Rocky returns to theaters on November 24, in a restored version. His interpreter, Sylvester Stallone, made his entry into The world almost forty-five years ago, April 4, 1977. The actor appears there for the first time and in all majesty on the occasion of the release of Rocky, by John G. Avildsen. He plays the title role and also signs the screenplay. The film was released in November 1976 in the United States on the sly, because Stallone was far from a star at the time.
“Powerful, entertaining, efficient:“ Rocky ”fully deserves its success. Heaven that French cinema produces from time to time a film of this kind. »Journalist Jean de Baroncelli in 1977
Since the end of the 1960s, the actor was confined to the roles of figuration. The success is enormous. At the end of January 1977, he took the head of the American box office and was crowned in March with the Oscar for best film. The world, written by Jean de Baroncelli, immediately seizes the connection between the character of a boxer at the end of the race who is offered the chance to challenge the world heavyweight champion and that of Stallone, a second-class actor.
“Stallone is famous today, notes the journalist. Fiction and reality mixed, his film illustrates in an exemplary way the American myth of success within everyone’s reach. “ And Baroncelli to conclude: “Powerful, entertaining, efficient: Rocky fully deserves its success. Heaven that French cinema produces from time to time a film of this kind. ”
“Rocky III” with tweezers
After Rocky, the career of Sylvester Stallone will not be followed with rigor by the daily newspaper. Certainly, in the edition of October 6, 1978, Jean de Baroncelli salutes the performance of the American actor as a trade unionist inspired by Jimmy Hoffa, in FIST, by Norman Jewison, but Stallone’s first stint behind the camera, in 1978, with the very successful The Tavern of Hell, goes unnoticed in the columns of everyday life.
Rocky III: Eye of the Tiger is treated with tweezers by Jacques Siclier, February 4, 1983, who considers that Stallone “Is not a very good actor and [qu’il] is not very beautiful ”. Silence prevails again when the release, in March 1983, Rambo, of Ted Kotcheff, where Stallone first and heartily dons the costume of the Vietnam veteran unable to find his place once returned to civilian life. The world misses out on the Stallone phenomenon.
“Rambo, behind the“ super-show ”appearances, is not entirely free. America calls the whole world to witness its innocence. »Louis Marcorelles in 1985
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