The children of French film superstar Alain Delon revealed his passing to AFP on Sunday. Delon was a controversial star who was viewed by some as a sex symbol and by others as an egotistical chauvinist. He was 88 years old.
“With great sadness, Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, and (his dog) Loubo announce the demise of their father. His three kids along with his family were with him when he died away quietly at his Douchy home, according to the statement, which followed months of bitter public family arguments over the star’s deteriorating health.
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According to his son Anthony, the actor, who was well-known for his parts in the 1960 masterpieces “Purple Noon” and 1967’s “Le Samurai,” passed away at approximately three in the morning (0100 GMT).
Having not been seen on film much during the 1990s, Delon gained notoriety in 2023 when three of his children brought a harassment as well as threatening behaviour complaint towards his live-in assistant, Hiromi Rollin.
After that, the siblings fought openly in the courts and media about the star’s health, citing a 2019 stroke among other issues. After Delon passed away, his family requested to remain anonymous.
Alain Delon, one of cinema’s most elusive figures, was both mesmeric and attractive.
Famously, Alain Delon is seen in 1967 sitting next to Marianne Faithfull on a couch with a reserved Mick Jagger across from her. The photo was presumably taken right before Faithfull’s role in The Girl on a Motorcycle was set, where Faithfull based a sleek leather body suit which Delon’s character would be very excited to unzip.
Faithfull is leaning in close while Delon whispers to her. She is laughing and glowing in his company, and her entire body language is wrapped up in his. All Jagger can do is stare glumly down at his cigarette. Afterwards, Faithfull would clarify that Jagger was really envious even if she didn’t think much of Delon.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine anyone who might have briefly outshone Jagger at that precise moment, capturing Faithfull’s attention and drawing attention from the media. And that’s Delon, in all of his creepy, breathtaking, almost otherworldly elegance. He was among the most gorgeous male stars in movie history, if not the most.
Unlike Paul Newman as well as Robert Redford, who were more openly beautiful in Hollywood, Delon had a mesmerizingly demure, long-lashes, almost feline aspect that could signify something secretive, wounded, or malicious. Delon also did not make it in Hollywood.
Together with his attractiveness, he exuded a dangerous appearance of passivity and stillness akin to that of a predator. It was this charisma that landed him roles in some of the most intriguing crime films of the time, including those directed by French filmmakers René Clément, Jacques Deray, and Jean-Pierre Melville, as well as the avant-garde Italian art the film industry of Visconti along with Antonioni.
This, in turn, demonstrated the confining power of exceptional beauty—a phenomenon that is typical in female celebrities but uncommon in males. Remarkably, his very first cinematic role was in the 1958 criminal caper Sois Belle et Tais-Toi (Be Beautiful along with Shut Up), starring fellow rookie Jean-Paul Belmondo. That’s an instruction often given to a lady in that sexist era. Delon’s stunning appearance forced him to remain motionless, and he began to sense that the camera would be most struck by the radiance of his glitz when he was composed and unaffected.
Delon portrayed Rocco in Visconti’s 1960 breakthrough film, Rocco and His Brothers. He is the brother who travels to Milan to live with his larger family and begin a new, ambitious life in that presumed center of prosperity. However, he tragically forfeits his own well-being for his brothers, particularly by pursuing a career in boxing, where that attractive face would undoubtedly sustain damage over time, as the audience would undoubtedly know.
Delon played the dapper and aristocratic Tancredi in Visconti’s 1963 film The Leopard, which was adapted from the Lampedusa novel. Tancredi was the son of Burt Lancaster’s complex and turbulent Prince of Salina.
During the same year as Rocco, Clément’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, which tells the tale of a killer and psychopath with an odd talent for people-impersonation, was adapted into Plein Soleil, also known as Purple Noon, starring Delon in a really iconic portrayal.
I’ve always found Delon’s otherworldly perfection to be unsettling in and of itself, almost as if he is mimicking a human. You would believe that he is a man who is accustomed to the stunned, rapt expressions on the faces of those who speak with him, used to their obedient amazement, but who also possesses a devious understanding of how to exploit that charisma for control and intimidation.
Dorian Grey would have approved of Delon’s portrayal of Ripley, a man of unquestioning boldness and rugged good looks. In Deray’s psychological suspense thriller La Piscine, sometimes known as The Swimming Pool, Delon’s demeanour was comparatively composed and serene, with his face having the potential to be both violently stirred up and rippling like a pool.
Similar to the titular hitman in Le Samouraï, Klein maintains a private and reserved demeanour. Almost a decade after Melville’s crime masterpiece, Delon’s impassivity has become refined and mandarin-like, yet ethically corrupted.
His performance is brilliant when he successfully embarrasses a Jewish client by obtaining a discounted photo, and as he leaves, he shows off the newsletter that is on his mat—the same ones that he receives. Delon’s expression wavers between shock, disgust, terror, panic, and a strong conviction that to show weakness by showing any other emotion would be futile. This is his masterwork, if you will.
In Volker Schlöndorff’s Swann in Love (1984), Delon played the elderly, irascible epicure Baron de Charlus. It was a brilliant casting choice, even though Delon struggled a little with the character’s demands. Similar to Sean Connery, Alain Delon gained notoriety in later years for his disgusting comments regarding slapping women and his graphic enthusiasm for the far-right ideologies of the Front National. However, his political redemption came from his endorsement of Losey and Monsieur Klein’s antisemitism research. He was a legend and a representation of the 1960s’ vanished beauty.
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