From a hectic youth to René Clément's film Plein soleil
His early childhood joined the fiction, because if Alain Delon incarnated the bandits in the cinema, he will finally have a lot of friends in the Fresnes prison yard (his adoptive father was a supervisor) where he spent all his time with the children of the guards, between cops and thugs. Rather "angry" with the school, the undisciplined and idle student, despite his CAP charcutier in his pocket, eventually enter the army 17 years ... where he is returned for stealing a jeep that s' is found destroyed in a river.
A romantic encounter will change everything. He discovers then the district of Saint Germain des Prés where his beauty does not go unnoticed. He even makes a strong impression at the Cannes Film Festival where he manages to be invited. His acting career began ... In 1960, his bewitching role in René Clément's Plein soleil offered him consecration and made his poisonous charisma appear in the open. It's also said that it's in Plein Soleil that René Clément invented Delon ... who was then only 25 years old and whose 4th film. The actor will pay a vibrant tribute to his master:
Nobody knew who I was. The film that went around the world, was the base of my career. I owe it to René. He directed like a real conductor, with all the nuances of moderato, piano, presto ... He loved making me move in a decor ...
His meeting with Luchino Visconti: The Cheetah
Delon's charisma will feed on his beauty, his feline agility but also his silence, and the enigma surrounding the actor ... Yet it is his very exclusive relationship with the filmmakers that will contribute to make it a myth. Visconti, who noticed him in Plein Soleil , offered him a first role in Rocco and his brothers, then Tancrède in Le Chepard.
Careful, even manic, the reconstruction work of Luchino Visconti required the employment of one hundred and fifty designers for The Cheetah . Purchase of period furniture, rental of properties or rehabilitation of some buildings cost a real fortune. The director declared that "what counts in the work of a film is to establish a certain climate that corresponds historically and psychologically to the original climate where the action took place either in reality or in the This film, which is considered a masterpiece of cinematography, won the gold medal in 1963 and contributed to the dazzling success of the young French actor, who said of Visconti:
There was only to be carried away ...
His love life and cinema are one: The swimming pool
Alain Delon loves women, and they will pay him well ... his career began thanks to women, as his mistress Brigitte Auber who will get her first role, but also the great love of his life, Romy Schneider, who will launch it in the cinema .
With the film Jaques Deray's swimming pool in 1964, which will bring together the two lovers on the screen in one of the most famous trios-and-behind-the-scenes of French cinema. Has Romy ever been so beautiful? Delon as beautiful? the couple on screen as in life, whose shooting marks the finds of a chaotic love affair, burst the screen. Their couple has become legendary. Other women have gone through the life of the seducer, like Brigitte Bardot , Mireille Darc, or Nathalie Delon, but Romy Schneider will remain the great love of his life.
I would be nothing without women. The actresses, the characters, the heroines they embody. In my life, as in the movies, we loved each other.
Popular success with Borsalino
He owes it to Jaques Deray always ... for the film Borsalino in 1974, where he forms an iconic duet with Jean-Paul Belmondo. The film that tells the adventures of two young thugs who try to become the bosses of the underworld of Marseille "sticks to the skin". This is not their first duet with P aris burn , but Borsalino will be the high point of the awesome couple they form on screen, with a desire for everyone to match other pairs of legend like Newman-Redford. This is a real popular success, and the soundtrack signed Claude Bolling become worship alone.
A cold-blooded animal in Samurai
Alain Delon will shoot in the 70's some films like Joseph Losey's Monsieur Klein (1976) and Trotsky's assassination (1971) which will remove him from his eternal role of seducer and will contribute to enlarge his film career, but a particular film made his game a "genre". His performance with Samouraï, where the director Jean-Pierre Melville directs him in a cold role, almost without text, centered on his character, is greeted by critics. The look, the coldness and the tension that it generates are part of Alain Delon's acting.
Alain Delon finally won little prizes for such a rich career, but he will still receive the César Award for Best Actor for Our Story of Bertrand Blier in 1984.
