Cinema isn’t a beauty contest, but if it were, Alain Delon surely would have won the title of the 1960s’ most handsome actor.
That’s a subjective call, of course, and as such, Delon is the kind of figure about whom writers tend to fall back on the word “arguably” — as in, “arguably the most handsome” — which is kind of a cop-out, as it leaves the argument to somebody else. When it comes to Delon, plenty have made the case. I loved Anthony Lane’s longform analysis of Delon’s allure in The New Yorker earlier this year. And none other than Jane Fonda, who co-starred with Delon in 1964’s “Joy House,” described him as “the most beautiful human being.”
Related Stories
The French star, who died Sunday, made more than 100 movies in a career that spanned 50 years, but for that one transformative decade in film history — beginning with the Patricia Highsmith adaptation “Purple Noon” (“Plein Soleil”) in 1960 and stretching through to his iconic turn in Jacques Deray’s “La Piscine” — Delon came to represent an unattainable ideal, with his piercing wolf-blue eyes, Elvis Presley cheekbones and fit, ready-to-wrestle physique.
Popular on Variety
But looks were only part of the equation. Given his working-class background, Delon possessed a streetwise toughness from the start, but read as slightly puppy-like in his earliest roles (the eponymous Italian bruiser in Luchino Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers,” the amorous stockbroker in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’eclisse”).
It didn’t take Delon long to settle into the suave, disaffected air that became his signature. From his less-is-more acting style to the way he smoked a cigarette, casually dangling from his lips, the star conveyed that he didn’t care what others thought of him. And there’s nothing more impressive than a man who isn’t trying to impress.
Delon never asked to be an actor. According to a recent interview with Brigitte Auber, who was then a French starlet fresh off filming “To Catch a Thief” for Alfred Hitchcock, she picked him up one night, walking drunk on a Parisian bridge, and brought him back to her place. (It was the first of many love affairs between Delon and coveted screen beauties, including Brigitte Bardot, Romy Schneider, Ann-Margret and Mireille Darc.) In 1957, he accompanied Auber to the Cannes Film Festival, where she introduced him around to the right people.
The young man was 21 and distractingly handsome. Within no time, he was working in movies. Appearing opposite Schneider in 1958’s “Christine,” Delon looks like a live-action Disney prince with his high-collared Austrian military uniform, chiseled features and neatly coiffed hair. It’s no wonder that closeted Italian director Luchino Visconti was smitten, casting Delon in both “Rocco and His Brothers” and “The Leopard,” in which he embodies the generation that will inevitably succeed Burt Lancaster’s ghost-like Sicilian aristocrat.
Delon brought an agitated, unpredictable tension to his early performances, exuding a dangerous/seductive potential he’d later learn to suppress. It’s not entirely clear why Delon opted to dial down that restless screen energy in later roles, but one can easily distinguish a difference between the supernova charm he brought to 1964’s “The Black Tulip” (a loose Dumas adaptation in which he plays the swashbuckling twins) and the subtler, more understate appeal of his Zorro portrayals a decade later.
One theory: Every time Delon smiled, he revealed a rough set of teeth — seemingly his only imperfection. Today, stars are cast largely for their good looks, but in the ’60s, it could be a liability, and Delon found himself trying to tone down his pretty-boy allure.
It was around this time that Henry Wilson, the Hollywood talent agent who’d discovered Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter and Guy Madison, offered Delon a chance to work for American producer David O. Selznick. Delon had already been acting in non-French films at the time (it was quite common then for European directors to cast actors of all nationalities, then dub them as needed, the way Visconti did with “The Leopard”).
To Delon’s credit, though he dabbled in a few English-language productions, he preferred to remain a big fish in the small pond of European cinema, rather than getting lost in the ocean that was Hollywood. It was a shrewd move, considering the way Hollywood treated actors with foreign accents, typecasting them in a limited range of roles. Consider the careers of “Gigi” star Louis Jourdan (“the last French lover”) and Omar Sharif (who co-starred with Delon in 1964’s “Yellow Rolls-Royce”).
Soon after, Delon met Jean-Pierre Melville, the filmmaker whom he considered his most important artistic collaborator. Melville was a true maverick of French cinema — a war hero who’d built his own studio and found a way to work outside the insular French film industry. Melville’s fiercely independent productions predated (and inspired) the French New Wave, and Delon was eager to work with the director, who’d had a falling out with his rival, Jean-Pierre Belmondo.
I have written at length about “Le Samouraï” (1967), a sleek, dialogue-sparse portrait of a self-sacrificing criminal antihero. Melville’s masterpiece is not only the source of Delon’s most impactful performance, but arguably the coolest film of all time (don’t worry, I make the argument here).
Delon plays Jef Costello, a hired gun in a stiff trenchcoat and gray fedora who moves undetected through the streets of Paris. We observe for minutes on end as he meticulously constructs his alibi, then assassinates the boss of a chic nightclub, only to have his methods put to the test when he’s spotted at the scene by a jazz pianist. It’s no small feat making the likes of Delon look inconspicuous, and yet, the actor found a way to subtract the magnetism he’d brought to “Purple Noon” (a seductive early version of “The Talented Mr. Ripley”) and play a blank canvas, on which audiences project motive and emotion.
It’s a tense thriller, but one that unfolds at a pace totally at odds with the high-adrenaline surge of contemporaneous Hollywood hits — like “The Thomas Crown Affair,” “Point Blank” or the New Wave-influenced “Bonnie and Clyde.” Where Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin and Warren Beatty radiated charisma in those films, Delon stripped that element away from “Le Samouraï” (and many subsequent roles).
Delon’s nearly expressionless face was an inscrutable Noh mask in that film. For those who understand French, his even-tempered line readings — gruff and flat — further disguised his intentions, while making the characters seem tough and intimidating. It’s a strategy that American stars Clint Eastwood and McQueen (who notoriously cut reams of dialogue from his scripts) came to embrace as well, though neither had the mannequin-fine looks to offset it. Delon internalized the lesson of “Le Samouraï” going forward, especially in two more films he made with Melville, “Le Cercle Rouge” and “Un Flic,” adopting the director as a kind of honorary godfather (which is ironic, since “Le Samouraï” was released in the U.S. as “The Godson,” hoping to capitalize off the Francis Ford Coppola film’s success).
To fully appreciate how different Delon’s approach was from that of other stars, one need only compare his sangfroid performance in 1970 gangster-movie lark “Borsalino” (not a great film, but a fun one) with that of his co-star, Belmondo, a jumpy ex-boxer who seems to be itching for a fight at every second. By that point, Delon was already a huge name, as was Belmondo, and pairing them was a no-brainer — though a bumpy development in their competitive careers, as Delon (who produced the project) gave himself top billing.
Both actors went on to make paycheck projects, getting rich off of action movies that feel rather embarrassing to revisit today. The Joseph Losey-directed “Mr. Klein,” in which Delon plays a war profiteer, is a rare film of substance. “Red Sun” and “Scorpio” are worth watching, but the rest served to finance a glamorous lifestyle that included a personal helicopter (in Agnès Varda’s unsuccessful “One Hundred and One Nights,” the star can be seen arriving in his private chopper).
Fame never flickered for Delon, who was beloved in France till the end. But looks don’t last forever. As Lane wrote in The New Yorker, “Alain Delon, in his prime, was the most beautiful man in the history of the movies.” I’d put the end of his prime — or the beginning of his decline — at 1969, when he made “La Piscine” with Schneider. It’s a hot, sticky erotic thriller set on the French Riviera, in which Delon’s character drowns a rival (Maurince Ronet, reunited from “Purple Noon”) after corrupting his daughter (Jane Birkin).
I’ve often said, if there was one film in the history of movies that I could somehow find a way to inhabit, it would be “La Piscine.” The modern mood piece is ultimately more successful in atmosphere than suspense, passing long, listless afternoons by the pool, where Delon and Schneider’s real-life chemistry brings things to a boil. The movie unravels toward the end, lingering too long after the murder. But at the center of the film is Delon, sun-bronzed and starting to show his age (he’s playing an unsuccessful writer whose good years are behind him, and one can sense the clock ticking for the actor as well). There he is, co-starring with two of European cinema’s most stunning actresses, and yet it is Delon who pulls focus.
On second thought, maybe cinema is a beauty contest. Among the medium’s many enchantments is the way it suspends the world’s loveliest people in amber, allowing us to remember how they appeared at their peak. Delon may have left us, but via “Purple Noon,” “Le Samouraï” and “La Piscine,” he will smolder forever.
