Belmondo is a B movie actor, many of film were B-movies. He played in genre movies, often action comedies, L’as de L’as, Le Cervau, Animal etc. De Funes specialized in comedies. When i say B-movies it is not derogatory in any way, but a way to set them apart from these slightly self conscious drama movies that win oscars, or the cahiers directors of the new wave. They were both in the entertainment business. Some of the plots in a Belmondo movie resemble a Van Damme movie today, but without the martial arts. Bud Spencer and Terence Hill adds that physical element, but in a way that makes them into European Jackie Chan movies, in a way. The stylized fist fight with a gleam in your eye. It is physical comedy in a sort Chaplin of tradition. Remember also that the modern spy thriller was created when hitchcock arrived from Babelsberg where he had been educated during the silent era, and then he filmed the pioneers of the british thriller genre, Joseph Conrad (secret agent) and John Buchan (39 steps, that is invasion literature) and Ethel Lina White (Lady Vanishes), and Farjeon (number seventeen). Then he moved to the US, and continued developing this. But the genre was created in the UK, using all these british writers in british made films with british actors. he also made a serial killer movie, The Lodger (Marie belloc lowndes story). And in Germany Billy Wilder, Fritz Lange and Peter Lorre (the famous villain of the murder movie M), were refuges from europe to hollywood. lange fled from persecution and his nazi wife, and then helped spur the noir film tradition, which used the novels written in the us by old american soldiers of WWI, Hammet, Chandler, Burnett, but also the Brit Graham Greene, a later generation of that type of story. But the point is that these were European immigrants to the US, and they created many iconic movies of the Hollywood golden age. And through immigrants like Von Sternberg, Wilder and Lange that lighting you see in those alleys was created. They were not the only source, but the ones i mentioned were all european trained. The film school generation drew heavily on the European tradition, but often serious films. But Tarantino, a generation after them, remade one of the most iconic spagetti westerns Django. Had it not been for him, those old Django movies would not have been lauded the way they have. And Eastwood created his career using Leone as a director, another import from Europe. He also starred alongside Burton in an Alistair Maclean movie, a scottish writer who shaped action movies in a major way. It should also be noted that a huge number of iconic Hollywood movies are REMAKES of classic French genre movies. They bought the scripts, and we in Europe only remember the English language version? Many people do not even know this? And if you removed all the old British actors from the Hollywood golden age (James Mason, Cary Grant, Laurence Oliver, Ralph Richardson, John Guilgud, Alec Guinnes, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Richard Burton, Charlie Chaplin etc), there might not even be anything to term a Hollywood Golden Age? Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo were swedes, and Charles Boyer French.

Even today, European actors are very important in Hollywood (think Anthony Hopkins, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Ralph Fiennes etc). Arnold is Austrian and van damme Belgian.

The point here is that Europe has made great entertainment, they have just been prevented from making most of it at home. But what if they were not? What you are seeing in the classic movie Casablanca, is a tiny american icon on plateau shoes telling a Swedish actress that he really likes to look at her, just before she boards the plane to Hollywood.

Do de Funes and Belmondo count as B Movies actors? Not so sure.

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