Alain Delon, restless star with an irresistible angel face

Noted for his beauty at the Cannes Film Festival, Delon's career got off to a very fast start: in 1957 he made his debut with a small role in Yves Allégret's 'Godot' and, a few months later, he already had a leading role in 'The Pure Lover' (1958), a mediocre melodrama by Pierre Gaspard-Huilt on whose set he met Romy Schneider.

1960 was the year in which Delon became a star, thanks to the success of René Clement's 'Murder in broad daylight', based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, in which his physical beauty is put at the service of a gripping thriller that combines commercial needs and suggestive art-house cinema insights.

However, the meeting that consecrated him as the memorable performer he was to become was with Luchino Visconti, a director who was already well established (among his previous masterpieces, we need only recall 'La terra trema', 'Bellissima' and 'Senso'), who wanted him for the lead role in 'Rocco e i suoi fratelli', also from 1960. In the role of Rocco Parondi - a young southerner who had immigrated to Milan with his family - his charm is (almost) in the background compared to a sorrowful performance of great intensity, capable of revealing to the world that his magnetic rebel gaze was capable of giving life to extraordinary performances.

It is no coincidence that Visconti also introduced him to the stage ('Pity She's a Slut', staged in 1961 and in which he again starred alongside Romy Schneider) before calling him back for another role that has entered the annals of the history of the Seventh Art: that of Tancredi in 'The Leopard' (1963) in which Delon's eyes reflected as much hope for the future, which his character represented, as nostalgia for a decadent and bygone universe (symbolised by the Prince of Salina Burt Lancaster). Based on the text of the same name by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, this film represents the dissolution of a society and the end of an era, perfectly portrayed by Delon and the entire cast.

In between Visconti's two (chief) works, however, another great film by another Italian master like Michelangelo Antonioni should be mentioned. In 'L'eclisse' (1962), a film with a metaphysical flavour, Delon and Monica Vitti give life to an immortal duet, in the role of a young couple who meet at the Rome Stock Exchange and who live a brief and intense relationship, which ends with a goodbye and a next appointment to which, perhaps, they will never arrive. The camera searches for them without finding them in one of the most evocative conclusions in the filmography of the future director of 'Blow-Up'.

However, it was not only Italian directors who sought him out during these years, but he went on to work with René Clement and several other French directors, as well as landing in Hollywood with a number of productions in the mid-1960s.

After several negligible and purely commercial feature films, in 1967 Jean-Pierre Melville gave him a role that alone was worth an entire career: in 'Frank Costello faccia d'angelo' he plays a silent and lonely killer (a 'samurai', as the original title suggests, decidedly more handsome than the Italian one) who confirms all his acting greatness.

He thus became one of the fundamental faces of polar - a purely French genre that combines detective and noir - and his collaboration with Melville continued with 'The Nameless' (1970) and 'Night on the Town' (1972).

The polar, however, will also touch him with other authors, we need only recall in this sense 'The Clan of Sicilians' (1969) by Henri Verneuil, a director who had already directed him in 1963 in 'Big Shot at the Casino'.

Also from 1969 is another small cult film, 'The Swimming Pool' by Jacques Deray, a film that will inspire several contemporary feature films, such as 'Swimming Pool' by François Ozon or 'A Bigger Splash' by Luca Guadagnino.

Deray then called him back for 'Borsalino' (1970), a film that inaugurated a new decade of great films for Delon and important collaborations.

Among these, perhaps the most significant is with another great auteur like Joseph Losey, who chose him for two decidedly complicated roles: 'The Assassination of Trotsky' (1972) and 'Mr. Klein' (1976). In the former he plays the hitman who became famous for the murder of the Russian politician; in the latter he is an art dealer who discovers the existence of a man determined to steal his identity.

Perhaps the greatest performance of his career, however, is that of Professor Daniele Dominici in an existential masterpiece such as Valerio Zurlini's 'La prima notte di quiete', a 1972 film that is simply memorable for its dramatic force and Delon's very personal interpretation.

In the first half of the 1980s he attempted the big step of going behind the camera, with two easily forgettable films: 'Per la pelle di un poliziotto' (1981) and 'Braccato' (1983).

Despite a few performances in films that are still significant ('A Love of Swann' in 1984 by Volker Schlöndorff), since the second half of the 1980s his appearances on the big screen have been far fewer than in previous decades.

During the following decade, however, it is worth mentioning that he appeared in two films by great masters such as Jean-Luc Godard ('Nouvelle vague' in 1990) and Agnès Varda ('One Hundred and One Nights', a great homage to the history of cinema in the year in which the Seventh Art turned one hundred years old, 1995).

His last notable role was in 1998 when Patrice Leconte chose him to star in 'One of the Two', alongside Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Through all these interpretations, Delon's face has become engraved in the collective imagination and, thanks to a truly rich filmography, in 1995 he lifted a well-deserved Bear for Lifetime Achievement at the Berlin Film Festival, followed in 2019 by an honorary Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the ultimate recognition of a life and career that not even death can now overshadow in any way.