On the occasion of the national tribute to Jean-Paul Belmondo, Emmanuel Macron delivered a eulogy on Wednesday, September 9 in the courtyard of the Invalides. The President of the Republic is very comfortable in this style of funeral eulogy, of national homage, he has already made a certain number of them.
It is moreover a style in itself in rhetoric: an epidictic discourse, the discourse of praise. Very fashionable at the time of ancient Greece, that of Demosthenes, it is today used on the occasion of weddings and funeral orations and it is a very codified style. Emmanuel Macron also perfectly follows this style in the long-awaited first part where we must talk about the deceased.
“One day a priest besieged by metaphysical questions in Léon Morin. Another, industrialist and heir press boss from America. Acid critic of consumer society in ‘The body of my enemy’, superb spy on a mission in Mexico under the wobbly legend of a lost writer, cop, thug, magnificent, always“.
We have a very rhythmic, very musical enumeration and at the same time a host of references to the films of Jean-Paul Belmondo to whom Emmanuel Macron pays homage. And this little assonance “cop, thug, gorgeous“is also a reference to the film The magnificent, this is an extremely elegant part.
The President of the Republic speaks of Jean-Paul Belmondo, but that is not enough. When you give a praise speech, you don’t just have to talk about the one you’re praising, you have to talk about a lot more. Through Belmondo, what Emmanuel Macron spoke about is both history and France.
The young premieres of the 1950s could give way to the film-reality of the New Wave, Belmondo was there. Color could definitely supplant black and white, Belmondo was there. Hollywood could shine, its stars conquer Europe, Belmondo was there.
Emmanuel Macron
It is an encasement of figures of speech, we have an epiphora, which consists in ending a succession of sentences with the same word or the same group of words, in this case “Belmondo was there”. But this epiphora frames a much deeper figure, a synecdoche, which consists in speaking of a part in order to evoke the whole or vice versa. Emmanuel Macron did a lot in his speech, he told the life of Belmondo to celebrate through her the history of France and the history of cinema.
He also spoke about each of us, a constant theme in his speech: “Jean-Paul Belmondo was our twenties, this young man with a broken nose who was predicted to have a dark professional and emotional future, and who, through hard work, unlimited nerve, enveloping charisma, eventually conquered France and seduced the most beautiful women in the world. Jean-Paul Belmondo was our 30th birthday. This modern-day Don Quixote capable of pushing back the limits of drunkenness at the same time as that of tenderness, like ‘A monkey in winter’. Jean-Paul Belmondo was our forty years old“.
Jean-Paul Belmondo is no longer the incarnation of France, he becomes the face of each and every one of us. We find here a synecdoche: we evoke a grandiose individual, to celebrate the multitude.
The conclusion is also very strong, in the form of a break since Emmanuel Macron passes to the questioning, to the direct address. He speaks directly to Jean-Paul Belmondo as if he were there, and that gives an epic breath to the speech.
National tribute to Jean-Paul Belmondo
“Farewell Bébel”, launches Emmanuel Macron at the end of his eulogy
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Here is. We close the speech as we started: after talking about France and each and every one of us, Jean-Paul Belmondo once again becomes the central object of the speech. But this time, we don’t talk about him anymore, but TO him, to Jean-Paul Belmondo. It is a construction that is both very classic and very elegant, it respects all the codes of the epidictic genre. It’s a beautiful speech, in tribute to a great actor.