PARIS (Reuters) - France staged a grand farewell to Jean-Paul Belmondo on Thursday, saying the charismatic actor and New Wave legend who died on Monday aged 88 would live forever on film screens.
Pallbearers carried Belmondo's coffin, covered in the French tricolour flag, into the courtyard of Les Invalides military museum in Paris, where Napoleon is buried, for an official tribute.
Known affectionately to the French people as Bébel, Belmondo was long one of France's most popular actors, having switched to mainstream movies after rocketing to international fame as a star of New Wave cinema in the role of an existential gangster in Jean-Luc Godard's "A bout de souffle" ("Breathless") in 1959. "He was the friend everyone dreamed of having,".
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