The renowned actor Alain Delon, famous for his roles in classic films such as Plein Soleil, Le Samouraï, and Rocco and His Brothers, has passed away at the age of 88, according to his children’s statement to French press.
Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, along with Loubo, the beloved family dog, mournfully expressed their father’s peaceful passing in his Douchy residence, surrounded by his three children and family. Additionally, they requested solitude during this challenging time.
Delon was instrumental in the revitalisation of French cinema during the 1960s, portraying a variety of characters like detectives, contract killers, and suave risk-takers. He worked with some of the most esteemed French directors, including Jean-Pierre Melville, René Clément, and Jacques Deray.
Apart from these, he also collaborated with renowned filmmakers such as Luchino Visconti, Louis Malle, Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-Luc Godard, though his attempts to break into Hollywood were less successful.
Delon was born in Sceaux, in the outskirts of Paris, in 1935, and was expelled from various schools before abandoning education at 14 to work in a meat shop. Following a period in the Navy, during which he fought in France’s colonial war in Vietnam, he was dishonourably discharged in 1956, leading him to stumble into the world of acting.
A chance sighting by Hollywood producer David O Selznick at Cannes resulted in a contract offer, but instead Delon chose to pursue French cinema, marking his debut with a minor part in Yves Allégret’s 1957 thriller, Send a Woman When the Devil Fails.
Delon quickly gained recognition thanks to his striking features, swiftly moving onto lead roles. In 1958, his role alongside Romy Schneider in the movie Christine triggered a real-life romance off-set, accentuating Delon’s emergent image as a heartthrob.
In the year of 1960, two of his films made waves internationally; he featured in ‘Plein Soleil’, an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel (also known as ‘Purple Noon’), and ‘Rocco and His Brothers’. Delon skyrocketed into stardom courtesy of the French version of ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’, while the narrative of ‘Rocco’ – about a poor South Italian family moving to the booming North – introduced him to Visconti, one of Europe’s leading auteurs.
Delon later teamed up with another Italian auteur, Antonioni, playing a charismatic stockbroker in the 1962 film ‘L’Eclisse’. He collaborated again with Visconti in 1963 for ‘The Leopard’ (also known as ‘Il Gattopardo’), a large scale melodrama set in the Sicilian Risorgimento, based on the much acclaimed Lampedusa novel.
Given Delon’s rising global standing, he made serious strides to infiltrate the English-language cinema, beginning with a minor role in the comedy ‘The Yellow Rolls-Royce’, directed by Anthony Asquith. He starred in ‘Lost Command’, a narrative about French soldiers in the second global war, Dean Martin’s western ‘Texas Across the River’, and ‘Is Paris Burning?’, another war based legendary featuring Kirk Douglas. Regrettably, none of these Hollywood ventures thrived sufficiently to firmly establish him in America, leading Delon to retreat back to France.
In 1967, Delon worked with director Jean-Pierre Melville to create the cult classic ‘Le Samouraï’, in which Delon portrayed a hitman garbed in a raincoat; the domestic appeal of the film sparked a series of crime-oriented films, including ‘The Sicilian Clan’, in which he starred alongside Jean Gabin, the Marseille based ‘Borsalino’, directed by Deray, and another Melville triumph, ‘The Red Circle’.
In between his endeavours, Delon managed to appear opposite Marianne Faithfull in ‘Girl on a Motorcycle’, a film showcasing a leather-clad Faithfull journeying across Europe on a motorcycle, as well as ‘La Piscine’, featuring his ex-girlfriend Schneider – which was eventually remade in 2016 as ‘A Bigger Splash’ with Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes.
‘La Piscine’ coincided with a colossal public fiasco, the ‘Markovic affair’, that shook the upper echelons of France when Delon’s bodyguard, Stefan Markovic, was discovered dead at a rubbish dump in 1968. François Marcantoni, a notorious gangster and Delon’s longtime pal, was brought to charges with the murder, though they were ultimately dismissed.
The narrative took a deeper turn when images compromising Markovic were discovered, supposedly showing various members of the French upper-class, comprising the spouse of Georges Pompidou, a presidential candidate. Despite the scandalous discovery, no concrete proof emerged. Still, Delon’s association with a number of questionable figures became notorious.
In the 1970s, Delon kept up a consistent output of films, though his work did not have the same impactful resonance as it did in the preceding years. He starred in Monsieur Klein, the winner of the César for the best film in 1977. The film featured Delon as an art dealer during World War II who is mistakenly identified as a Jewish escapee with the identical name. In 1985, Delon snagged the best actor César for his role in Notre Histoire, a peculiar allegory by Bertrand Blier.
Exhibiting his versatility, Delon ventured into other fields, producing a series of films with his own firm, making his directorial bow in 1981 with Pour la Peau d’un Flic, promoting boxing and even trying his hand at furniture design.
In the 1990s, Delon scaled back his work, particularly after portraying a dual part in Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague. Upon announcing his retirement from acting in 1997, this decision was short-lived as he returned to the screen in 2008 for a role as Julius Caesar in the popular French live-action film, Asterix at the Olympic Games.
Delon’s personal life was equally as eventful as his career, involving long-term relationships with Schneider, Mireille Darc (who he split with in 1982 after a 15-year relationship), and Rosalie van Breemen, a Dutch model and the mother of his two children, whom he separated from in 2002. He was wedded to Nathalie Delon from 1964 to 1968, and they had one child, Anthony, in 1964. In 1962, Nico, a singer and model, gave birth to a Son, Christian. Although Delon denied fathering the child, his mother adopted the boy. – Guardian