Le SamouraiDelon, Alain Mark Lager November 2024 Great Actors Issue 111 b. 8 November 1935 Sceaux, France d. 18 August 2024 Douchy, France Alain Delon’s ancestry covers the diversity of France, Paris and Switzerland from his mother’s family tree and Corsica in his father’s lineage. Alain’s parents divorced, causing a chaotic childhood during the 1930s-1940s, his aggressiveness and anger, rebellion against teachers, resulted in his expulsion from numerous schools and, in his adolescence during the 1950s, he completely dropped out of education and was embroiled in alcohol-fueled street violence, eventually joining the French Navy at the end of his teenage years and ending up in jail at the age of twenty, subsequently submerging himself in associations with the criminal underworld. All of these experiences he expressed as an actor during the 1960s-1970s in many of his most memorable performances, as a soldier (The Leopard), an assassin (Le Samourai), and a thief (Le Cercle Rouge). An Alpine chill congealed in his crystallized eyes while a Mediterranean passion simmered beneath his surface. An interview in 2018, before being presented an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019 for his career, was republished in French newspaper Le Monde alongside an obituary, in the interview Delon stated “Everything I did in films, I truly lived.” Clement, Antonioni, Visconti (International Breakthroughs, Italian Summers 1959 – 1962) At the age of twenty-three, August 1959, sixty-five years before he passed away at the age of eighty-eight, Alain Delon was cast in his international breakthrough role as Tom Ripley in Rene Clement’s Plein Soleil (released in the United States August 31, 1961 as Purple Noon). Filmed on Ischia, an island off the coast of Naples, Henri Decae makes an impression through his crisp camerawork that highlights the architecture and light of the locations and Delon makes an impression through his aloof eyes, enigmatic facial gestures, and equally crisp shirts that reflect the sunshine. Delon’s portrayal of Tom Ripley is a charming deceiver who is Machiavellian in his murder of Philippe Greenleaf in order to purloin his identity and in his continued misleading of Philippe’s estranged girlfriend Marge Duval (the lovely Marie Laforet). The most distinctive scenes do not involve the killings of Greenleaf and the American Freddy Miles nor the dialogue. The most distinctive scenes unfurl in a similar way as the sail on the solitary boat where Delon’s Ripley suffers sunstroke. They contain no words and involve Delon’s face, around the midpoint of the story as he strolls through a seafood market and notices a dead fish’s head with the same nonchalance as he observed the corpse of Greenleaf (the incongruity of Nino Rota’s jaunty score), the closeups of Delon’s blue eyes and Laforet’s green eyes in a moment of romance, and the penultimate shot of Delon reclining on Maronti Beach, buzzing cicadas in the distance. Purple Noon Purple Noon At the age of twenty-four, 1960, Delon was cast as Rocco in Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and Visconti confessed that the film could not have realized its potential without Delon, the black-and-white camerawork of Giuseppe Rotunno, slice-of-life direction by Visconti, and the dogged, gutsy portrayal of Rocco who becomes a boxer heavily influenced Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro twenty years later when they made Raging Bull. Rocco falls for Nadia (Annie Girardot), the girlfriend of his abusive, aggressive brother Simone (whose violence results in two repugnant scenes, her rape and her murder). These scenes were controversial at the time and censored for its release. Though acclaimed as a culmination of neorealism, the melodramatic, often over-the-top performances and the protracted running time of Rocco and His Brothers are flaws of the film. Visconti attempted a contemporary portrait of Sicilians moving from the south to the north of Italy in Milan, however, his following film The Leopard (set during the Risorgimento of the 1860s) is his masterpiece and is superior. While Purple Noon exhibited his fashionable style and Rocco and His Brothers his tough masculinity, his next two performances were superior due to the chemistry between Delon and his lead actresses. Behind the Scenes of L’Eclisse At the age of twenty-five, July 1961, Delon was cast as a character that was more complex than the boxer of Rocco and His Brothers, as Piero the stockbroker opposite Monica Vitti as Vittoria (her greatest performance) in Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse (Eclipse), not only the most memorable of Michelangelo Antonioni’s movies from that decade, yet also the second strongest of his career (after The Passenger) because the chemistry between Delon and Vitti is dynamic. Filmed in Rome, Gianni di Venanzo creates an atmosphere of distance, emptiness, and mystery, especially during the enigmatic ending, Antonioni’s architectural background is evident and prominent as he bisects and intersects Delon and Vitti with a column in the crowded stock exchange that splits their faces, a building under construction that appears ghostly in the summer breeze where Vitti rejects Delon’s advances and returns for a reunion (a building that reappears in an ominous way in the epilogue where Delon and Vitti have disappeared and a newspaper’s headline reads “Nuclear Arms Race”), and a window in Delon’s apartment where they share their first kiss on either side of the glass, the most romantic scene in Antonioni’s entire filmography, unusual because the characters of Vittoria and Piero, similar to the characters in the majority of Antonioni’s movies, cannot communicate their deeper selves to each other, they face the meaningless void of their everyday existence brought upon them by bourgeois capitalism. Though Antonioni’s (and the audience’s) gaze is focused upon Vittoria because she is the central character, Piero’s energy, alternately playful and restless, inspires both an intensity and vivaciousness in Vitti that is absent from L’Avventura and Deserto Rosso, the viewer never notices her laugh or sees her smile this much in contrast to those more morose musings on malaise. Though Piero and Vittoria idealistically tell themselves their ephemeral relationship will last forever, this is highly improbable, since, despite their affections (Delon and Vitti convey most of their emotions in their expressive eyes and facial features), their conversation when Delon divulges that he feels like he is in a foreign country with her and she reveals that she wishes she did not love him (or loved him more) is a disillusion, a division, that signals their separation, similar to the eclipse of the film’s title. L’Eclisse At the age of twenty-six, during a Sicilian summer in 1962, Delon reteamed with Visconti for a markedly different film than the neorealism of Rocco and His Brothers, the elegant epic Il Gattopardo (The Leopard). The Leopard is a film that must be seen on the big screen in order to appreciate the cinematography of genius Giuseppe Rotunno, painterly and panoramic. There is an insouciance that is irresistible in Delon’s performance as Tancredi Falconeri, from when he is first introduced opposite Burt Lancaster’s Don Fabrizio Corbera as they debate the future of Italy to his soldierly valor during a battle in the streets of Palermo to his charming flirtatiousness (flashing eyes and lascivious grin) with Claudia Cardinale’s Angelica Sedara at a dinner party resulting in her eruptive, guttural laugh that the guests consider vulgar to their coquettish hide and seek together through the empty passageways of the aristocratic villa. Though Lancaster is the central character (and shared the same birthday as Visconti, his scenes dominate the film), Delon and Cardinale are perhaps the most beautiful couple in cinema history, Lancaster’s performance elegiac, while the romantic youthfulness of Delon and Cardinale lifts cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno’s and director Visconti’s lavish, luxurious mise-en-scene into an intoxicating lustrousness. While the chemistry between Delon and Vitti (four years older than him) in L’Eclisse contains an ambiguous mystique, the chemistry between Cardinale (three years younger than him) and Delon radiates a sensuous, smoldering strength. While most of the moments in the film, Delon is dashing and debonair, he has an attentive concern towards Lancaster when discovering him contemplating a death painting (he takes his hand) and dejected eyes when watching Lancaster’s graceful, noble waltz with Cardinale. Behind the Scenes of The Leopard Behind the Scenes of The Leopard French Riviera Stories (1962 – 1964) At the age of twenty-seven, November 1962, in a French television interview, Delon asserted that the “director is what matters most in a film…a great script directed by just anybody risks being an awful film, while a great director can make a terrific film from a filler item buried in the back pages” and confessed that his earlier roles were weaker, however, he was grateful to the directors Clement, Antonioni, and Visconti because they discerned that he was capable of more depth in his performances and instructed him on how to express every facet of his emotions in front of the camera and in relation to other actors. Delon also selected Jean Gabin and Jean Marais as French actors whom he admired. Any Number Can Win was the first of Delon’s roles that was similar to his experiences previously in his youth, his character Francis Verlot is a thief of the working class who joins Jean Gabin (the exact opposite of Delon in his age and demeanor) in a Cannes casino robbery. Delon is less memorable in this role. There would be a much more complex French heist film waiting for his career in his thirties (Le Cercle Rouge). This role is more about style than substance, Delon’s physique at a swimming pool and his clothes catching the audience’s attention (leather jacket in his city neighborhood versus sports car, suit, and sunglasses while cruising Cannes). With this movie’s popularity, Delon secured a contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer to distribute four more movies (Yellow Rolls-Royce, Joy House, The Unvanquished, Once a Thief). Yellow Rolls-Royce was his first British film and his character does not stand out among the star-studded cast in this flimsy, frivolous movie. Joy House, like Any Number Can Win, had a similar setting in the French Riviera (Monte Carlo and Nice) and reteamed Delon with director Clement for another summer filming (August 1963), like Plein Soleil. Joy House (unlike Any Number Can Win) does not begin with conversations, instead it opens with action, Delon is almost drowned in a tub and, after his car is pushed off a cliff, makes a daring underwater escape. Filming additionally took place at the Villa Torre Clementina (Roquebrune-Cap-Martin), Henri Decae’s camerawork is in black-and-white and focused on interiors and stage lights, in contrast to the color cinematography of exterior locations in Plein Soleil. This film is a failure, from Alain Delon’s dubbed English voice as the cheating gambler Marc to the complete lack of chemistry between he and Jane Fonda (Natalie Wood was originally cast as the character of Melinda and would have been a better choice) to the silly script. Delon finished his French Riviera scripts in Marseille with a rather serious and somber story concerning the Algerian War that was controversial because the war was still fresh in the minds of the French people, causing censorship of several scenes. Though the direction by Alain Cavalier is clearly nowhere near as distinctive as Antonioni in L’Eclisse and Visconti in The Leopard, The Unvanquished is actually a better film than the melodramatic, overlong Rocco and His Brothers and frivolous Yellow Rolls-Royce, Any Number Can Win, and Joy House, from the resilient Delon as army renegade Thomas Vlassenroot and anguished Lea Massari as kidnapped lawyer Dominique Servet, a hostage whom Delon frees from the Organisation Armee Secrete, to the impassioned score by Georges Delerue and compelling camerawork by Claude Renoir (the black-and-white cinematography of Delon and Massari in the night rain and the tracking shots as Delon leaves Massari past flowers and the forests, Vlassenroot’s doom and his return home, are the most memorable scenes). Delon’s favorite actor was John Garfield (according to an August 1970 interview in The New York Times with Judy Klemesrud). His role as army deserter Thomas Vlassenroot is the closest in his career to John Garfield’s anti-government revolutionary Tony Fenner in John Huston’s We Were Strangers. Just as Tony Fenner suffers a tragic demise, so too, does Thomas Vlassenroot in the austere ending of The Unvanquished, Delon displays an intensity during the death sequence, he reaches out for his daughter, however, the child does not recognize him, he collapses and closes his own eyes with his hand. The last shot is Vlassenroot’s name and birth-death years (1933-1961), the character dies at age twenty-eight, the same age as Delon in 1964. Hollywood Interlude (1964 – 1966) Delon’s next character was another criminal, he was cast in his debut Hollywood role as Eddie Pedak in Once a Thief, filmed in San Francisco. Delon is introduced running upstairs to his wife Kristine (Ann-Margret) and child daughter to take them to the waterfront where he works. The arrival of Eddie’s older brother Walter (who wants Eddie to rejoin him in thievery) adds tension courtesy of Jack Palance. The script is weak with its macho stereotype (Delon does not accept Palance’s pushings towards a robbery until he finds Ann-Margret working in a Playboy style nightclub and he slaps her around there, at home, and in the streets when their daughter is kidnapped) and its stereotypical presentation of women (Ann-Margret’s over-the-top shrieking). The movie ends in a similar way as The Unvanquished with Delon dying of gunshot wounds, this time it is his child daughter who closes his eyes, however, it is completely missing the power of The Unvanquished. Once a Thief is a frustrating failure. At the age of twenty-nine, Delon was cast as Captain Phillipe Esclavier, alongside Anthony Quinn, in the Columbia Pictures war movie Lost Command. Set initially during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (Delon was previously in the military at the age of eighteen during this battle), the majority of the script takes place during the Algerian War, this is a war movie that is nothing special and is standard, typical of the genre during the 1960s with dry dialogue that is interminable, interrupted with combat scenes that are indistinguishable from each other with their explosions and machine gun fire. The movie does not deviate from this formula and ignite interest until the final half hour when Delon reteams with Cardinale, cast as the Algerian Aicha Mahidi (Cardinale was born and raised in neighboring Tunisia). Delon (a soldier as he was in The Leopard) and Cardinale do not express the same vigorousness as a couple in this movie as they did in The Leopard, quite simply because the director, cameraman, and scriptwriter do not have the attentiveness to character development and mise-en-scene that Visconti and Rotunno displayed in that masterpiece. Delon wrapped up his brief career in Hollywood with the trifling, trivial western Texas Across the River. At the age of thirty, he realized that his career was floundering so he decided to quit pursuing Hollywood roles. Experimental Roles (1967 – 1968) After acting in another popular action movie, The Last Adventure, in 1966, Delon decided in 1967 to deviate from the action, crime, and historical genres he was accustomed to and accept roles that were more experimental for him in erotic psychological thrillers (Duvivier, Cardiff, Deray) and a story in a horror anthology (Malle), whether or not any of these experiments were successful is dependent on each viewer’s taste. Alain Delon is an amnesiac in Julien Duvivier’s Diabolically Yours, Senta Berger is deceiving and entrapping him in the Chateau de Themericourt, pretending to be his wife while, with her lover, she secretly murdered the man she tells Delon he is. The dialogue and direction completely lack the “diabolical” edge promised in the title and instead the pacing drags and the script is dull, Francois de Roubaix’s score and the chateau’s decor momentarily maintain the viewer’s interest. The film failed to capture audiences’ attentions in theaters. Alain Delon’s next performance, as William Wilson in an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation (in the horror anthology Spirits of the Dead), was a more entertaining experience because of the clever direction by Louis Malle and the casting of sex symbol Brigitte Bardot. As the middle entry in the three stories, it is superior to Roger Vadim’s “Metzengerstein”, however, it is inferior to Federico Fellini’s phantasmagoric “Toby Dammit” showcasing Terence Stamp’s most memorable performance. “William Wilson” is intriguing, courtesy of two sequences that stick with the viewer, the first is Delon’s abduction of the blonde Dutch actress Katia Christine who is killed when he encounters his doppelganger during a mock dissection, while the second is Bardot with black hair (appropriately gothic and more sultry than she ever was as a blonde) challenging Delon to a poker game over cigars and wine where he wins and whips her in a sadistic frenzy followed by Bardot slapping Delon when his double declares that he is a card cheat. Alain Delon is in sadist whipping mode again in an opening nightmare scene of Girl on a Motorcycle where Delon’s lashings make Marianne Faithfull nude while riding a horse in a circus tent. The Ronald Duncan script is ridiculous (Delon says to Faithfull that her “body is like a violin in a velvet case” and she responds “skin me”) and the Les Reed score is an easy listening hangover from the “summer of love”. This film is all about style rather than substance, from Faithfull’s sex appeal (skintight black leather) and Delon’s exploration of her sensuality to director Jack Cardiff’s earthy cinematography of France and Germany. The “erotic” scenes (that resulted in the first X rating on a movie in the United States) are quite tame by today’s standards. Though there is chemistry between Delon and Faithfull (not only in this film yet also in a photograph of Delon and Faithfull with Mick Jagger on a blue couch and red carpet at Le Duc in Paris where Delon and Faithfull are sharing a flirtatious smile while Jagger is dejected by his lack of attention), Girl on a Motorcycle is narratively jumbled. La Piscine At the age of thirty-two, August 1968, Alain Delon reunited with his former lover, Romy Schneider, and their magnetic attraction to each other was reignited and clearly evident in Jacques Deray’s water obsessed La Piscine where the majority of the scenes surround a swimming pool at Villa L’Oumede in Ramatuelle near Saint Tropez on the Cote d’Azur. Delon, out of jealousy, because of Maurice Ronet’s romancing of Romy Schneider and scorning and sneering at Delon, seduces his daughter and drowns him. Despite falling short of the film’s initial promise due to the stagnant section of the script that follows when a detective investigates and the dissatisfying ending, it is not the script that sustains the viewer’s interest. It is the gaze upon the hypnotic performances of Delon, Schneider, and Jane Birkin that is tantalizing, courtesy of cinematography by Jean-Jacques Tarbes of the amber August light pouring onto their beautiful eyes and bronzed skin, costume design by Andre Courreges and makeup by Mariel Bernard that highlights the distinctive personalities of the characters (from Delon’s drifting, restless writer Jean-Paul Leroy’s denim and sunglasses concealing his emotions and hiding from his hangover to Schneider’s lusty, melancholy Marianne’s elegant eyeliner and a contrast between breezy, casual white shirts and pants emphasizing her balance and distance from Delon and Ronet and backless dresses that are fashionable and glamorous displaying her attempts to charm Delon and Ronet to Birkin’s bored, curious Penelope’s bohemian chic wardrobe), Michel Legrand’s langorous, moody music, and production design by Paul Laffargue that places 1960s designs next to the pool and throughout the villa. There are several scenes that stand out in La Piscine, a conversation between Delon and Schneider where she ascribes his character to his astrological chart, “You’re Pisces, Aquarius rising…” (Delon was a Scorpio with Libra rising and Aries moon, however, the director Deray was a Pisces), a nocturnal sadomasochistic scene (where Delon whips Schneider, just as he had previously whipped Bardot and Faithfull), and a party scene featuring a gyrating Stephanie Fugain. La Piscine “The Greatest Director I Know” (Jean-Pierre Melville Trilogy) (1967 – 1972) At the age of thirty-one, Delon met director Jean-Pierre Melville who cast him as an assassin Jef Costello in Le Samourai, a collaboration that would result in arguably the best film of both their careers. Delon espoused Melville’s minimalism (his character is the least dialogue driven of his performances) and Melville removed the rougher edges of his previous black-and-white gangster films that decade that were inferior, polishing with precision his technique in conjunction with atmospheric color cinematography by Henri Decae that captures a series of gray hued scenes where Delon wanders as a loner, lost in his meditations, whose fate is intertwined with two women, a girlfriend Jane Lagrange (portrayed by his wife Nathalie, from whom he separated when the film was finished) and Valerie (played by the captivating and riveting Cathy Rosier who is the most mesmerizing female character in Melville’s filmography). Le Samourai Le Samourai Le Samourai opens with a quote “There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai, unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle…perhaps…” over a stark room resembling a cell or cloister of a monk, St. Anthony the Great (the hermit) or St. Jerome, the only light in the darkness is from the rainy skies beyond the windows, the figure in the shadows can barely be seen as he is outstretched on his bed, clouds of smoke hovering above him, his only companion is a bullfinch in a cage. Francois de Roubaix’s reflective soundtrack fits the rainy solitude, the characters’ ruminations. It is April 4, six o’clock in the evening, Saturday. The apartment building is Impasse des Rigaunes in Paris. Melville meticulously catalogs Delon’s movements, from dressing himself in a gray fedora hat and tan trenchcoat (Melville’s homage to 1940s film noir) to his big ring of keys utilized to steal a car (he glances at an attractive woman in a nearby car through the rain streaked window, however, he has no time for romance, he has work to do) to his paying of a man in a garage (no words exchanged) for a license plate, registration, and a revolver. The first dialogue is not until the ten minute mark and Melville upends audience expectations when Delon meets with then wife Nathalie, once again, there is no time for romance, he simply tells her a time during which he was with her at her apartment for a future alibi. When she affectionately says, “I like when you come here, because you need me”, he does not respond. After shooting Martey, whom he was hired to kill, at his nightclub, there is only one true witness of the murder, Rosier in a silver metallic dress, the two share no words during her gamine gaze at Delon. Delon eludes Francois Perier’s police commissaire with his alibi (too airtight according to Perier, this makes him suspicious) and with Rosier’s refusal to identify him, her eyes meet his and he has fallen in love. This love (that is never consummated onscreen) continues during Delon’s second visit to the nightclub to see the jazz pianist play and his return with Rosier in her black exterior/red interior car where the most crucial line of the screenplay is a question asked by Rosier after Delon admits he did not even know Martey, he simply killed him for money (“What kind of man are you?”), followed by a scene in her stylish apartment (grand piano, statues, and Rosier in her oriental patterned black satin nightgown). This is a doomed love, tragic, during his third visit to Rosier where, like a samurai, he preserves his honor when he publicly presents himself as her assassin, her eyes reflective and sad, she asks “Why, Jef?” He is shot by police, and then, the discovery, the revolver is not loaded. Le Samourai Le Samourai October 23, 1967, in a French television interview, only two days before Le Samourai was released, Delon praised Melville more than any director he had worked with. “He knows more about cinema than anyone. He’s the greatest director I know, the greatest cameraman, the best at framing and lighting, the best at everything. He’s a living encyclopedia of cinema.” Behind the Scenes of Le Cercle Rouge At the age of thirty-four, January-March 1970, Delon reteamed with Melville, he was cast as another criminal, this time a thief Corey who has just been released from jail. Corey, despite not being a loner like the lead in Le Samourai (he collaborates with Gian Maria Volonte’s escaped prisoner Vogel and Yves Montand’s ex-cop marksman), is actually a colder character both physically with his darker hair and his moustache (in Le Samourai he was clean shaven) and psychologically with his lack of love, there is no female figure in this film for Delon to embrace, a photograph of Corey’s previous girlfriend he strategically puts in the safe of the man he went to jail for after he grabs the man’s gun and money, alerting him to the fact that Corey knows he is sleeping with his previous girlfriend. Eric Demarsan’s elegant soundtrack expresses the atmospheric city streets and country woods, the characters’ moods. Le Cercle Rouge opens with an epigraph “Siddhartha Gautauma, the Buddha, drew a circle with a piece of red chalk and said: ‘When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle.’” This red circle is presented symbolically in four sequences. 1.) After Delon draws a red circle on the tip of a pool cue and hits a red ball, two crooks confront him in the billiard hall and he murders one of them. 2.) After Volonte escapes from the train and struggles through the snow to hide in the trunk of Delon’s brown Plymouth (they share camaraderie and cigarettes), Delon is confronted again by hoodlums sent to kill him, except Volonte emerges from the trunk and murders them, the money is blood splattered, making their heist a necessity. 3.) After Montand’s delirium tremens causes him hallucinations, a monstrous nightmare, and he agrees to be the sharpshooter for their jewelry store heist, aiming (ambitiously removing the rifle from the tripod) at the metallic circle, he regains his self and refuses to share in any profits with Delon and Volonte. 4.) When Delon goes to meet with a fence (Andre Bourvil’s inspector Mattei undercover) at Santi’s nightclub, a waitress (Stephanie Fugain) hands him a red rose, a sign of his approaching death. Le Cercle Rouge At the age of thirty-six, November 1971-February 1972, Delon was cast in his first cop role in Melville’s final film, Un Flic. The opening sequence is atmospheric, the downpour and windy waves crashing against the rocks as the quartet of stone-hearted thieves steal from a bank, followed by the bitter, case-hardened Delon who is desensitized by the crimes he investigates, only displaying emotion when he plays the piano at an empty nightclub after it has closed, even his entanglement with glassy blonde Catherine Deneuve completely lacks any warmth, she is entangled herself with Richard Crenna, even to the point of injecting their half comatose gunshot wounded friend to poison him in his hospital bed. There are scenes that do not add anything to the script (such as the affluent pedophile and the transvestite). This is a bitter, morose, numb story that is the least satisfying of Melville’s trilogy with Delon. Crime, Romances, Thrillers (1968 – 1981) Charles Bronson and Alain Delon joined forces for the first time in Adieu, L’Ami (Farewell, Friend a.k.a. Honor Among Thieves) because Delon was a fan of Bronson. Delon was once again cast as a soldier (an army doctor), while Bronson is a mercenary, they both return to France after fighting in Algeria. Delon (as recompense for causing the death of her partner during the war) is deceived by Olga Georges-Picot into taking a risk with no reward — the night the employees leave for Christmas vacation, Delon will put clandestine documents back into the safe for her, however, the plan goes awry when both Bronson (who wants the money in the safe) and Delon are locked inside. Delon and Bronson share chemistry and clever, comical conversations in the sharp-witted screenplay by Sebastien Japrisot, these are the film’s strengths (alongside Francois de Roubaix’s soundtrack) and, although this heist story does not, of course, attain the higher level of sophistication in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge, this film is far superior to Delon’s subsequent pairing with Belmondo (who, unlike Bronson, clashed with Delon) in the disastrous Borsalino. Adieu L’Ami Delon reteamed with Bronson three years later in the western Red Sun, though they share far less onscreen time together. Delon and Bronson are bandits who rob a train, then Bronson is betrayed by Delon (who has purloined Toshiro Mifune’s most prized possession) and he is pressured to tag along with Mifune on his pursuit of Delon to recover his stolen sword, an action packed, entertaining, and humorous journey. Delon reteamed with Burt Lancaster (a decade after Lancaster’s best performance of his career in Visconti’s The Leopard) in the aptly titled Cold War spy movie Scorpio (the sign of actors Lancaster and Delon, director Michael Winner, producer Walter Mirisch, and former president Warren G. Harding who is referenced in a scene). Delon’s character is a hitman who has an affection for cats and is blackmailed by the CIA to hunt his previous boss Lancaster. The espionage is not exciting, the direction by Winner is mediocre, and Delon’s and Lancaster’s performances are less memorable than their first collaboration a decade before. Delon reteamed with Romy Schneider in Assassination of Trotsky. Richard Burton as Trotsky and Delon as hitman Frank Jacson is initially intriguing casting, however, Schneider is miscast and the script is tiresome. Jeff is only notable because it introduced Delon to Mireille Darc who was his partner until 1983, though their relationship lasted fifteen years, their acting collaborations were completely unsatisfying, the ridiculous romance Love Mates, the drab thrillers Icy Breasts and Death of a Corrupt Man, and the dull drama Man in a Hurry. The bulk of Delon’s performances were in crime movies where he portrayed either gangsters or police, several of these he produced, in Sicilian Clan the direction and script are second-rate, the only standouts are Irina Demick’s lovely outfits by Helene Nourry (who was costume designer on Belle de Jour), Creezy is a cursory, shallow story about a politician’s affair, in The Gypsy Delon is questionable as a Roma (the direction and script are misogynistic and subpar, the guitar by Django Reinhardt is the only memorable part), and Boomerang is a boring script, Delon’s first time co-writing, about a man whose son has killed a cop causing him a scandal (it could be considered Delon’s own roundabout take on his own scandal, his bodyguard Stefan Markovic’s murder in October 1968). The reteamings with director Jacques Deray were fiascos, completely unlike La Piscine, none of these movies were memorable, Flic Story is a flat and tedious retelling (despite a real life cop’s autobiography as the script’s source and Jean-Louis Trintignant as the criminal detective Delon is attempting to catch), Le Gang is a humdrum 1940s period piece (Delon dressed in a goofy wig), and Three Men to Kill is monotonous. There was Delon’s directorial debut at the age of forty-five, the crime movie Pour la Peau d’un Flic (1981), that is noteworthy only because it was his introduction to Anne Parillaud, with whom he began a problematic relationship during the remainder of his forties. Though Delon and Parillaud clearly share chemistry onscreen and their compatibility is of a higher quality than his movies with Mireille Darc, it is a plodding, run-of-the-mill script. Though the majority of Delon’s crime movies during the 1970s-1980s were letdowns, an exception was Tony Arzenta (a.k.a. Big Guns, a.k.a. No Way Out), filmed in cold Copenhagen, Denmark in January 1973, Delon is at his angriest (at age thirty-seven) as he is hell bent on revenge after his wife and son are blown up in a car explosion meant for him in, by far, his second best crime movie of the 1970s (after Le Cercle Rouge), Duccio Tessari’s tough as nails direction, high octane action sequences, Gianni Ferrio’s funky, grooving soundtrack, and Silvano Ippoliti’s intense camerawork are the strengths. While crime movies were Delon’s metier, he also tried his hand at three thrillers, two directed by Alain Jessua and a third directed by Serge Leroy, Shock Treatment was also released under a more exploitative title (Doctor in the Nude) and has a bizarre premise (blood from poor male youths rejuvenating wealthy women) but is lacking requisite suspense, Armageddon is absurdly abstruse, and Attention, the Kids Are Watching is particularly peculiar, annoying children causing deaths and Delon dirty and disheveled. While Delon predominantly acted in crime movies, the most unconventional of his performances during the 1970s was as a depressed, drifting poetry professor who is struggling as a substitute teacher in Valerio Zurlini’s La Prima Notte di Quiete (a.k.a. October in Rimini) (its original title “the first night of quiet” is more poetic and profound, derived from a Goethe quote, “death is the first night of stillness”, while its translated title is more prosaic), Delon’s chemistry is compelling with the mesmerizing, mysterious, pensive Sonia Petrovna in this story that is simultaneously aesethetic (he discusses cinema and literature with her), sacred (they visit the fresco Madonna del Parto of Piero Della Francesca where Petrovna asks Delon if he wants to have a child and no is his response), sordid (an after party where private footage is shown of her nude and sexy on a vacation, causing her resentment and shame), and sorrowful tragedy. The atmospheric, chiaroscuro cinematography by Dario Di Palma of late night, misty streets matches the melancholy mood. The film’s flaws are the side characters. La Prima Notte di Quiete Epilogue At the age of forty, Delon was cast as the detached Monsieur Klein (an unscrupulous salesman purchasing artworks from Jews who are desperate to exit the ensuing Holocaust). Filmed December 1975-February 1976, the screenplay by Franco Solinas is similar to Edgar Allan Poe’s detective stories, transported to 1942 Nazi occupied Paris, where Klein’s name is confused with a Jew with the same name, thus sending him investigating through a maze that he ultimately never escapes, from the frosty, icy snows of a Strasbourg castle to desolate ghettos and a disturbing ending in a crowded, dark train tunnel to Auschwitz. Joseph Losey won best director at the Cesar Awards and Delon received his first French awards nomination for Best Actor. The film’s flaws are the side characters. Delon finally won a Cesar Award, oddly, for a silly role, in Bertrand Blier’s blase, cheesy dramedy Notre Histoire (1984), it is revealing that he did not accept this award. In Delon’s final interview at the age of eighty-five (2021), he quoted Jacques Laurent, “In a world that no longer suited me, and which I barely resembled, I will have had no sorrow or regret in leaving it. I had long since gone to the other shore. I lived without roots, except those of memory. All men die of grief.” In Delon’s greatest performances (Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge, L’Eclisse, La Prima Notte di Quiete), his weltschmerz connects deeply with the audience and the viewer wanders with him to the edge of the metropolis and the mind. Essential Filmography Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967) Le Cercle Rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970) The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963) L’Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) La Prima Notte di Quiete (a.k.a. October in Rimini) (Valerio Zurlini, 1972) Purple Noon (Rene Clement, 1960) La Piscine (Jacques Deray, 1969) The Unvanquished (Alain Cavalier, 1964) Adieu L’Ami (a.k.a. Honor Among Thieves) (Jean Herman, 1968) Monsieur Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976) Tony Arzenta (a.k.a. Big Guns, a.k.a. No Way Out) (Duccio Tessari, 1973) Red Sun (Terence Young, 1971) “William Wilson” Spirits of the Dead (Louis Malle, 1968) Girl on a Motorcycle (Jack Cardiff, 1968) Un Flic (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1972) Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960)
