearly the guys who want to go off with each other - Belmono and Reggiani. That's why they both end up dead.

Movie review - "Up to His Ears" (1965) **1/2

This was so frustrating because so much was good about it - fantastic locations, colour, action, stunts, plus Jean Paul Belmondo having a great time, ditto Ursula Andress. They make a great on screen couple. The action gets particularly good once she joins him on his adventures.

But it's a dumb story. That Man from Rio was simple, and clear - girl's father goes missing, boyfriend helps out. Sympathetic protagonist, strong stakes, clear goal. This is a mess - Belmondo is a a millionaire who is bored so tries to kill himself but fails - he arranges for someone to kill him then changes his mind.

I'm not a big fan of this over used plot, especially not here - who cares about a bored millionaire? They just should have had his relatives try to kill him.

Andress is stunning and good fun. Belmondo too. The support cast all go for it.

This is set in the present day but at times feels like it's the 19th century. It's so frustrating because so much of this is good.

Movie review - "Two Women" (1960) **** (warning: spoilers)

Powerful affecting drama which earned Sophia Loren an Oscar, and deservedly so, because she's captivating - imperious, gorgeous, tormented, warm, funny, harrowed, loving. It's a fantastic part (at its heart this film is a good old fashioned star vehicle).

The story is simple: Loren and her daughter get sick of being bombed in 1943 Rome so they head home. Loren has a sort of romance with an intellectual (Jean Paul Belmondo). The Allies come. She and her daughter are raped by Moroccan soldiers. The boyfriend is killed.

It's very effective, understated on the most part.I kept thinking of the Russian movie Burnt by the Sun - like that this is a rural piece with the violence more alluded to in bursts (the opening bombing, a plane strafes them along the road killing a man, running into pro Mussolini guerillas) building to the shock finale where Loren and her daughter are raped.

Belmondo is effective cast against type. Eleonara Brown is pretty good as the girl. Raf Vallone's part feels tacked on (he's a guy Loren sleeps with at the beginning), although I guess he has uses exposition wise. But it's Loren's film.

Movie review - "Le Casse" (1971) (aka "The Burglars") ***

Jean Paul Belmondo never really made a stab at English speaking stardom, but this feels very aimed at the international market - it's a heist thriller, with large slabs of non speaking sequences and two Hollywood co-stars, Omar Sharif and Dyan Cannon.

It's a film of set pieces - an opening 20 minute credit and burglar set piece (shades of Rififi), a 13 minute car chase sequence (shades of French Connection), 10 minutes of Belmondo visiting a cabaret with Dyan Cannon, a superb chase scene on board a bus, a final shoot out at the docks.

Belmondo is always good in these sort of roles (i.e. likeable thieves). Cannon's part is decorative and not much else; she is treacherous (surprise, not) and gets slapped around by Belmondo (surprise, not). Sharif was the revelation for me - excellent as a bastard of a cop, genuinely threatening. He should have played more villains.

The plot has a simple concept - corrupt cop tries to rob crooks - but it got better as it went along. I wish the action set pieces had been better motivated. It was shot partly on location in Athens which means it looks different.

Movie review - "The Loner" (1987) * (aka "Le Solitaire") **

Jean Paul Belmondo is probably best know still to English speaking audiences for his French classics but he made an awful lot of commercial crud that was popular in France. From the 70s to the 80s you could count on an annual Belmondo film where he'd play a secret agent or cop going around bashing people up. This one flopped and ended the cycle.

This one is best described as Belmondo's most "McBain" movie. He's a tough cop who discusses retirement with his partner - who is duly killed by a psycho baddie, leaving Belmondo to look after his cute kid. There's some other cops, a visit to a nightclub where they play hilariously awful 80s French pop songs, a visit to a brothel, tired action sequences that seem out of a TV show.

The relationship between Belmondo and the kid is undercooked, the villains are dull. It's a very ordinary movie.

Movie review - "Backfire" (1964) **1/2

Most film buffs have seeb about Breathless, the first teaming of Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. I'm willing to bet not many know about this one, their second collaboration - I'd never heard of it. Belmondo is a gold smuggler working for Gert Frobe who travels around Europe with Seberg, smuggling.

It feels very sixties with its crisp black and white photography, jaunty jazz soundtrack, lots of shots of cars driving around various locations in Europe, groovy chicks in groovy outfits, double crossing criminals, one scene set in a fashion photography shoot, a plot involving gold and double crosses. This could be a 60s British film with Michael Caine.

Belmondo gives a relaxed star performance that doesn't demand a lot of him. Seberg is pretty. They have nice chemistry. There's plenty of movement, mainly in the form of cars driving around. But really this is a "whatever" movie.

Parts are reminiscent of Breathless - Belmondo and Seberg being crooks and falling in love, the pace. It's a lot more schmick and a lot less fun.

Movie review - "That Man from Rio" (1964) ****1/2

William Goldman once wrote that the hardest kind of movies to do well were romantic comedies and action adventure films. Books upon books have been written about rom coms; the latter is less well explored. How many top class examples of the genre can you think of off the top of your head: Charade, North by Northwest, Romancing the Stone, the best Bonds, Raiders of the Lost Ark... there's not that many.

They're very easy to go wrong - the tone can be off, the wrong stars cast, the script too lazy. But when it works it works wonderfully as proved by this infectious fun French film. It has a high reputation - it was very popular internationally, it one of Jean Paul Belmondo's best remembered films - and I was delighted to see it lived up to the reputation.

The whole thing just works, from the moment the bright bossa nova theme song plays over the jaunty credits, to the opening sequence of a statue being stolen from a museum. This forms an effective Macguffin, with statue and professor being kidnapped along with professor's daughter (Francois Dorleac)... whose fiance (Belmondo) takes off in hot pursuit. There's a good ticking clock too in that Belmondo is on eight days leave from the army and has a certain time by which to get back.

Belmondo is the perfect hero, masculine, handsome (though not annoyingly pretty), clearly having the time of his life... much more likeable than say Alain Delon. Dorleac is a wonderful heroine, spiritied, beautiful and funny - a much sparkier performer than her sister, Catherine Deneuve.

It was shot on location in Paris and Brazil, the latter especially offering some fresh, gorgeous locations - even now Brazil doesn't turn up as a location that much in Hollywood films, so I'm not very familiar with it. They visit Rio and Brasilia and the Amazon it looks wonderful, beautifully shot. Brasilia has this wonderful other-world-y quality. The Amazon sequence at the end feels very Raiders of the Lost Arc-y. There's some unexpected poignancy at the end when we see an Amazon tribe by the roadside as a crew cut down trees.

If I'm being honest there's probably one sequence too many - Dorleac's final kidnapping was one too far. But it's just darn fun.

Movie review - "Seven Days... Seven Nights" (1960) (aka "Moderato cantilabe") **

Jean Paul Belmondo later said this film was boring and he was right. No one's denying the talent - Marguerite Duras' script from her novel, Jeanne Moreau, Peter Brook, Belmondo, some stunning black and white cinemtaography. It's a simple story with interesting aspects. It feels realised, if that makes sense - that the filmmakers made the film they wanted to. It satisfies on it's own terms.

But it is dull. It goes on for too long. It avoids drama - you keep waiting for Belmondo and Moreau to go for it but they don't, not really. Moreau is very good. Belmondo seems a bit bored (he was a last minute replacement for Richard Burton).

I'm always nervous about writing these sort of reviews about art house classics because I feel I'm exposing my ignorance or something. That I missed the point. However I do feel I got the point here - I just didn't like it. Maybe I'll change my mind in another viewing in a decade or so.

Movie review - "Hunter Will Get You" (1976) **1/2

Jean Paul Belmondo in tough guy mode, a sort of free lance muscle who does jobs the cops can't touch like bust heroin dealers and shut down gambling operations. The main plot of this involves him looking into a serial killer (Bruno Cremer, who you may recognise from Sorcerer) who gets young men to help him rob banks then kills them.

It's not very well made (the writer and director is Philippe Labro), and the film suffers in the early part when Belmondo is not around. But things pick up when Belmondo hooks up with a young man who Cremer failed to kill; he breaks him out of prison and they escape together.

The last half hour is good - Cremer killing the boy and then Belmondo seeking revenge (shock - another French film about the undeclared love between two men), resulting in some strong action and a climactic fight scene where Belmondo shoves a broken glass bottle into Cremer's gut, leading to a quote from Oscar Wilde plays over the credits.

It feels like a TV show with a bit more violence and a major star in the lead.

Movie review - "Fear Over the City" (1975) **1/2

Like British film stars had to play war heroes in the 50s, French film stars had to play cops in the 70s. Here Jean Paul Belmondo is a tough chain smoking detective investigating a serial killer. It's fun to see Belmondo and partner Charles Denner (you might recognise him from The Man Who Had Power Over Women) constantly smoking and looking world weary; both are definitely well cast and it's an ideal star vehicle for Belmondo. It was co-written and directed by Henri Verneuil, a man with a number of strong tough guy feature credits (eg The Sicilian Clan).

The film suffers from being about serial killers - not super common in 1975, that subject has become so well covered a lot of this feels familiar. It plays like an episode of a TV show, only in French, with Belmondo, and an impressively staged chase sequence in the middle where Belmondo goes after a baddie. (You think it's going to be a small chase but it turns out to be a long one, rather like The French Connection. And the baddie isn't the killer, he's someone else.)

The opening sequence consists of a lone woman being taunted by a serial killer over the phone - rather like the opening of Scream, only she throws herself impulsively off a balcony rather than being legitimately murdered. But don't worry, murder fans - the killer still knocks off some women in dutifully unpleasant scenes. The killer (Adalberto Maria Merli) has a neat visual "look" - a bug eye.  He kills because he doesn't like the morals of certain women, rather like the killer in Frenzy. He sends lots of letters and phone calls to the police and even visits them - so it's not that hard for them to figure out who did it, you would think, but Belmondo doesn't until the killer throws a grenade into a porno theatre and holds a porno actress and her friends (!) hostage. Belmondo isn't much of a detective - even at the end he admits he's more muscle than brain.

There's a subplot about a gangster who is pursued by Belmondo and lots of scenes in apartments. Various psychiatrists at the end get involved to have a chat.

This film feels like a bunch of "bits"thrown together - a serial killer, a robber, an action sequence. It was a big hit and Belmondo seems to be having fun.

Movie review - "A Man Named Rocca" (1961) ** (warning: spoilers)

A French gangster film which means it has elements of 1930s Warner Bros films plus plenty of French man love and treatment of women as madonnas or whores. The man love comes from Jean Paul Belmondo who arrives in Marseilles trying to figure out why his old partner, Pierre Vancek, is in prison. The whore is Beatrica Altariba, mistress of Vaneck's dodgy partner. The madonna is Vaneck's sister, Christina Kaufmann.

It was based on a novel by Jose Giovanni, who had a fascinating life, being imprisoned during World War Two, where he fought and also collaborated with the Nazis.

The main problem with this film is it lacks focus. You think it's going to be about Belmondo getting his mate out of prison. But he doesn't do much to get that to happen - there's no suppression of evidence, solving of the crime, convicting the real killer, prison breaks etc. He just knocks off his mate's dodgy partner and takes over his rackets. The mate goes to prison, Belmondo goes for the sister, then shoots some thugs who hassle him and winds up in prison himself.

The movie changes gears and becomes a prison film with Belmondo being a bad ass and going to work clearing land mines, resulting in some Wages of Fear style tension. His mate loses an arm, he gets out and there's a rushed feeling ending where the mate still stuffs up.

 A film full of unresolved subplots (the mistress) and unsatisfactory emotion. Belmondo is charismatic, though really a bit too young for the role. Kaufman and Altariba are beautiful.

Movie review - "The Vultures" (1984) *** (warning: spoilers)

A French Foreign Legion film with a World War Two backdrop - Jean Paul Belmondo is a legionnaire whose platoon is mostly wiped out by Germans, while trying to retrieve six million in old bullion. There are only five survivors, which makes the film cheaper, as they try to get the money back. Belmondo wants to take the money for himself while Michel Constantine wants them to Do the Right Thing.

Act two has Belmondo lock Constantine in a bank and dealing with a banker and his wife, who gives the film some female glamour. Act three involves the emergence of a German soldier who used to sleep with the wife.

The director was Henry Verneuil, a good, solid commercial director who knows how to keep things moving. Belmondo is perfectly cast as a legionnaire lacking in scruple, determined to make some money, a man's man with an eye for the ladies, strutting around in his singlet with a machine gun being tough and cynical, etc.

The film is astonishingly cynical - the only person interested in doing their duty is Constantine.  Belmondo wants the cash, as does his sidekick; there's a fat cowardly soldier, a cowardly bank manager, the manager's trampy wife, and a German officer. Constantine shoots dead Belmondo's ally; he Belmondo ends up teaming up with the wife and German  and killing Constantine. Then he and the German double cross each other. A bank manager electrocutes himself urinating on a live wire.

The visuals are great - trucks, desert sand, blue seas, old African buildings etc. There's lots of double crossing and people going after money though some script issues - how did Belmondo on foot track down the German in a tank? I get that the German read the map wrong... but how did Belmondo know where to find him?

But on the whole this is a no nonsense heist film very much in the vein of Kelly's Heroes and Three Kings.

Movie review - "Magnet of Doom" (1963) **1/2

The French once again with a love story between two men: Jean-Paul Belmondo is a recently retired boxer who is hired by dodgy businessman Charles Vanet (presumably Jean Gabin turned it down) to drive him across America. There's a bag of cash in the back of the car which makes you think it's going to be a straight up thriller but it turns into more of a character piece, with the men trying to size each other up - I was reminded at times of pieces like The Servant.

It never really feels like they're in America - I think most of it was shot in France. There's some lovely photography, Belmondo is great and I liked Vanet, who I wasn't super familiar with.

Movie review - "Borsalino" (1970) ***

Alain Delon no doubt had the grosses of Bonnie in Clyde and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid very much in mind when he made this bromance depression era gangster flick which provides a great team starring duo for himself and Jean-Paul Belmondo. They play two gangsters in Marseilles who meet by fighting over a woman - but eventually decide its bros before hos and go into business together, running the whole town and creating enemies.

No one else really gets a look in during the film, except for maybe the costume and production designers. There's a lot of male love, and the stars looking natty and being great mates. Plenty of action too - it's an enjoyable movie, with the lead actors perfectly cast. Belmondo is a better tough guy than Delon, no matter how many real life gangster contacts the latter had.

Movie review - "Docteur Popaul" (1972) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

French black comedy that was popular in its day. Jean Paul Belmondo is a doctor who marries "ugly" Mia Farrow (glasses, buck teeth) then falls for her sister, Laura Antonelli, and proceeds to set about killing her suitors. Since Mia Farrow's part is played by, well, Mia Farrow and isn't very big for most of the movie's running time, you know she's going to do something by the end - so the twist is telegraphed.

It's a misogynistic film, which the filmmakers I think try to cover up by the fact that Belmondo gets his come-upppance and the end - but still, it's misogynistic. (Lots of jokes about ugly women etc). Also there's kind of a reality problem with Belmondo so obsessed with Antonelli's suitors that he takes them out.

The piece relies a lot on the charm of Belmondo, which is considerable, though he occasionally mugs.

Movie review - "Mississip Mermaid" (1969) *** (warning: spoilers)

Catherine Deneuve was a natural Hitchcock blonde - icy beauty and suggested sensuality underneath; she never made a movie for him but Hitchcock fan Francois Truffaut was the next best thing and certainly she's very well cast as a mystery brie in this movie. Reunion Island planter Jean Paul Belmondo has fallen in love with her via letters - she rocks up, he marries her, but she's not who she appears to be.

Belmondo has great star charisma but his casting does throw the movie off - he's a handsome, virile guy, I didn't quite believe he would need to resort to a mail order bride, even on Reunion... the movie is set in the present day. I also didn't quite buy he would become so obsessed with Deneuve he would overlook all the lying and deception. (There's nothing wrong with his performance, it just took a stretch.) Mind you, Deneuve is very hot.

The first half is a decent mystery - Belmondo falling for Denueve, then trying to find her; very Hitchcock. The second half is more warped this-love-thing-is-crazy stuff, which feels more typically Truffaut.  (Though this is influential in it's way - the ending of this isn't that far away from Basic Instinct.) Bizarre scripting decision - Deneuve's actions are motivated by this evil gangster called Richard who we barely see.

There's beautiful locations - Reunion Island, the Alps, Lyon. The stars look stunning.