Alain Delon: here is one of the few French names well known abroad. So when his children announced his death at the age of 88, Sunday August 18, the international press gave him a place in its pages. Across the Channel, the BBC website salutes the “star of the golden age of French cinema” while the left-wing daily The Guardian calls him “the last great myth of French cinema”. As in many other articles, it is his physique that catches the attention of our colleagues. The British newspaper highlights his “strange”, “breathtaking”, “almost extraterrestrial” beauty.
Same emotion among our Belgian neighbours, as in everyday life The evening who speaks of “a final clap for a giant”. The journalist rewinds the life of the octogenarian and describes him as “the instinctive and mythical incarnation of cinema, with more than sixty years of career, a dizzying filmography that commands respect”. Far from being as “sunny” as Jean-Paul Belmondo, Delon is described as a “lone wolf obsessed with the past”.
Besides, the Italian The Republic angle his article on “the eternal rivalries” between the two actors, “a competition” that the media traces back to the 1960s. “The two sacred monsters of French cinema have sometimes had trouble finding the “fragile balance” between their two egos, to the point that they are ideal rivals for each other, in life as well as on the big screen.”
If the British tabloid The Mirror argues that “his success was more rooted in France and Japan than in Los Angeles,” but he still pays tribute to his “performances that often feature tense and seductive men, subject to sudden outbursts of emotion and violence, marked by inner turmoil.”
“Shaky and resentful dinosaur”
In the American magazine The Hollywood Reporter, The French artist is nicknamed “the male Brigitte Bardot”, in reference to her physique and her charm. However, the Californian media recalls that Alain Delon never managed to become a star in Hollywood. “He moved there in 1964, signed contracts with MGM and Columbia and made a total of six films. But he failed to break through and left in 1967, to play shortly after in crime films The Sicilian Clan (1969) and Borsalino (1970), two successes at the French box office.” For the United States, Alain Delon is above all the hero of Full Sunby director René Clément. Where other media put Delon on the front page of their sites, the prestigious New York Times And Washington Post relegate the information to the end of the page.
The Japanese media also paid tribute to him. Indeed, the actor’s career had a special impact in the Japanese state: “a thirty-year love story” according to Alain Delon. The Japan Times title thus soberly: “The French idol of the big screen.”
In Switzerland too, the death of Alain Delon is making headlines. In the daily newspaper The Timewe look back at the beginnings of this tutelary figure of French cinema, compared to “a real tough guy with an angelic face”. If our colleagues are full of praise for the French star, they are honest about the end of his career: “Star… Alain Delon devoted the second and major part of his career to polishing this status with its declining brilliance. What a shame…” Without beating around the bush, the Swiss daily lists the actor’s failures, saying that, at one time, he was a subscriber to “fetid turnips signed by the worst hacks in French cinema”. “We will remember the young thug with a dazzling beauty in the light of the sixties rather than the shady and resentful dinosaur on whom the shadow descended”, it concludes.
A “tarnished” image
It is difficult, in fact, to rewind the life of Alain Delon without mentioning his political positions and the controversies he has aroused. And it is The Guardian who puts his foot in it by returning to his “macabre admiration for the politics of the extreme right and the National Front” and “his odious remarks on slapping women”. The same in the Spanish daily The Countrywho recalls the public petition launched by the MeToo movement in France after he received an honorary Palme d’Or in 2019. “Far from his moments of glory, his life has become almost more of a section people than a culture section. His declared friendship with Jean-Marie Le Pen, his defense of the death penalty and his homophobic remarks have ended up tarnishing his image,” the Iberian media outlet states.
To finally conclude: “Delon fascinated France until the end. The actor spent the last moments of his life locked away in his residence south of Paris. Everyone now remembers his journey which left an indelible mark on the cultural history of his country and the rest of Europe.”
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