“Fallen” Angel

“You're too handsome; you'll never have a career.” This was the verdict producers often gave him when, in his youth, he tried to find work in cinema. Born four years before the start of the Second World War, he could have become a butcher, a marine, a waiter, or a Hollywood star. Instead, he became, without exaggeration, an icon of French and global cinema, a standard of male beauty, a sex symbol of the 60s to 80s, and a true friend of Ukraine.

On 18 August 2024, Alain Delon, the great French theatre and film actor, director, screenwriter, and producer, passed away at the age of 88. He was one of the last stars of the golden age of European cinema and a recipient of the César Award, the Golden Bear, and the Honorary Palme d'Or.

Alain Delon was born in the southern suburbs of Paris to an Italian Corsican father who ran his own cinema, “Regina.” Delon's mother worked as an usher in the same cinema. Although his parents divorced when the boy was not yet three years old, it is possible that this cinema determined his future.

Delon's stepfather, Paul Boulogne, was the owner of a popular butcher shop in the city. The work in the shop took up all his parents' free time, leaving them with no energy to raise the boy. Therefore, the responsibility for his upbringing was entrusted to his nanny, Madame Nero. Alain spent several years in her family, which he always recalled with constant warmth and affection. He also claimed that since the Nero family's house was located just a few steps away from the Fresnes Prison, in October 1945, he distinctly heard the shots when Pierre Laval, a Nazi collaborator and head of the Vichy government, was executed in the prison yard. It is difficult to say how much this event influenced Delon, but later in life, when playing tragic characters, many of whom ended their stories on the scaffold (as, for example, Delon's character in the film “Two Men in Town”), the actor always managed to convey, with just his facial expressions and gaze, the sense of deep doom that overwhelmed his characters.

His lively nature and complete disregard for discipline cast doubt on the classical education of the young Delon. After several schools and boarding schools from which he was expelled, his parents decided to train him as a butcher. Delon did not object, and a year later, having received his diploma, he began working in a Paris butcher shop. Perhaps he would have become the most handsome butcher in Paris if, at the age of 17, he had not seen a recruitment poster in the metro inviting young men to become test pilots. Delon was not accepted as a pilot, but the substantial salary of 200,000 francs led him to join the paratroopers of the Marine Corps. This is how the future actor ended up in Indochina.

Despite Delon upgrading his skills and completing radio operator courses, he arrived in Saigon straight into a disciplinary company. For days on end, the disobedient and defiant seaman Alain Delon loaded rice, only to go straight to the guardhouse for the night. However, the actor also recalled this period with warmth, noting in an interview:

“This was the happiest time of my life. It allowed me to become who I became later and who I am now.”

In 1956, Alain Delon was demobilised and returned to Paris. After a brief unsuccessful attempt to work as a waiter in a bar on the Champs-Élysées, Delon, on the advice of friends, began attending castings and screen tests, where he was consistently rejected... due to his overly handsome appearance. It was there that he met aspiring actor Jean-Claude Brialy, with whom Delon went to Cannes, hoping to catch the eye of producers. And so it happened— in Cannes, he was noticed by Hollywood talent scout Harry Wilson, who was looking for a replacement for the recently deceased James Dean. Delon successfully passed the screen tests and was offered a seven-year Hollywood contract. The only thing left to do was learn English, which the actor began doing upon returning to Paris. However, his friend Brialy persuaded Delon to start his career in France, introducing him to the famous French director Yves Allégret. Delon starred in several of Allégret's films, including leading roles, but the films themselves were not particularly successful at the box office.

Alain Delon's star rose in 1960 when the detective drama “Purple Noon,” the first screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” was released. The film about a poor, charming, and amoral adventurer was enthusiastically received by both the public and Parisian critics, who praised Alain Delon's acting talent, in which “an angelic face” and “a devilish soul” were combined.

“Finally, Alain Delon found his hero. A man with a double bottom. A fallen angel.” wrote the French film critic Marie-Claire Tremois about his acting work.

And this was true—cold, broken, rebellious, with a mandatory flaw, such characters abound in Alain Delon's vast filmography. Even when he played completely positive characters, like the brave pilot in “The Last Adventure,” the elusive folk hero in “Zorro,” or the honest policeman in Jean-Pierre Melville's drama “Un Flic,” the detachment and lack of emotion in his portrayals sometimes made it difficult to believe in the honesty and sincerity of his characters until the credits rolled. And the number of charming anti-heroes played by Delon, from the hitman in “Le Samouraï” to the cheerful and deadly bandit Gauche in the western “Red Sun,” deserves a separate filmography.

A heartthrob and scandalist, a frequent guest of the society pages on the one hand, sentimental and warm-hearted, an animal lover (after retiring, the actor bred dogs and advocated for animal rights—this love he carried from childhood) and hating injustice on the other, Alain Delon was also a person with a “double bottom” in life, harmoniously and brilliantly combining in himself both angelic and devilish qualities.

He first announced his retirement from acting in 1999, returning to a television career that had been on hold for forty years. “My cinema died with me. And the series in which I act, as well as the theatre, have nothing to do with cinema. I have not broken my promise to myself not to act again.” Fortunately for viewers, Delon returned to the big screen a few more times, and only in 2017, due to health problems, did he finally put an end to his film career.

“I cry with you, and I do not accept this war,”

—these words of Alain Delon were heard in September 2022 on the French channel TV5 Monde during an interview between the actor and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Despite his age and frail health, the 86-year-old actor easily distinguished good from evil and harshly condemned Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

“You do not deserve what you are going through; you do not deserve what Ukraine is going through now, what your people are going through. More than anything in the world, you deserve for this war to end. You did nothing to provoke it. There are things I do not understand. I cannot accept this war. If I were 50 years younger, I would join the Ukrainian army,”

—Alain Delon declared on air. He also promised to visit Kyiv if his health allowed. Unfortunately, this never happened. However, during the same broadcast, Delon read an excerpt from Taras Shevchenko's “Testament” in French.

In the spring of 2024, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy awarded Alain Delon the Order of Merit of Ukraine for his unwavering support of the Ukrainian people.

That conversation with Zelenskyy in 2022 ended with Alain Delon saying, “Glory to Ukraine!” 

Now, as we bid farewell to the great Frenchman, whose works embody the very spirit of European cinema, Ukrainians can respond, “Glory to the heroes!”