French Icon: Alain Delon

We trace the life of magnetic movie star Alain Delon, who died in August aged 88.

My introduction to the magnetic on-screen stillness of the beautiful, chisel-cheeked visage of legendary French actor Alain Delon – who passed away aged 88 in August – was not via one of his best-known roles. Neither in Plein Soleil (Purple Noon), René Clément’s sun-soaked 1960 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr Ripley, in which he played the charming, sinister life-stealer Tom Ripley in a role that shot him to international fame (and which left perhaps the most seminal image of Delon in the public eye despite decades of work thereafter). Nor was it via his portrayal of a betrayed, vengeful professional hitman in Jean-Pierre Melville’s neo-noir caper Le Samourai (1967), nor Jacques Deray’s 1969 jealousy thriller La Piscine (The Swimming Pool), another sunshine and tension classic in which Delon starred alongside future fiancée Romy Schneider.

Rather, I came to the Sceaux-born actor’s oeuvre via the next of Melville’s moody Delon vehicles, Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle, 1970). It was in the Paris underworld of nightclubs and gangsters (as well as the surrounding winter countryside for action-packed chase sequences) that I experienced Delon’s eagle-eyed gaze and gravitas in full force completed by a beige raincoat, neat moustache and a Gauloise casually clinging to his lips. In the film, which features a now iconic 30-minute heist scene (which undoubtedly inspired later robbery classics such as Ocean’s Eleven and Heat), he plays a cool ex-con just out of prison. There’s a brief moment during the superbly taut jewellery robbery where we see just those cool blue eyes in a balaclava, piercing with intensity. This is Delon, oozing charisma, at the top of his craft.

Early tribulations

That Delon rose to the pinnacle of French cinema at all – even if his fine work in the 60s and 70s carried his reputation through later, less memorable career stages – is remarkable considering the early tribulations, some self-induced, that he endured. Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon’s parents divorced when he was just four so he was sent to foster parents; when they died he spent time living with his birth parents, both now remarried. A spell at boarding school saw his rebellious nature unfold – he was eventually expelled for fighting. Further expulsions followed until he eventually started working at his father’s charcuterie shop at the age of 14. National service followed at 17 (he served as a parachutist in the French-Indochina war) but this didn’t go much better. He was caught stealing a Jeep and thrown out. While in Indochina, however, he watched gritty crime thriller Touchez pas au grisbi (Honour Among Thieves, 1954) and was in awe of the tough-guy persona of lead actor Jean Gabin, whom he later called ‘my God’.

Back in Paris, Delon met actress Brigitte Auber, his first love, and accompanied her to the Cannes Film Festival, where he made some film industry contacts. His striking looks impressed a talent spotter for American producer David O. Selznick but he turned down a lucrative Hollywood move, instead taking a debut role in French thriller Quand la femme s’en mêle (Send a Woman When the Devil Fails, 1957), despite having no acting training. He later credited the film’s director, Yves Allégret, for offering career-changing advice: “Don’t act, live.” Delon went on to work with the great auteurs such as Visconti (catch his superb performance in 1961’s Rocco and His Brothers) and Antonioni, and his was fame became truly international – he was especially beloved in Japan. Often accused of chauvinism, he was a somewhat divisive figure in France but undoubtedly one of the last great French screen stars. When news of his death broke, President Macron said Delon “played legendary roles and made the world dream”, adding “he was more than a star: he was a French monument”.

From France Today Magazine