Remembering Alain Delon

One of the legends of French film, Alain Delon has died at the age of 88. Cinema Paradiso pays tribute to an actor who was no stranger to success or scandal.

The key to Alain Delon's career was that he was always shrewd enough to operate within his limits. He knew what he could do and what he didn't want to do. In an interview with Le Figaro in 2018, he declared: 'My career has nothing to do with the profession of a thespian. Being a thespian is a vocation. I'm an actor...A thespian performs, spends years learning his craft, while an actor lives. I always lived my roles and never performed them. An actor is an accident. I'm an accident. My life is an accident. My career is an accident.'

If he was modest about his talent, he was less reticent about his looks. As he told GQ: 'I am handsome. And it seems, my darling, that I was very, very, very, very handsome indeed. Look at Rocco [and His Brothers], look at Purple Noon! The women were all obsessed with me. From when I was 18 till when I was 50.'

The chiselled features and lack of formal training led some to underestimate Delon's acting ability. But, for one glorious decade, few were better equipped to embody the spirit of postwar French masculinity.

Sceaux It Goes

Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon was born on 8 November 1935 in Sceaux, a well-to-do suburb of Paris that is now situated in the Hauts-de-Seine department. Father Fabien was a projectionist at Le Régina, a cinema in Bourg-la-Reine, while mother Édith (who was nicknamed 'Mounette') divided her time between assisting in a pharmacy and being a cinema usherette. Unfortunately, they divorced when Alain was four and he was sent to live with foster parents.

His foster father was a guard at Fresnes Prison in Val-de-Marne and the young Delon recalls hearing the volley of shots that executed France's wartime collaborationist leader, Pierre Laval, in 1945. While staying with the family, Delon became interested in cycle racing and hoped to follow hero Fausto Coppi into the Tour de France. However, his foster parents were killed in a car crash and Delon spent the next few years shuttling between two half brothers and an adopted sister at Fabien's house in L'Haÿ-les-Roses and two half-siblings at Édith's place in Bourg-la-Reine.

As he kept getting into fights with other pupils, Delon was expelled from a number of schools. At the age of eight, he was dispatched to the Catholic boarding school of Saint Gabriel de Bagneaux, where he spent four years before getting into trouble for stealing the principal's motorbike. At Saint-Nicolas d'Igny in Essonne, he became a chorister and performed for the future Pope John XXIII. In 1949, he also got his first taste of acting, when he played a thug in La Rapt, a short film made by Fabien's friend, Olivier Bourguignon.

Around this time, Delon and friend Daniel Salwadet decided to run away to Chicago, where the latter's uncle lived. The plan was to hitchhike to Bordeaux. But they were stopped in Châtellerault, where Delon's temper led to them spending a night in the cells before being sent home. As it was clear that he was never going to find a niche at school, he was apprenticed to stepfather, Paul Boulogne, at his charcuterie. 'They all threw him out,' Édith later recalled. 'The only subject he liked was sport. Academically he was typically 43rd out of 44.'

During his three years in the shop, Delon obtained a Certificate of Professional Aptitude. But he had a bad reputation in Bourg-la-Reine, where he partied hard and may well have a gang connection. Yet, as he later joked in Le Monde, 'If I'd stayed a pork butcher, I'd never have had so much trouble.'

Cannes Can

At the age of 17, having failed with his application to become a pilot, Delon joined the French Navy. Following basic training at the Pont-Réan Maritime Training Centre (where he discovered that he got seasick), he was sent to the Bormette Signals School. On being caught stealing equipment, he was given the choice of instant dismissal or an extended five-year service. As a first-class seaman, he saw action in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu during the French-Indochina War before being posted to Saigon, as part of a protection unit at the city arsenal.

His assignment didn't last long, however, as he was arrested for stealing a Jeep and driving it into a river. Delon celebrated his 20th birthday in a naval cell and spent another 45 days behind bars on his return to Toulon for stealing a gun. This fascination with firearms would last a lifetime, as would Delon's penchant for defying authority. However, one plus point from his tour of duty was an enduring love of iconic actor Jean Gabin, whom he saw in Jacques Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi (1954) in a Saigon cinema.

Dishonourably discharged in 1956, Delon drifted to Pigalle, the Parisian red light district, where he admitted, 'I lived off my looks, supported by ladies of the quartier.' Refusing to contact his parents for signing the consent forms that had allowed him to join up as a minor, he found digs at the Regina Hotel and worked both as a waiter in a café near the Champs-Élysées and as a porter at the food market at Les Halles.

Frequenting the dives of Pigalle and Montmartre, he mixed with members of the underworld and was taken by their codes of honour, brotherhood, and silence. He was protected by a gay thug named Carlos and briefly dated the future singer, Dalida, as he seemed to be drifiting into becoming a pimp. Venturing upmarket into Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Delon had a revelation. 'I realised,' he recalled, 'that everyone was looking at me. Women became my motivation. I owe them everything. They were the ones who inspired me to look better than anyone else, to stand stronger and taller than anyone else, and to see it in their eyes.'

While strutting at the famous cafés, Delon met actress Brigitte Auber at the Club Saint-Germain and they moved in together in the swanky rue du Pré-aux-Clercs. Auber had recently co-starred with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955) and she introduced Delon to Jean-Claude Brialy, who was about to become the face of the nouvelle vague in headlining Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958). Together, they attended the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, where Delon was noticed by his future agent, Georges Beaume.

'Everybody in Cannes stared at the boy,' Beaume remembered, including Henry Willson, a talent spotter for the American film producer David O. Selznick, who invited him to a meeting in Rome, where he was remaking A Farewell to Arms (1957) with Jennifer Jones and Rock Hudson. Following camera tests at the famous Cinecittà studios, Selznick offered Delon a seven-year contract, on the proviso that he studied English and moderated his accent.

However, the producer of Gone With the Wind (1939) wasn't the only game in town. The 22 year-old Delon had started a liaison with actress Michèle Cordoue, who persuaded her director husband, Yves Allégret, to cast him in the crime drama, Quand la femme s'en mêle (aka Send a Woman When the Devil Fails, 1957). 'I didn't know how to do anything,' he confessed looking back at reporting to Billancourt Studios to play the minor role of Jo the hitman, opposite Edwige Feuillère, Jean Servais, and Bernard Blier. 'Yves Allégret took one look at me and said: "Listen to me very carefully, Alain: Talk like you talk to me. Look like you look at me. Listen like you listen to me. Don't act, live." That changed everything.'

Clearly, Delon made a favourtable impression, as the director's brother, Marc Allégret, offered him the role of petty crook Loulou in the crime caper, Sois belle et tais-toi (aka Be Beautiful But Shut Up, 1958). The picture starred Mylène Demongeot, but is remembered for the first teaming of Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo, who would go on to make eight films together. However, this could easily have been Delon's swan song, as he borrowed a car from second assistant director, Pascal Jardin, and rolled it five times in the Saint-Cloud tunnel. Miraculously, he survived with just a scar on his chin. Someone was evidently looking down on 'the French James Dean', who had not been so fortunate when his Porsche 550 Spyder had crashed near Cholame, California on 30 September 1955.

Delon never mentioned Dean among his acting heroes, although he openly admired Gabin, John Garfield, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, and Robert Walker. He was most in awe, however, of Jean Marais, the lover and regular collaborator of Jean Cocteau. When asked how he managed to remain on an even keel after his rapid rise, Delon replied: 'I try to not let myself be overwhelmed. To remain what I was before, to remain as simple. I took as a model an actor that I love and that is Jean Marais, who always remained the same.'

His head was turned, however, by the beauty of German actress Romy Schneider. The star of Ernst Mareschka's Sissi (1955), Sissi: The Young Empress (1956), and Sissi: The Fateful Years of an Empress (1957), Schneider was paired with Delon in Pierre Gaspard-Huit's Christine (1958). They first met in front of a press cordon at Orly Airport in April 1958 and, not speaking a word of the other's language, they made a poor impression on each other. She felt he was coarse, while he considered her dull and plain. While in fin-de-siècle Viennese costumes to play Christine Weiring and Franz Lobheiner in a remake of Max Ophüls's Libelei (1932), however, they fell deeply in love. Indeed, they quickly became engaged and were nicknamed 'the fiancés of Europe' by the press.

But Delon's next project reunited him with Mylène Demongeot, as he played Julien Fenal in Michel Boisrond's comedy, Faibles femmes (aka Weak Women, 1959), which proved such a hit that Delon was whisked off to New York on a promotional tour. Boisrond sought him again for Antoine Michaud, the innocent who is led into a life of crime with Lino Ventura in an effort to impress Françoise Arnoul in Le Chemin des écoliers (aka Way of Youth, 1959). The scenario was based on a bestseller by Marcel Aymé. But it was an American thriller that made Delon a major movie star.

Overnight Icon

Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley had been published in 1955. However, Hollywood had fought shy of her provocative novel and French director René Clément seized the chance to adapt it for the screen as Plein soleil (aka Purple Noon, 1960). He had cast Brigitte Bardot's boyfriend, Jacques Charrier, as the roguish Tom Ripley and wanted Delon to play Philippe Greenleaf, the millionaire's son he bumps off out of envy at his luxurious lifestyle. But Delon demanded to be cast at the anti-hero and Clément realised that he could use the seaside setting to exploit Delon's physique. As this was only his sixth feature, few acting demands were made, as Delon was asked to strike poses reflecting his natural swagger, amorality, and charm.

In other words, 'The Professor', as Delon called Clément, had taught him the expression that the actor dubbed, 'The Look', and which would serve him well for the next 50 years. The Italian auteur, Luchino Visconti, however, felt that Delon had an underdog streak and cast him as the gentlest of the five Pirondi siblings who make their way north from Lucania to Milan in Rocco and His Brothers (1960). When asked why he had cast the French actor against type, the patrician director replied, 'Because Alain Delon is Rocco. If I had been obliged to use another actor, I would not have made the film.'

The neo-realist spirit flickers in this unflinching adaptation of Giovanni Testori's novel, which sees Rocco become a boxer in order to pay off the debts incurred by his brother, Simone (Renato Salvatori), after he becomes obsessed with a prostitute named Nadia (Annie Girardot). His lines in the Italian version were dubbed, but Delon revealed unsuspected levels of vulnerability in a 'wise fool' role that spread his fame worldwide after the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Having taken a walk-on in Purple Noon, Schneider reunited with Delon on the Paris stage, when Visconti directed them in a 1961 production of John Ford's Stuart tragedy, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Reunions also followed on screen, as Delon played Ulysse Cecconato in René Clément's Franco-Italian comedy, Quelle joie de vivre (aka Joy of Living) and Albert III, Duke of Bavaria opposite Brigitte Bardot in the 'Agnès Bernauer' episode of Michel Boisrand's Amours célèbres (aka Famous Love Affairs, both 1961).

Neither was particularly successful, but Delon was mentioned in the running for David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). The role went to Peter O'Toole, as rumours circulated that Delon was going to play Marco Polo or Alexandre Dumas in the biopic, The King of France. Instead, he returned to Italy to play Piero, the wheeler-dealer stockbroker who has an affair with translator Vittoria (Monica Vitti) in Michelangelo Antonioni's L'eclisse (1962). The winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, it completed the 'alienation trilogy' that had commenced with L'avventura (1960) and La notte (1961) and demonstrated again that Delon had hidden depths when under the tutelage of a truly great director.

Having cropped up unexpectedly as an uncredited passenger in Venice in Helmut Käutner's Redhead, Delon guested as Pierre Messager, the medical student who discovers that his mother is a famous actress (Danielle Darrieux) in the 'L'Inceste' episode of Julien Duvivier's Le Diable et les dix commandements (aka The Devil and the Ten Commandments). However, he was more challenged in Henri Verneuil's Mélodie en sous-sol (aka Any Number Can Play, both 1963), a Riviera casino heist thriller that prompted Delon to plead with the producer to cast him instead of Jean-Louis Trintignant so that he could work with Jean Gabin. In return for playing apprentice crook Francis Verlot, Delon took a share of the foreign distribution rights rather than a salary and made himself a tidy sum.

After doing old pal Jean-Claude Brialy a favour by essaying Monsieur Lambert in Marcel Bluwal's Carambolages, Delon signed a five-picture deal with MGM. Before heading Stateside, however, he returned to Italy to play the cynical revolutionary, Tancredi Falconeri, in Luchino Visconti's lavish adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard (1963). After Laurence Olivier, Spencer Tracy, Anthony Quinn, and Gregory Peck had been considered, Burt Lancaster co-starred as the Prince of Salina who opposes his opportunistic nephew's hot-headed notions of patriotic heroism. But all eyes were on Delon and Claudia Cardinale, as Tancredi pursued his uncle's goddaughter, Angelica.

As the embodiment of a seismic change in the course of history, Delon cuts quite a dash in a role that had originally been earmarked for Warren Beatty. He earned his sole Golden Globe nomination, after the picture had won the Palme d'or at Cannes. But it was back to the day job during 1964, as he doubled up as twins Julien and Guillaume de Saint Preux in Christian-Jaque's adaptation of the Dumas swashbuckler, The Black Tulip, before catching up with René Clément for Les Félins (aka, Joy House). This was the second of Delon's MGM films and it saw him play Marc, a Riviera card sharp who falls in with an American widow (Lola Albright) and her niece (Jane Fonda).

Later in the year, Delon founded Delbeau Productions with Georges Beaume and they launched their slate with Alain Cavalier's L'Insoumis (aka The Unvanquished, 1964), which pitched Delon into the Algerian War, as Foreign Legion deserter Thomas Vlassenroot agrees to kidnap lawyer Dominique Servet (Léa Massari). MGM agreed to distribute, but controversy over legally enforced edits sapped audience enthusiasm. Recently rediscovered, however, this now has a cult following after a still of Delon was used by The Smiths for the sleeeve of 'The Queen Is Dead''. It's sometimes shown under the title Have I the Right to Kill? and it's a shame it's not currently available on disc.

Hollywood Flop

Although Delon was now a superstar in France, he still had ambitions to make it in Hollywood after missing out on Joshua Logan's musical version of Marcel Pagnol's Fanny (1961). As part of his MGM deal, he agreed to play Stefano, the chauffeur for gangster Paolo Maltese (George C. Scott) who falls for hat check girl Mae Jenkins (Shirley MacLaine) in a segment of Anthony Asquith's The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964), which playwright Terence Rattigan had based on Helmut Käutner's snapshot of postwar East German life, In Those Days (1947).

Fresh from having a retrospective at the the Cinémathèque Française, Delon joined Juliette Gréco and Romy Schneider in sprinkling a little cameoing stardust as film actors in Guy Gilles's comedy, L'Amour à la mer (aka Love At Sea, 1964). However, he spent the next couple of years in Los Angeles, where he completed his MGM deal with Ralph Nelson's Once a Thief (1965), in which Eddie Pedak (Delon) struggles to go straight in San Francisco with his wife (Ann-Margret) and young daughter because his estranged brother (Jack Palance) and an embittere cop (Van Heflin) keep dogging his steps.

MGM announced that Delon would headline Sam Peckinpah's Western, Ready For the Tiger, but the project stalled. He was also overlooked for Tony Richardson's wonderful adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Hollywood spoof, The Loved One (1965). Thus, Delon was next seen in white tie and tux trading quips with Bob Hope at the Academy Awards, where he nervously presented the Oscar for Best Visual Effects to Robert Stevenson's Mary Poppins (1964). Doing the round of film magazines around this time, Delon insisted, 'I am not a star. I am an actor. I have been fighting for 10 years to make people forget that I am just a pretty boy with a beautiful face. It's a hard fight, but I will win it.'

As part of his strategy, Delon signed a three-picture contract with Columbia, making his debut for the studio as military historian Captain Philippe Esclavier in Mark Robson's Lost Command (1966), which was adapted from Jean Lartéguy's bestseller, The Centurions. The opening action took Delon back to Dien Bien Phu before the scene shifts to Algeria, where Basque commmander Anthony Quinn leads a paratroop regiment against the National Liberation Front. Compatriots Michèle Morgan, Jean Servais, and Maurice Ronet co-starred, while Delon got to reunite with Claudia Cardinale. But the reviews were mixed and Robson's plan to make a sequel, The Praetorians, was shelved, as was a biopic of Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes with Delon in the lead.

Producer Ray Stark supposedly inquired about Delon for two projects, but he lost out to Richard Burton in John Huston's The Night of the Iguana (1964) and Robert Redford for Sydney Pollack's This Property Is Condemned (1966). But Stark did cast Delon in René Clément's Is Paris Burning?, a stellar account of the Liberation of the French capital in 1944 and the roles played during that fateful summer by the Maquis and the Free French Forces. Delon played Gaullist general, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, and shared top billing with Jean-Paul Belmondo. However, the supporting cast was a 'qui est qui' of French thesping and the Hollywood contingent under Kirk Douglas wasn't bad, either.

Running almost three hours, this epic was hugely popular in France and was easily the biggest hit of Delon's Hollywood sojourn. The trouble was, it was filmed in 180 locations across Paris. When Delon ventured back to Universal Studios to play Spanish aristocrat Don Andrea Baldazar in Michael Gordon's comedy Western, Texas Across the River (1966), the 'ice cold angel' seemed out of place. as he struggled to banter with trek guide Dean Martin and his Native American sidekick (incongruously played by fellow Rat Packer, Joey Bishop) after he is forced to flee 1840s Louisiana after an attempt is made to abduct his bride-to-be (Rosemary Forsyth).

Yorkshireman Ken Annakin had passed on the project because he felt the schedule was too tight. This caused problems for Gordon, who disliked Martin's phlegmatic attitude to work. Delon got lost in the mix and with it went his dream to conquer America, as 'the top, the last step - a kind of consecration'. Instead, he returned to La Patrie, where Americanophile Jean-Pierre Melville was waiting for him with an offer he couldn't refuse.

Resuming the Old Routine

Back in Europe, Delon was lined up to reunite with Visconti on his interpretation of Albert Camus's The Stranger (1967), but he had a change of heart and cast Marcello Mastroianni instead. On returning to France, Delon played it safe by teaming with Lino Ventura as stunt pilot Manu Borelli and aspiring racing driver Roland Durbant, who go in search of treasure off the African coast in Robert Enrico's Les Aventuriers (aka The Last Adventure), which was adapted from a novel by José Giovanni. While not as successful at the box office, Julien Duvivier's Diaboliquement vôtre (aka Diabolically Yours, both 1967) proved a solid send-off for the veteran director whose career stretched back to the silent era and into the Tradition of Quality, which was recently examined in a Cinema Paradiso article.

Amnesiac Georges Campo's discovery that he is really Algerian War veteran Pierre Lagrange and is snared in a conspiracy concocted by his supposed wife, Christiane (Senta Berger), required Delon to do more acting than usual. But 'the Look' was back for his best performance of 1967, as Jef Costello, the taciturn contract killer in Le Samouraï. Barely speaking a word, as he searches for the client who had betrayed him, Delon evoked memories of a bygone era in his trenchcoat and fedora. But there was a modern minimalism about Melville's direction, which tapped into Delon's own fascination with the underworld. As he told Cahiers du cinéma, 'It's something that surpasses me, that exists beyond me. The samurai is me, but unconsciously so.'

Famously grouchy New York Times critic Vincent Canby commended Delon for 'doing what he does best (looking impassive and slightly tarnished) '. Writing years later, David Thomson concurred in averring, 'Delon is not so much a good actor as an astonishing presence - no wonder he was so thrilled to realise that the thing Melville most required was his willingness to be photographed.'

Yet Delon opted next to return to the stage, as Gino in Jean Cau's Les Yeux crevés, which was filmed for television by Raymond Rouleau. Louis Malle paired him for a second time with Bardot in 'William Wilson', a segment of the Edgar Allan Poe anthology, Histoires extraordinaires (aka Spirits of the Dead, 1968), in which a troubled man in early 19th-century Italy is challenged to a duel by the doppelgänger who has accused him of cheating at cards with courtesan Guiseppina Ditterheim.

When plans to make The Scavengers with Henri Verneuil fell through, Delon took another tilt at workng in English, when he joined Marianne Faithfull in Jack Cardiff's The Girl on a Motorcycle. Famed for the moment when Daniel pulls down the zip on Rebecca's leather jumpsuit with his teeth, this erotic drama became the first film to receive an X rating in the United States after the Production Code was scrapped. Also with an eye on the American market, Delon joined forces with Charles Bronson to play Algerian War vets, Dino Barran and Franz Propp, who plot to steal a Christmas payroll from a company safe in Jean Herman's Adieu l'ami (aka Farewell Friend, both 1968), which was scripted by Sébastien Japrisot.

Despite breaking up after four years, Delon and Romy Schneider had remained close friends and they decided to act together again in Jacques Deray's steamy Saint-Tropez saga, La Piscine (1969). Jean-Jacques Tarbès's camera ogled bickering lovers, Jean-Paul and Marianne, as they reclined beside the pool. But their uneasy idyll is disrupted by the arrival of Harry (Maurice Ronet), Marianne's record producer ex, who is accompanied by Penelope (Jane Birkin), the 18 year-old daughter no one knew existed.

This psychological thriller was remade by Luca Guadagnino as A Bigger Splash (2015), with Tilda Swinton and Matthias Schoenaerts in the Schneider and Delon roles. However, no one has been tempted to revisit Jean Herman's Jeff (1969), even though there's a familiar feel to the story of thieves who fall out while laying low after a heist. Delon, who also produced for his Adel Productions company, plays the eponymous gang leader who vanishes while fencing diamonds in Antwerp. But the picture was most notable for the start of a 15-year romance with co-star Mireille Darc.

More commercial and critically acclaimed was Henri Verneuil's Le Clan des Siciliens (aka The Sicilian Clan, 1969), an adaptation of an Auguste Le Breton novel that brought together Delon, Jean Gabin, and Lino Ventura in a satisfyingly convoluted caper. Delon is Roger Sartet, a French crook who persuades Sicilian clan leader Vittorio Manalese (Gabin) to help him ambush a jewellery exhibition in transit between Rome and New York under the nose of the pursuing Commissaire Le Goff (Ventura). Partway through the production, however, Delon's career was rocked by a real-life crime.

Teflon Delon

It was often said that Delon was so good at playing crooks, killers, and seducers because he drew on his own private life for inspiration. When asked why he rarely played romantic leads, he insisted that love scenes bored him. 'I prefer to fight.' When pressed by another reporter, he confided, 'I prefer to make love at home.'

While he was happy to acknowledge many of his dalliances, Delon refused to admit to a one-night stand with the German singer, Nico, in 1961. When she gave birth to a son, Christian Aaron Päffgen, he denied paternity and broke off contact with his mother when she adopted Ari when he was two. By this time, Delon had parted company with Romy Schneider and had married Francine Canovas, an aspiring actress who changed her name to Nathalie Barthélémy before being billed in Le Samouraï as Nathalie Delon.

Clearly, she couldn't resist 'the most handsome man in the world', as Delon had been labelled by Time magazine. But living with him came with its complications. Some members of the press pack dubbed him 'the French Sinatra' because of his underworld connections. Madame Delon herself confessed in a TV documentary, 'I can't open a drawer without finding a gun in it.' Such discoveries prompted Nathalie to file for divorce. But the story was supplanted in the papers on 1 October 1968, when the body of Delon's Yugoslavian bodyguard, Stefan Markoviæ, was found with gunshot wounds to the head on a rubbish dump in Élancourt, a village on the western outskirts of Paris.

Delon and Corsican gangster François Marcantoni came under suspicion, when the victim's brother, Aleksandar, produced a letter in which Markoviæ had written, 'If I get killed, it's 100% the fault of Alain Delon and his godfather François Marcantoni.' The plot thickened, however, when the investigation uncovered the fact that Claude, the wife of former prime minister and presidential contender, Georges Pompidou, had attended salacious parties with Delon and Markoviæ. There were even rumours that photographs existed of Madame Pompidou attending an orgy and the politician accused his opponents of using the French secret service (SDECE) to intimidate him.

Delon and Nathalie were both questioned, while Marcantoni was charged with being an accessory to murder before being released for lack of evidence. When chat show host Dick Cavett raised the issue in a 1970 interview, Delon was prickly, but insistent that he would not allow the Markoviæ affair to derail his career. He similarly merely shrugged when he was handed a four-month prison sentence in absentia for assaulting an Italian photographer.

Undaunted, he moved on from Nathalie to Mireille Darc, who was so amused by the fact that Delon was also seeing the Guadeloupe-born dancer and actress, Maddly Bamy, that she wrote the screenplay for Roger Kahane's Madly (aka The Love Mates, 1970) under her real name, Mireille Aigroz, and co-starred with Delon, who clearly saw the funny side, as he also produced.

An Up-and-Down Decade

Delon kept his head down for a few months following the scandal. He produced Roger Kahane's theatrical drama, Sortie de secours, and took an uncredited bit as a gang boss in Gérard Pirès's Fantasia chez les ploucs (aka Fantasia Among the Squares, both 1970). He was not one to stay out of the limelight for long, however, and was soon back in circulation in two of his best films of the new decade.

Having guested as a man at the airport in Robert Enrico's José Giovanni-scripted, Ho! (1968), Delon decided to reunite with its star, Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jacques Deray's Borsalino (1970). Inspired by the real-life crimes of Paul Carbone and François Spirito, the knockabout antics of 1930s Marseille hoods Roch Siffredi and François Capella proved such a hit with audiences that fedoras came back into fashion and Delon signed up for the sequel, Borsalino & Co. (1974). However, box-office lightning didn't strike twice and critics started to comment on Delon's waning powers.

Back in 1970, however, he was about to prove that 'the Look' was as effective as ever in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle rouge, as small-time crook Corey is released from jail and heads to Paris to share details of a jewellery heist with Vogel (Gian Maria Volonté), who has just escaped from a train while being escorted to court by Inspector Mattei (Bourvil). Based around a robbery sequence that matches the one in Jules Dassin's Rififi (1955), this tense thriller is easily the pick of the 30-odd features that Delon made in the 1970s.

By contrast, a reunion with Deray on Doucement les basses! (aka Easy, Down There!) was less memorable, even though it brought Alain and Nathalie Delon together again. More intriguing was a further teaming with Charles Bronson in Terence Young's Soleil rouge (aka Red Sun, both 1971), a Spanish-shot Sukiyaki Western set in 1870 that sees Gauche (Delon) and Link Stuart (Bronson) regret stealing a ceremonial sword from the Japanese ambassador, as samurai bodyguard, Kuroda (Toshiro Mifune), is determined to recover it.

Simone Signoret also proved an interesting co-star in Pierre Granier-Deferre's La Veuve Couderc (aka The Widow Couderc, 1971), as drifter Jean Lavigne (Delon) agrees to do odd jobs around the Burgundian farm run by an older woman and her disabled father-in-law. Set in 1934 and based on a novel by Georges Simenon, this should be available on disc in this country. However, Cinema Paradiso can offer Joseph Losey's The Assassination of Trotsky (1972), in which the Kremlin dispatches Franc Jacson (Delon) to Mexico to infiltrate the circle of exiled Menshavik leader, Leon Trotsky (Richard Burton), and eliminate him. With Losey often drunk on set, Burton kept the project going, while Delon caught up with co-star, Romy Schneider.

He was still very much an item with Mireille Darc, however, and guested opposite her as a man who rings a doorbell in Georges Lautner's Il était une fois un flic (aka There Once Was a Cop). Michel Constantin took the lead, but Delon played Édouard Coleman in Jean-Pierre Melville's Un flic (aka The Cop, both 1972), as a Parisian police commissioner has to balance his friendship with nightclub owner, Simon (Richard Crenna), with the fact that he is a known drug smuggler and that Coleman is in love with his mistress, Cathy (Catherine Deneuve).

This was Melville's final film and Delon struggled to find anyone else who knew so instinctively how to direct him. Perhaps things might have been different if Hollywood producer Robert Evans gone with his gut instinct and cast Delon as Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, because 'that's how he was described in the book'. But Al Pacino was cast and, having turned down Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, Delon took himself off to Rimini to play an academic who falls for a vulnerable student in Valerio Zurlini's psychological drama, La prima notte di quiete (aka Indian Summer, all 1972).

Venturing into horror, Delon was more animated than usual as Doctor Devilers in Alain Jessua's Traitement de choc (aka Shock Treatment), which sees patient Annie Girardot begin to suspect that all is not well at a clinic on the Breton coast. Michael Winner also coaxed a typically watchful

performance out of Delon as Jean Laurier, the hitman sent to eradicate his CIA mentor, Cross (Burt Lancaster), in Scorpio. He also seethed with purpose in the title role of Duccio Tessari's Tony Arzenta (all 1973), in which a hitman seeks revenge on the bosses responsible for the deaths of his wife and child in a botched shooting.

Sadly, we can't bring you Delon's turn as Judge Pierre Larcher in Jean Chapot's Les Granges brûlées (aka The Burned Barns), which reunited him with Simone Signoret, or his display in José Giovanni's Deux hommes dans la ville (aka Two Men in Town, both 1973), which sees printer Gino Strabliggi being harassed by Inspector Goitreau (Michel Bouquet), while trying to go straight under parole officer Germain Cazeneuve (Jean Gabin). But we do have Rachid Bouchareb's English-language remake, Two Men in Town (2014), with Forest Whitaker, Harvey Keitel, and Ellen Burstyn taking the respective roles.

It says much for this phase of Delon's career that Pierre Granier-Deferre's La Race des seigneurs (aka Creezy, 1974), José Giovanni's Le Gitan (aka The Gypsy, 1975) and Comme un boomerang (Boomerang, 1976), Jacques Deray's Le Gang, Alain Jessua's Armaguedon, Édouard Molinaro's L'homme pressé (aka Man in a Hurry), Georges Lautner's Mort d'un pourri (aka Death of a Corrupt Man, all 1977), Serge Leroy's Attention, les enfants regardent (aka Attention, the Kids Are Watching), and Martyn Burke's Le Jeu de la puissance (aka Power Play, both 1978) are rarely mentioned in profiles and are hard to see outside France.

Despair not, however, as Cinema Paradiso's vast catalogue even has a few titles from Delon's mid-career fallow patch. A Richard Matheson novel gave him the chance to pair with Darc in Georges Lautner's Les Seins de glace (aka Someone Is Bleeding, 1974), in which lawyer Marc Rilson takes an interest in widow Peggy's relationship with writer, François Rollin (Claude Brasseur). By contrast, ex-Sûreté detective Roger Borniche's autobiography provides the impetus for Jacques Deray's Flic Story (1975), which Delon also produced and which chronicles the eight-year pursuit of murdering gangster, Emile Buisson (Jean-Louis Trintignant).

Fond of occasionally swashing his buckler, Delon donned the famous black mask and brushed up on his sword-fighting skills to essay Don Diego de la Vega locking horns with Colonel Joaquin Huerta (Stanley Baker) over the control of Nueva Aragón in Duccio Tessari's Zorro (1975). Marking the end of Baker's illustrious career, this lively adventure made Delon a box-office contender once more, particularly in China, where it was one of the first Western films to be shown after the Cultural Revolution.

On this form, it's tempting to think how Delon might have fared as Duncan Idaho in Chilean auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky's planned 14-hour adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune. Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, and Mick Jagger were also lined up, while Pink Floyd were approached to contribute to the score. But, while the imagination runs riot, Cinema Paradiso members can also check out how Richard Jordan, James Watson, Edward Atterton, and Jason Momoa respectively handled the role in David Lynch's Dune (1984), John Harrison's Frank Herbert's Dune (2000), Greg Yaitanes's Frank Herbert's Children of Dune (2003), and Denis Villeneuve's Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024).

Undeterred by Joseph Losey's problems on The Assassination of Trotsky, Delon sought him as actor-producer to direct Monsieur Klein (1976). It proved to be a wise decision, as this potent drama won the César for Best Picture and Best Director, while Delon thoroughly merited his first Best Actor nomination for his performance as Robert Klein, the Catholic art dealer who becomes a target of misinformation after fleecing the Jews desperate to sell their valuables in an effort to get out of Occupied France.

In gratitude for being given a second chance, Losey declared: 'Alain is one of those rare talents who can be honoured as being difficult. To me, this word means professionalism, demand, dedication to work, warmth, and love. He's not a man to play with, but a man you can rely on.' Unfortunately for Delon, fewer film-makers shared this opinion, as the hits started to dry up.

A Slow Fade

A quick look at the Alain Delon filmography on the Cinema Paradiso website reveals the huge gaps between available titles from the last four decades of his career. This is partly down to the fact that British DVD and Blu-ray labels only tend to release undisputed classics when it comes to older foreign films. There are a few curios along the way, but even a star of Delon's magnitude can slip through when the career cracks start to widen.

It could have been so different. How might we judge Delon today if he had not turned down parts in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and John Huston's Escape to Victory (1981) ? According to some sources, Delon even turned down Cubby Broccoli's offer to take over from Roger Moore, when he decided he'd had enough of playing James Bond. It seems unlikely, but 007 would have spared Delon the ignominy of playing Captain Paul Metrand, the co-pilot alongside George Kennedy in the cockpit of the supersonic airliner in David Lowell Rich's disaster movie, The Concorde...Airport '79 (1979).

Sadly, we have to glide by such outings as Pierre Granier-Deferre's Le Toubib (aka The Medic, 1979), Jacques Deray's Trois hommes à abattre (aka Three Men to Kill), Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov's Teheran 43 (both 1980), and Robin Davis's Le Choc (aka Shock). But we should pause for Pour la peau d'un flic (aka For a Cop's Hide, 1981) and Le Battant (aka The Fighter, 1983), as Delon wrote, produced, and directed the pair, as well as headlining as Choucas and Jacques Darnay.

Critics were quick to point out that these Melvillean noirs fell short of the originals, in spite of the supporting contributions of Anne Parillaud and Catherine Deneuve. They were more enthusiastic about Delon's performance as gay roué, Baron de Charlus, in Volker Schlöndorff's Un amour de Swann (aka Swann in Love), which was adapted from the first volume of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. But he received some of the best notices of his career as Robert Avranches, the alcoholic garage owner who becomes fixated with younger divorcée, Donatienne Pouget (Nathalie Baye), in Bertrand Blier's deliciously evasive puzzle, Notre histoire (aka Our Story, both 1984). Both films deserve a UK release on disc, especially as Delon won the César for his work in the latter.

In 1985, he composed a song for José Pinheiro's Parole de Flic (aka Cop's Honour), which he also scripted and produced. But audiences had started to tire of Delon's trademark traits and there were few takers for René Manzor's Le Passage (1986) and José Pinheiro's Ne réveillez pas un flic qui dort (aka Let Sleeping Cops Lie, 1988).

Despite coming to the fore around the time the nouvelle vague was transforming French cinema, Delon had not been able to match Jean-Paul Belmondo's crossover appeal and has remained firmly in the mainstream. Eyebrows were raised, therefore, when Jean-Luc Godard cast him as polar opposite twins, Richard and Roger Lennox, in Nouvelle Vague (1990). In her film marking the centenary of cinema, Agnès Varda also invited Delon to appear as himself, disembarking from a helicopter, in Les Cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma (aka One Hundred and One Nights, 1995).

It's frustrating that neither of these films is available to rent, but it's more understandable in the case of Gilles Béhat's Dancing Machine (1990), Édouard Niermans's Le Retour de Casanova (1992), Jacques Deray's Un crime (1993) and L'Ours en peluche (aka The Teddy Bear, 1994).

In 1997, Delon was joined by Lauren Bacall in Le Jour et la nuit (aka Day and Night, 1997), a study of a world-weary writer in a Mexican retreat that was written and directed by the philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy. The reviews were vicious, with Variety hooting, 'Laugh-out-loud awful without touching the cult realm of "so bad it's good",' while Cahiers declared it the worst French film since the Second World War. All the more reason for it to be on disc, therefore, especially as the negative reaction was analysed in the extras documentary, Anatomy

of a Massacre.

Any hopes Delon had that he could bounce back by rejoining forces with Jean-Paul Belmondo in Patrice Leconte's Une chance sur deux (aka Half a Chance, 1998) were quickly dashed when the critics savaged the story of car thief Alice Tomaso (Vanessa Paradis) trying to discover whether Julien Vignal (Delon) or Léo Brassac (Belmondo) is her father. Nettled, Delon announced his retirement after returning to the stage to some acclaim in Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's Variations énigmatiques.

He put a brave face on his decision in an interview with GQ, in which he denounced modern cinema. 'It's a shallow, worthless era soured by money,' he grumbled. 'We no longer film with a moving camera but a digital thing stuck on the end of your fist. No one gives a sh*t about anything any more. If Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura were alive today, they'd be completely stumped.' He continued, 'Those who use the phrase "It was better in my day" are old fools. But when I say it, it's different, because it's true: in my day, it was something else, it really was better. You see, I don't have anything to lose any more, I've had it all.'

In conclusion, he shrugged, 'Look, I had incredible luck. I've been happy all my life; I filmed with the best. I did what I wanted, with who I wanted, when I wanted. I dwell on the past more than I think about the future, yes, because my past was extraordinary. Today just doesn't compare. A life like I had doesn't come around twice. That's why when it comes to retirement, I have no regrets.'

A Sad End

Making it known that he could be lured away from leisure by the right project, Delon guested as himself to pay tribute to the stars of yesteryear in Bertrand Blier's Les Acteurs (2000). However, he also ensured that any casting would be on his own terms. Consequently, he turned down the chance to play Louis XV in Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette (2006) because he didn't want to wear a wig. He also decided to consider offers from television after his previously limited experiences in the TV-movies, Le Chien (1962) and Le Bel indifferent (1978), and the mini-series, Cinéma (1988). Delon had also leant his voice to the French version of Bill Couturié's documentary, Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam (1987).

In 2002, he enjoyed the costumes in Fabio Montale, a three-part series based on the Marseille crime novels of Jean-Claude Izzo. Indeed, such was the show's cult success that Delon agreed to produce and headline Frank Riva (2003-04). But it struggled in the ratings, as did José Pinheiro's teleplay, Le Lion (2003). However, there was interest in Anne Bourgeois's Sur la route de Madison (2007), as it preserved the Théâtre Marigny reunion of Delon and Mireille Darc in a play based on the Robert James Waller novel that Clint Eastwood had filmed as The Bridges of Madison County (1995).

Delon had been living with Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen (who was 21 years his junior) until 2001, but he remained close to their children, Anouchka and Alain-Fabien. However, the memory of Romy Schneider also lingered and Delon, who declared her 'the love of my life', took to the stage at the 2008 Césars to lead the audience in a standing ovation on what would have been her 70th birthday. The following year, Delon was played by Guillaume Delorme in Torsten C. Fisher's German teleplay, Romy (2009), with Jessica Schwarz in the title role.

For someone in retirement, 2008 proved to be a busy year, as not only did Delon direct himself and Anouk Aimée in Love Letters - a teleplay inspired by an A.R. Gurney stage work - but he also cameo'd as Julius Caesar in Frédéric Forestier and Thomas Langmann's Astérix aux Jeux olympiques (aka Asterix At the Olympic Games, both 2008). This adaptation of René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo's beloved comic book featured Clovis Cornillac and Gérard Depardieu as Asterix and Obelix and was then the most expensive French (and non-American) film ever made. But the highest-grossing title of Delon's career would be also be his last major venture.

Having played a wealthy patriarch in Louis Choquette's tele-comedy, Un mari de trop (aka One Husband Too Many, 2011), Delon narrated Isabelle Clarke's L'Occupation intime and co-starred with daughter Anouchka in Une Journée ordinaire (aka An Ordinary Day, both 2011), a small-screen version of the Eric Assous play in which they pair had appeared in Paris. 'My father doesn't spend much time on his roles,' Anouchka told the press, 'and he's not a fan of rehearsals. Whereas I work like mad to be as natural as possible, it comes instantly to him. He can deliver everything effortlessly.'

Thanks to the mischievous mind of Hungarian György Pàlfi, Delon got to flirt with Marilyn Monroe in Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen, which was pieced together from snippets from over 450 films. He also popped up in Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret's splendid documentary, Journal de France, which reflected on the former's 40-year career as a photographer and film-maker. Completing 2012, Delon contributed a cameo to Russian Sarik Andreasyan's festive farce, Happy New Year, Moms! But he would only make one more picture, Michel Denisot's Toute ressemblance (aka Disclaimer, 2019), in which he played himself guesting on a talk show.

In 1991, Delon had been made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur and he would be upgraded to the rank of Officier in 2005. He had also been presented with an honorary Golden Bear at the 1995 Berlin Film Festival. When Cannes announced a similar award in 2019, however, there was a furious backlash. Delon had jeopardised his national treasure status by voicing his admiration for Far Right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen. 'He is dangerous for the political set because he's the only one who's sincere,' he had informed the press. 'He says out loud what many people think, and what the politicians refrain from saying because they are either too demagogic or too chicken. Le Pen, with all his faults and qualities, is probably the only one who thinks about the interests of France before his own.'

Delon's opposition to adoption by same-sex couples also made headlines, as did his glib insistence that he had 'never harassed a woman in my life. They, however, harassed me a lot.' A petition containing over 25,000 signatures protesting Delon's 'racism, homophobia and misogyny' was sent to the Cannes festival's artistic director, Thierry Frémaux. However, he refused to buckle, retorting, 'We're not going to give [him] the Nobel peace prize.' During the ceremony, he declared: 'We know that intolerance is back. We're being asked to believe that if we all think the same, it will protect us from the risk of being disliked or being wrong. But Alain Delon is not afraid of being wrong, being disliked, and he doesn't think like others, and he's not afraid of being alone.'

Delon was equally forthright. 'You don't have to agree with me,' he said in an emotional acceptance speech. 'But if there's one thing in this world that I'm sure of, that I'm really proud of - one thing - it's my career.' He continued, 'For me, it's more than the end of a career. It's the end of a life. It feels as though I'm receiving a posthumous tribute while being alive.'

His downbeat tone probably owed something to the cancellation of his comeback feature. Directed by Patrice Leconte, La Maison vide was to have paired Delon with Juliette Binoche. But, like Christian-Jacque's L'Échiquier de Dieu (1962) - in which Delon had been playing Marco Polo alongside Dorothy Dandridge's Empress Zaire when the plug was pulled - and Die Boss, Die Gently (1970) - Jacques Deray and Piero Schivazappa's film about mercenaries - the project had been cancelled abruptly in November 2018.

Worse news came in 2023, when Ari Boulogne died after a lifetime of drug abuse and family wrangles would dominate Delon's final months. During the course of his career, he had made a fortune from sidelines. He had been one of the first French film stars to 'brand' himself, with cigarettes, sunglasses, watches, clothing, and fragrances all bearing the AD mark. He had also designed furniture, built up an art collection, and bred racehorses on his 300-acre Douchy-Montcorbon estate in the Loiret region to the south of Paris. However, these enterprises made him a target for the taxman and Delon had taken Swiss citizenship in 1999 after establishing a tax exile base in Geneva.

With the actor in increasingly poor health after a stroke in 2019, the fate of his €245m (£210m) fortune became a pressing issue. Anthony, Anouchka, and Alain-Fabien put up a united front to limit the influence of Hiromi Rollin, the Japanese onetime production assistant they had accused of trying to manipulate Delon after she had taken up residence in Douchy. No sooner had they succeeded in evicting her in 2023, however, than the siblings started squabbling among themselves.

Delon admitted that he had favoured Anouchka over his sons and confided to a reporter in 2018, 'I'm not sure I've been a good father to them or a good grandfather. Have I been up to the task? I don't think so.' The half-brothers could hardly have been pleased by the revelation that they would receive a quarter each of Delon's estate, while their sister (who is sole executor) would inherit the rest. But there also seemed to be an emotional rivalry in play, as Anouchka sought to keep her father in Switzerland for medical treatment, while Anthony (cognisant of he fact that there is no inheritance tax between a father and daughter under Swiss law) strove to honour Delon's wish to die at Douchy.

On 4 January 2024, Delon filed a complaint against Anthony following an interview in Paris Match, in which he had lamented his father's 'diminished' state and accused his half-sister of withholding the results of some cognitive tests. Furthermore, Delon's lawyer, Christophe Ayela, disclosed that he 'cannot bear the aggressiveness of his son Anthony, who keeps telling him that he is senile'. Shortly after a police raid uncovered 72 unlicenced firearms and 3000 rounds of ammunition at Douchy, Anouchka sued her brothers (who had each written books about their loveless childhoods) for invasion of privacy in March 2024 after they had posted a conversation between herself and her father on Instagram.

The following month, Delon was placed under reinforced guardianship, with the public nature of the increasingly rancorous war of words between Anouchka and Alain-Fabien prompting Brigitte Bardot to opine, 'It's lamentably mediocre to soil the image of Alain, a sublime icon who represents France with panache!' However, the siblings came together to announce Delon's death at Douchy on 18 August 2024.

'In my property,' Delon had once told Paris Match, 'I have a cemetery with 45 dogs I have had throughout my life. In the middle, I've built a chapel in which there are six places. I will be buried beside my dogs.' However, his last request for Loubo to be destroyed and interred with him was ignored by his children, as controversy followed Delon to the grave.

Taking to social media, President Emmanuel Macron averred that Delon had 'made the world dream. Lending his unforgettable face to turn our lives upside down.' He concluded, 'Melancholic, popular, secretive, he was more than a star: a French monument.'

Despite his egotism, Delon had been under no illusions about his celebrity. 'This insanity gets to the point where "Delon" becomes a label,' he explained in a 1991 television interview. 'And you must keep being it, play it, remain and dwell in it, because the public wants it, because you want it a bit and because that's the rule.' He played 'Delon' to the end because he was aware that he was 'the last great myth of French cinema'.