Alain
Delon, Smoldering French Film Star, Dies at 88
The
César-winning actor was an international favorite in the 1960s and ’70s, often
sought after by the era’s great auteurs.
By Anita
Gates
Aug. 18,
2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/18/obituaries/alain-delon-dead.html
Alain Delon,
the intense and intensely handsome French actor who, working with some of
Europe’s most revered 20th-century directors, played cold Corsican gangsters as
convincingly as hot Italian lovers, died on Sunday. He was 88.
He died at
his home in Douchy-Montcorbon, France, according to a statement his family gave
to the French news service Agence France-Presse.
Hours later,
President Emmanuel Macron honored him in a post on social media, saying,
“Wistful, popular, secretive, he was more than a star: a French monument.”
During his
heyday, the 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Delon was a first-tier international star,
highly paid and often sought after by the era’s great auteurs.
When he
burst on the scene in the gangster genre, as a sad-eyed, saintly young sibling
in “Rocco and His Brothers” (1960), Luchino Visconti was in the director’s
chair. Two years later, when Mr. Delon played a sexy stock trader, it was in
Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Eclisse” (“Eclipse”).
And “Le
Samouraï” (1967), released in the United States as “The Godson,” and the
jewelry-heist flick “Le Cercle Rouge” (1970), in which Mr. Delon was a
sinister, mustachioed ex-con, were both directed by Jean-Pierre Melville,
patron saint of the French New Wave.
Louis Malle
directed Mr. Delon’s segment of “Histoires Extraordinaires” (1968), based on
three Edgar Allan Poe stories. In Jacques Deray’s “La Piscine” (“The Swimming
Pool”), from 1969, Mr. Delon’s character rather casually murdered a houseguest.
For the same director, he made “Borsalino” (1970), co-starring with Jean-Paul
Belmondo as a Marseilles crime boss. Decades later, he appeared in Jean-Luc
Godard’s “Nouvelle Vague” (1990).
Mr. Delon
was well past the peak of his fame when he won the best actor César, France’s
Oscar equivalent, for his performance as a middle-aged alcoholic grasping for
happiness in the Bertrand Blier drama “Notre Histoire” (1984). That same year
he played against type in a different way, as the sensual gay aristocrat Baron
de Charlus in “Swann in Love,” drawn from Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of
Things Past.”
Of course,
his type depended on the audience’s point of view, and that seemed to vary from
continent to continent. In Japan, he was considered a Western star, because of
films like “Red Sun” (1971) with Toshiro Mifune. In Europe, he made a career of
brutal crime dramas — as a cop killer, a hit man, an assassin, a murderer on
the run — but he was enthusiastically accepted in other genres. He starred in
the 1976 French best picture winner, “Mr. Klein,” as a wartime German art
dealer threatened by being mistaken for a Jewish man with the same name.
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American
critics, however, often saw Mr. Delon only as a pretty boy. Vincent Canby’s New
York Times review of “Le Samouraï” described his character as a “beautiful
misfit” and faintly praised Mr. Delon as “doing what he does best (looking
impassive and slightly tarnished).”
Yet Mr.
Delon’s handsomeness was one reason his appeal endured. His “beauty has long
inspired paroxysms of rapture,” Manohla Dargis wrote in April, when the art
house Film Forum in Manhattan presented a retrospective series of 10 Delon
films.
“This is,
after all,” she added, “a star whose looks over the years have been described
as sensual though also insolent, cruel, self-absorbed and androgynous, a word
that helps explain why his beauty — as with that of other men whose looks
threaten tidy gender norms — makes some viewers uneasy even as it sends others
into ecstasy.”
Still, in
1965, Mr. Delon told the British magazine Film and Filming that shooting
intimate physical contact was “a bore for me — love scenes, kissing scenes.”
His explanation at the time: “I prefer to fight.”
But in 1970,
when a reporter for The Times followed up on that question, he added, “I prefer
to make love at home.”
Alain Fabien
Maurice Marcel Delon was born on Nov. 8, 1935, in Sceaux, France, a wealthy
suburb of Paris. His parents, Fabien and Édith (Arnold) Delon, divorced when he
was 4.
Growing up,
Alain had discipline problems and was expelled from several schools. The
pattern seemed to continue when he joined the French Navy in his late teens.
During his military service, which included the First Indochina War, he spent
almost a year behind bars for various infractions, he said, before receiving a
dishonorable discharge in 1956. One of his offenses, he told the talk show host
Dick Cavett in 1970, was stealing a Jeep.
Then, in
1957, his life changed in a fairy-tale way. Having worked only at odd jobs (at
one point he helped his stepfather, a butcher) and with no career plan, he
happened to accompany a friend, the actress Brigitte Auber, to the Cannes Film
Festival and was discovered there by a representative of the American film
producer David O. Selznick. He was soon offered a contract — if he agreed to
study English. But before he had a chance to pack his bags for Hollywood, he
received another offer, from the veteran director Yves Allégret, and chose to
stay in France.
Mr. Delon’s
first credited screen role was that year in Mr. Allégret’s “When the Woman
Meddles,” but it was his performance in René Clément’s 1960 film “Plein Soleil”
(“Purple Noon”), based on the Patricia Highsmith novel and remade almost 40
years later in the United States as “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” that caught the
public’s rapt attention.
He was Tom
Ripley, a penniless but savvy young man hanging out with and taking revenge on
rich, amoral friends. Mr. Delon’s onscreen image was arresting: sparkling blue
eyes, mile-long lashes, sandy hair falling across his forehead, the pout, the
slouch, the angelic demeanor that could shift instantly. He reminded many
moviegoers of James Dean, the young American screen idol who had died five
years before.
As Ms.
Dargis wrote of Mr. Delon in April, his “stardom was sealed the moment Ripley
peels off his shirt, baring his chest.”
Despite his
rejection of Mr. Selznick, Mr. Delon was always forthright about his desire for
Hollywood stardom, in addition to his international success. In 1965, he told
The Los Angeles Times that he considered America “the top, the last step — it’s
a kind of consecration.” But that dream never quite came true.
His first
British film, “The Yellow Rolls-Royce” (1964), did well at the box office, but
as just one face in that movie’s star-studded international ensemble cast, his
Italian photographer-gigolo largely blended into the background. More than a
half-dozen American films followed — including “Once a Thief” (1965), a crime
drama in which he starred opposite Ann-Margret, and “Texas Across the River”
(1966), a western spoof with Dean Martin — but none were hits.
For American
moviegoers, Mr. Delon’s best-known film was probably “Il Gattopardo” (“The
Leopard”), from 1963. Although it also starred Burt Lancaster, the film, based
on a novel by the aristocrat Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, was an international
production from Mr. Visconti.
Mr. Delon’s
last effort was “The Concorde … Airport ’79” (1979). He played George Kennedy’s
debonair co-pilot in a perpetually endangered SST.
In 1968,
Stevan Markovic, a former bodyguard of Mr. Delon’s, was murdered and found in a
dump near the star’s suburban Paris home. The investigation brought forth a
scandal about alleged sex parties that involved both Mr. Delon and high-ranking
political officials. Mr. Delon was questioned by the police, and an associate
was indicted but not convicted; the case was never solved.
He was at
home with controversy, making public statements that suggested homophobia and
racism. The Daily Beast referred to his “well-known misogyny and problematic
politics” in 2019, when he was given an honorary Palme d’Or, the Cannes Film
Festival’s highest prize.
Mr. Delon
was inducted into the Légion d’Honneur in 1991. For many years he was also a
successful businessman, licensing his name to products.
He was
married only once — to Nathalie Barthélémy (whose name at the time of their
marriage was Francine Canovas) — from 1964 to 1969, but he led the life of a
dedicated serial monogamist. He had enduring romantic relationships with women,
including Romy Schneider, his frequent co-star, from 1958 to 1963; Mireille
Darc, an actress and model, from 1969 to 1982; and Rosalie van Breemen, a Dutch
model, from 1987 to 2002.
Survivors
include a son, Anthony, from his marriage, as well two children from his
relationship with Ms. van Breemen: a son, Alain-Fabien, and a daughter,
Anouchka.
The three
had been locked in a bitter feud over medical treatment for Mr. Delon, whose
health had declined since a stroke in 2019.
Mr. Delon
had denied paternity of a third son, Christian Aaron Päffgen — later known as
Ari Boulogne — from a brief relationship with the pop star Nico. But Mr.
Delon’s mother raised the boy as her grandson, giving him her surname from a
remarriage. He died in 2023.
Most of Mr.
Delon’s screen appearances in the 2000s were on French television, and he
announced his retirement from film more than once. After an eight-year absence
from movies, he turned up in Roman robes and a laurel crown as Julius Caesar in
the historical farce “Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques” (2008).
His last
feature film was a 2012 Russian-language comedy drama, “S Novym Godom, Mamy!”
(“Happy New Year, Mommies!”), in which he played himself. He did the same in
2019, in “Toute Ressemblance,” a comic drama.
More
important, perhaps, was the restoration and rerelease in 2021 of “La Piscine,”
booked for two weeks at Film Forum, where it was so popular that it ran all
summer. And new critics praised the film’s “unapologetic decadence” and Mr.
Delon’s “sexy sleekness” and “hint of menace.”
He was often
criticized for rampant egotism but seemed able to see fame for the complicated
illusion that it was.
“This
insanity gets to the point where ‘Delon’ becomes a label,” he said in a 1991
television interview, reported in The Connexion, a Monégasque news site. “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.”
Aurelien
Breeden contributed reporting.
Alain Delon: how family feud brought Shakespearean tragedy to final years
Tensions
between his children had erupted behind the gates of the French actor’s home in
the village of Douchy
Kim Willsher
in Douchy
Sun 18 Aug
2024 15.23 BST
It has been
some time since Alain Delon was last seen in the village of Douchy, his country
home for the past half a century and the place he designated as his final
resting place. Local people remember when back in the 1970s and 80s he would be
spotted at the nearby chemist shop or the only restaurant, or even at the
annual school fete with Mireille Darc, an actor and one of the great loves of
his life.
“When I was
a schoolgirl they would come for the end-of-year party. They would play Father
Christmas and give everyone a present,” one woman recalled.
Christian, a
florist, remembered delivering the actor’s favourite flowers – red and white
roses and white lilies – to the estate known as La Brûlerie, whose long stone
wall stretches for nearly a mile and a half along the road to the village in
the Loiret department of central France.
“He was
always very jovial and liked a joke but he wasn’t a showoff. He didn’t play the
star or artist here. He was considered a local,” he said.
On Sunday
the Douchyssois, as they are known, turned out to say adieu to their most
famous resident after learning of Delon’s death aged 88, and lay flowers at the
wrought-iron gate of the home where he had lived as a recluse with failing
health for the last year.
It was here,
85 miles (140km) south-east of Paris, that Delon had declared he wished to be
buried, near the chapel built in a cemetery he created for more than 30 of his
beloved dogs.
And it was
here that after months of public infighting, Delon’s children sat down united
in grief to compose a joint statement.
“Alain-Fabien,
Anouchka, Anthony, as well as [his dog] Loubo, are deeply saddened to announce
the passing of their father. He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy,
surrounded by his three children and his family,” they said in a statement,
adding that the family asked for privacy.
It was also
here that in his decline Delon was to witness sibling tensions erupt at the
beginning of this year when, severely diminished by a stroke in 2019 and a
slow-developing lymphoma diagnosed in 2022, he was at the centre of a flurry of
bitter accusations, squabbles involving secret recordings and threats of legal
action.
It was
hinted at – and hoped for – that the actor’s health was so fragile he was
largely unaware of the Shakespearean tragedy unfolding as the three evicted
Delon’s Japanese companion, Hiromi Rollin, from the property a year ago and
paraded their grievances in the press and on television. The children said
their father was still lucid, forcing Delon’s lawyer to step in earlier this
year.
“It has to
stop and everyone needs to calm down. That’s enough now,” Christophe Ayela
said.
Delon had a
famously stormy relationship with his two sons, Anthony, 59, whose mother,
Nathalie, was his only wife, and Alain-Fabien, 30, whose mother is Rosalie van
Breemen, a Dutch model and journalist. Le Monde suggested Delon’s own turbulent
childhood left him incapable of establishing relationships with his sons. Delon
was four when his parents divorced and he was sent to a foster home.
The actor
made no secret that he favoured his daughter, Anouchka, 33, whose mother is
also Breemen, and who lives in Switzerland. “To no other woman have I so often
said I love you,” he said in 2008, adding a decade later: “I have a daughter
who is the love of my life, perhaps a little too much with regard to the
others.”
A third son,
Christian Aaron Boulogne, known as Ari, born to the German rock star Nico of
the Velvet Underground and whom the actor never recognised as his son, was
partly raised by Delon’s mother. He died in 2023 aged 60 after long-term drug
addiction.
A police
officer stands on a road as journalists an photographers stand on a mini
roundabout behind. Other people are in front of the gates to the property
Before
Delon’s death, the family confirmed that in line with French law – under which
a parent cannot disinherit their children, however estranged or conflicted the
relationship – his estate, which wildly varying estimates put at between €50m
and €300m (£58m and £352m), would be divided into quarters with a required 25%
going to each child.
The actor
was free to decide what to do with the final 25% and has reportedly left it to
Anouchka, giving her half of his fortune in total. It is an inequitable
disbursement but one that Delon’s children have publicly said they do not
contest, insisting their feud was not about money. In February, Anthony said:
“There is no inheritance war.”
Outside La
Brûlerie on Sunday, once the site of a holiday camp for railway workers’
children and surrounded by woodland, villagers were remembering the man not his
money as gendarmes kept journalists and television crews at a respectful
distance, allowing only mourners through to lay flowers.
In French
media, Delon had the last word. In a 1996 question-and-answer sequence with the
TV presenter Bernard Pivot, the actor was asked: “If God exists, what would you
like to hear him say to you after your death?”
Without
hesitation, Delon replied: “Since this is your greatest and deepest regret, I
know, come, I’ll take you to your father and mother, so that for the first
time, at last, you can see them together.”
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