Alain Delon: Surface glitter and inner core

French star Alain Delon died on August 18 at the age of 88. Although he acted in a variety of films made by masters ranging from Jean-Pierre Melville to Michelangelo Antonioni, he was more known for his good looks than his acting skills and versatility.

A cultural and cinematic icon of the 20th century, Delon emerged as one of the most bankable European stars of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and became an international sex symbol but perhaps, like James Bond, more an object of male envy than feminine desire. He can perhaps be contrasted with Cary Grant or Marcello Mastroianni, also handsome, but who managed to tide over their looks, become engaging presences and even laugh at themselves in comedy. 

Alain Delon’s good looks, like that of many others, tended to be distracting and he was best cast in ‘non-acting’ roles where the ‘character’ is problematised rather than where his histrionic capabilities mattered. He was cast as Casanova in a French film ‘The Return of Casanova’ (1992) but his presence is too cold and narcissistic; the balding and not-so- striking Michel Piccoli (Dom Juan ou Le festin de pierre, 1965) was much more compelling as a rake since he could make women believe that they mattered. Still, since Delon appeared in so many great works it would be necessary to acknowledge him through some films where his presence actually helps.  

A Delon film that first comes to one’s mind is Rene Clement’s ‘Purple Noon’ (1960). It was the French version of Patricia Highsmith’s novel ‘The Talented Ripley’, a much better film than the 1999 American film with Matt Damon, who was more suited for the role than Delon. In the novel a young man Tom Ripley is hired by a rich American to go to Italy and persuade his son and heir Dickie Greenleaf to return to the US instead of lazing about with his girlfriend doing nothing. Tom is enamored of Dickie’s lifestyle, learns to imitate him in every way and kills him and various others who might suspect. What’s disturbing is, Tom is never caught despite the several occasions when he might have. In the French version Tom is caught. Delon manages a convincing performance despite the brilliant Maurice Ronet as Dickie alongside him. Tom Ripley is nondescript, virtually without a personality, which makes his mimicry of someone else so plausible. Delon effectively subdues his frosty presence as the ingratiating Tom Ripley.   

One of my favourite Delon films is Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘Le Samourai’ (1967) in which the star is a hitman Jess Costello whose method is to create airtight alibis before undertaking a hit. In this one he is required to kill a nightclub owner but he is seen by a musician at the club who can identify him. His alibi is airtight but his being seen makes him a liability to those who hired him. What is interesting about the film is that Jeff never gets a full story when he undertakes a hit and this is a Pinteresque element (as in ‘The Dumb Waiter’) since people act only with partial knowledge in Pinter’s plays. Delon in this film plays the role impassively as usual but it serves the film’s metaphysics since ignorance of the larger picture and indifference to it is what Costello subsists on. 

A truly great film is Joseph Losey’s ‘Mr Klein’ (1976) set in wartime Paris. Robert Klein is an art collector buying artworks cheap from fleeing Jews and profiting from it — until a newsletter meant for Jewish people in Paris intended for a Jew with his name comes accidentally to him. From now on it becomes necessary for him to establish that he is not the Robert Klein to whom the newsletter was meant and that he is pure-blooded French. But the Jew Robert Klein, who initially seems within his reach, is always a step away and despite all his efforts the other’s Jewish identity engulfs him. At one point he learns that the other Mr Klein owned a German Shepherd, and a stray dog that answers to its description follows him from the market.     

In each of these films Alain Delon plays a role in which ‘character’ is deliberately problematised. To elaborate, ‘character’ is defined by motivated action towards a given personal goal but in the films described above the protagonists are driven into acts that they have not really planned and the first act carries them further to others — even if it is murder. Each filmmaker in question seems to understand that the star has a strange presence on the screen, all glittering surface but without an inner core, just right for these highly complicated roles.  

Delon also played a conventional cop role in another excellent thriller Flic Story (1975) by Jacques Deray where Jean-Louis Trintignant plays a real-life paranoid killer Emile Buisson opposite him. Here Delon shows a considerable degree of charm, something that one does not associate with his other roles. In Bengaluru he was a hit in the 1970s in films where he appeared with Charles Bronson like ‘Red Sun’ (1971) and Farewell Friend (1968). To conclude, the occasion of Alain Delon’s demise reminds one of Cyrano De Bergerac’s lament in Edmond Rostand’s play when he is told of the death at war of his rival in love, that “he had good looks.”