In Memoriam: Alain Delon | Tributes

L’affaire Markovic was still making news in 1970 when Delon was asked by the New York Times whether he was bothered by what some of his friends did for a living. Delon replied, “I don’t worry about what a friend does. Each one is responsible for his own act.” With this Sinatra-esque attitude (he’d admired Frank Sinatra from boyhood on), Delon forged ahead with multiple movies that leaned into his reputation. I especially like Deray’s “Borsalino,” the story of two Marseille crooks (the other played by Jean-Paul Belmondo) in the 1930s who rise from minor rackets to major racketeering; and “The Sicilian Clan,” a French-Italian gangster film directed by Henri Verneuil. An early scene finds Delon’s criminal escaping from a police transport by cutting through the bottom of the truck with a smuggled tool, then lowering himself underneath. Delon didn’t play concentrated, sweaty fear all that often, but he does here, making the sequence incredibly tense. 

In 1976 Delon produced and acted in “Mr. Klein,” a psychological drama of Occupied Paris, directed by the formerly blacklisted Joseph Losey. It’s a layered, haunting, and exceptional movie about Robert Klein (Delon), a French Catholic art dealer making a fortune by paying rock-bottom rates for paintings sold by desperate Jews. Abruptly, he becomes aware that he may have been mistaken for a different Robert Klein, who is Jewish. Thus does one Mr. Klein descend into an obsessive search for the other. Delon loved this role of a man who at first feels well-protected but comes to sense and dread a far less privileged version of himself. But while the film “Mr. Klein” won awards, Delon’s superb performance did not. The left-wing political filmmaker Costa-Gavras said he fought hard for Delon on the Cannes jury that year, but like many others who admire the art, Costa-Gavras was up against Delon’s seeming inability to stop making noxious public remarks. In fact, it wasn’t long after “Mr. Klein” that Delon proclaimed “I am profoundly anti-communist”—which, ok—then added, as if lack of controversy might hurt the image, that if this made him a fascist, too bad. 

If I have neglected most of Alain Delon’s personal life, it’s because it’s more exhausting than his politics and even less appealing. And perhaps by now, it’s become apparent that I’m not mentioning something else: the beauty. That once-in-a-lifetime face. Attractiveness matters at the movies, however much we may try to deny or write around that fact. But your mother was right; looks aren’t everything, not even for an actor. Delon, of course, understood that, and approached his own beauty with a strong dose of French bluntness, as when a 1990 interviewer asked for the umpteenth time whether it was a chore being gorgeous. The answer, roughly translated: “Physical beauty is a problem when you’re handsome and a moron. Or handsome and a bad actor. I dare say I don’t put myself in those categories. So beauty can be a problem. But it’s somebody else’s problem, someone who’s jealous or spiteful…Let’s be clear, physical beauty, for a man or a woman, when you have the rest, is a big advantage. You have to recognize it.” 

Looking at Alain Delon is one of the keenest pleasures in cinema. But If handsome was all that mattered, Buster Crabbe would have been a superstar. Delon had the advantage, but in his acting, he had the rest, too.