LOS ANGELES — French actor Alain Delon, who is known for his roles in the films of New Wave director Jean-Pierre Melville, like ‘Le Samourai’, has died at the age of 88.
He also appeared in Melville’s heist films ‘Le Cercle rouge’ and ‘Un Flic’, reports ‘Variety’.
Some of his other significant films were Rene Clement’s ‘Purple Noon’, Visconti’s ‘Rocco and His Brothers’ and ‘The Leopard’, Antonioni’s ‘L’Eclisse’, Jose Giovanni’s ‘Two Men in Town’, and Joseph Losey’s ‘Mr. Klein’.
As per ‘Variety’, after Jean-Paul Belmondo defined French cool at the beginning of the New Wave in Godard’s ‘Breathless’, Delon and director Melville very consciously redefined it in ‘Le Samourai’, in which he played a killer for hire always adjusting his fedora so it was just so, and the actor was consequently compared to James Dean.
But the comparison to Dean was limited; while the American actor was given to emotional outbursts in his performances, Delon was far from effusive. What was taken for cool in ‘Le Samourai’ could just seem cold in a lesser movie, such as Melville’s ‘Un Flic’.
Delon’s fame during the 1960s and ’70s was not just limited to France but in regions as diverse as Japan, Communist China and Latin America.
Delon’s extraordinary appeal was crystallised in ‘Le Samourai’ Film scholar David Thomson described him as “the enigmatic angel of French film, only 32 in 1967, and nearly feminine. Yet so earnest and immaculate as to be thought lethal or potent. He was also close by then to the real French underworld”.
David said, “Delon is not so much a good actor as an astonishing presence — no wonder he was so thrilled to realise that the thing Melville most required was his willingness to be photographed”.