Alain Delon: Style, Stardom, and Masculinity 9781623567606, 9781501300264, 9781623561574

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Alain Delon

Alain Delon Style, Stardom, and Masculinity Edited by Nick Rees-Roberts and Darren Waldron

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2017 © Nick Rees-Roberts, Darren Waldron and Contributors, 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-6235-6760-6 PB: 978-1-5013-2012-5 ePub: 978-1-6235-6445-2 ePDF: 978-1-6235-6157-4 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

Contents Notes on the Authors Acknowledgments Introduction: Alain Delon, Then and Now Nick Rees-Roberts and Darren Waldron On the Limits of Narcissism: Alain Delon, Masculinity, and the Delusion of Agency Darren Waldron 2 Delon and Performance: Emploi and the Interaction Between Individual, Role, and Character Laurent Jullier and Jean-Marc Leveratto 3 France’s “new Don Juan”: The Representation of Alain Delon’s Youth Gwénaëlle Le Gras 4 Dubbing Delon: Voice, Body, and National Stardom in Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960) Catherine O’Rawe 5 Delon/Gabin/Verneuil: Modernity within Tradition Leila Wimmer 6 Alain Delon, International Man of Mystery Mark Gallagher 7 The Star’s Script: Delon as Director, Producer, and Screenwriter Isabelle Vanderschelden 8 The Singing Actor: Delon on Record Barbara Lebrun 9 Dressed to Kill: Delon, The Style Icon Nick Rees-Roberts 10 Toujours Delon: The Script of Aging Sue Harris

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Bibliography Index

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59 75 91 111 125 141 159 175 185

Notes on the Authors Editors Nick Rees-Roberts is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Paris-Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III), France. His research focuses on contemporary French cinema, queer theory, and fashion cultures. He is the author of French Queer Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2008) and a jointauthored book (with Maxime Cervulle) Homo Exoticus: race, classe et critique queer (Armand Colin, 2010) as well as journal articles on gender, sexuality, film, and fashion. He is currently completing a monograph entitled Fashion Film in the Digital Age (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016). Darren Waldron is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in French screen studies at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on representations of sexuality, gender, and ethnicity in contemporary French cinema, popular film, and audience reception. He is the author of Queering Contemporary French Popular Cinema: Images and their Reception (Peter Lang, 2009) and Jacques Demy (Manchester University Press, 2014) and coeditor (with Isabelle Vanderschelden) of France at the Flicks: Trends in Contemporary French Popular Cinema (Cambridge Scholars Press 2007). He is currently completing a jointauthored monograph (with Chris Perriam) entitled French and Spanish Queer Cinema: Audiences, Communities and Cultural Exchange (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

Contributors Mark Gallagher is an associate professor (senior lecturer) of film and television studies at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Another Steven Soderbergh Experience: Authorship and Contemporary Hollywood (University of Texas Press, 2013) and Action Figures: Men, Action Films and Contemporary Adventure Narratives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and coeditor of East Asian Film Noir (IB Tauris, 2015) and Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television

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Studies. He is currently completing a book on the actor Tony Leung Chiu-Wai for the BFI’s Film Stars series. Gwénaëlle Le Gras is an assistant professor of film studies at the University of Bordeaux 3, France. She has published on French stars, gender, and popular cinema, including two books on French stars in 2010: one on Michel Simon (Michel Simon, l’art de la disgrâce, Paris, Scope editions) and one on Catherine Deneuve (Le mythe Deneuve, une “star” française entre classicisme et modernité, Paris, éditions du Nouveau Monde). She has since coedited a volume with Delphine Chedaleux on genre and actors (Genres et acteurs du cinéma français 1930–1960, collection “Le Spectaculaire,” Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012). She coordinated the dossier entitled “Quoi de neuf sur les stars?” in the online review Mise au point, no. 6, 2014 (http://map.revues.org). She also coedited an edition of Contemporary French and Francophone Studies entitled “stars du cinéma français d’après-guerre” (vol. 19, no 1, January 2015) and the edited book Cinémas et cinéphilies populaires dans la France d’après-guerre 1945–1958 (Paris, editions du Nouveau Monde, 2015). Sue Harris is a reader in French cinema studies at Queen Mary, University of London. She teaches across the Film Studies curriculum with a particular focus on film history and contemporary French cinema. She is the author of a monograph on An American in Paris in the BFI Film Classics series (May 2015) and has written widely on French cinema and popular culture. Her published work includes Bertrand Blier (MUP, 2001); France in Focus: Film and National Identity (edited with Elizabeth Ezra; Berg, 2000); Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema (coauthored with Tim Bergfelder and Sarah Street; AUP 2007); From Perversion to Purity: The Stardom of Catherine Deneuve (edited with Lisa Downing; MUP, 2007). She has been an associate editor of the journal French Cultural Studies since 2001. Laurent Jullier is Director of research at IRCAV (University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris) and Professor of Film Studies at the University of Lorraine. He has written articles for Esprit and for Encyclopædia Universalis, as well as a dozen books, some of which several have been translated into English (see www.ljullier.net).

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Barbara Lebrun is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in contemporary French culture at the University of Manchester. Her research looks at representations of ethnicity, gender, prestige and nostalgia in French popular music, with an interest in audience reception. She is the author of Protest Music in France. Production, Identity and Audiences (Ashgate, 2009), winner of the 2011 IASPM book prize for Best Anglophone Monograph, and editor of Corps de Chanteurs. Présence et performance dans la chanson française et francophone (L’Harmattan, 2012). She has published articles in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States and is currently working on a monograph contextualizing the career of female singer Dalida. Jean-Marc Leveratto is a professor of sociology at the University of Lorraine, France. His main research interests are in the study of cultural consumption as a “body technique” and in the history and sociology of the cultural industries (particularly theater and cinema). His most recent book publication is Cinéphiles et cinéphilies, coauthored by Laurent Jullier (Armand Colin, 2010).

Catherine O’Rawe is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in Italian at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Stars and Masculinities in Contemporary Italian Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and has published widely on recent and postwar Italian cinema. She is also the coeditor, with Helen Hanson, of the volume The Femme Fatale: Images, Histories, Contexts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Isabelle Vanderschelden is head of French at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her recent research focuses on contemporary French cinema and film pedagogy. She has published articles on popular French cinema, popular stars, subtitling, transnational films, and comedy. She is the author of a critical study of Jeunet’s Amelie (IB Tauris 2007) and Studying French Cinema (Auteur 2013). She has also coedited with Darren Waldron (University of Manchester) a book on recent trends in French popular cinema France at the Flicks (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2007). She is currently working on another monograph on French screenwriters with Sarah Leahy (Manchester University Press 2016). Leila Wimmer is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in film studies at London Metropolitan University. She is the author of a study of the critical reception of British cinema in postwar France entitled Cross-Channel Perspectives: the French Reception of British Cinema (Oxford: Peter Lang: 2009). Her interests include

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French cinema history, cross-European and cult stardom, film reception, and cinephilia. She has published essays on Billy Wilder’s Mauvaise graine, the reception of Baise-moi, Jane Birkin as a Franco-British star, the cult stardom of Sylvia Kristel, and women’s cinephilia in French fan magazines of the 1930s in the journal Film, Fashion and Consumption in 2015.

Acknowledgments The editors wish to thank Katie Gallof at Bloomsbury for commissioning the book, Mary Al-Sayed for overseeing the production process, and Ginette Vincendeau for her encouragement for the project in its early stages. Nick ReesRoberts and Darren Waldron would especially like to thank Tim Rees-Roberts for logistical support in the final stages, and Nick Rees-Roberts thanks Silvano Mendes for personal support throughout the project. Barbara Lebrun wishes to thank François Ribac, Freya Jarman-Ivens, Kevin Donnelly, and Vladimir Kapor for their helpful advice and support. We also thank Palgrave Macmillan for their permission to reproduce “Alain Delon, International Man of Mystery,” which originally appeared in Transnational Stardom, edited by Russell Meeuf and Raphael Raphael and published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013.

Introduction: Alain Delon, Then and Now Nick Rees-Roberts and Darren Waldron

Few male European actors have been as iconic and influential for generations of filmgoers as Alain Delon. In his heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, he was emblematic of a modern masculinity and a distinctive European style, a symbol of French elegance. Delon’s appeal has spanned cultures and continents, reaching as far afield as East Asia, where young men have imitated his look and mannerisms. From his break-through as the first onscreen Tom Ripley in Plein soleil/Purple Noon (René Clément, 1960), through two legendary performances for Luchino Visconti in Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960) and Il gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963), to his roles as the laconic anti-heroes in three of Jean-Pierre Melville’s most celebrated film noirs—Le Samouraï/The Samurai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967), Le Cercle rouge/The Red Circle (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970), and Un flic/Dirty Money (JeanPierre Melville, 1972)—Delon came to embody the flair and stylishness of the European cinema of the period. He was particularly associated with the French polar or crime film; his appearances opposite Jean Gabin in Henri Verneuil’s Mélodie en sous-sol/Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil, 1963) and Le Clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (Henri Verneuil, 1969) and alongside Jean-Paul Belmondo in a nostalgic revision of the Marseille criminal underworld of the 1930s Borsalino (Jacques Deray, 1970) bolstered his image as one of France’s most recognizable and popular film stars. A critical consensus has formed around the myth of Delon as a fragile but cruel beauty. The use of Delon’s photogenic face and slim body to advertise Plein soleil at the start of his career was spectacular. The young actor became a movie star because he was seen as naturally beautiful—his smooth skin, piercing blue eyes, symmetrical face and delicate nose, luscious hair and slim torso, all visually embellished by directors and cinematographers. Delon’s glamorous lifestyle added to his appeal. His tempestuous relationships, particularly with actress Romy Schneider, fuelled the celebrity gossip of the early 1960s. Delon

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epitomizes an ambiguous masculinity. His macho roles and archetypal playboy image were mitigated by his refined features and troubling gaze. In contemporary France, Delon is a contested and ambivalent figure, his likeability tarnished by his bombastic declarations, reported extremist politics, and pompous selfpromotion. He made the cover of Le Figaro Magazine in July 2013 and was included in a feature article on shifting models of masculinity, in which the aging star berated the gradual loss of gender differences and the recent French same-sex marriage legislation (Haloche 2013, 32–34). Given its spectacular prominence and problematic nature throughout the actor’s career, the issue of masculinity is a central critical inquiry in this collection. Delon’s youth included a prolonged period of military service in the French army in the early 1950s. He was born on November 8, 1935 in Sceaux, a middle-class suburb south of Paris. Following his parents’ divorce in 1939, he was placed with foster parents and then sent to various Catholic boarding schools, from which he was expelled. A turbulent youth, Delon signed up for military service in the French navy aged 17 and was posted to Saigon toward the end of the Indochina War. Looking back, he claims that this limited, but nevertheless formative, experience of war as a young man shaped his military temperament, providing him with rigor, discipline, and a sense of duty (Jousse and Toubiana 1996, 27–28). On his return to France, he lived in Pigalle in north Paris, allegedly using his charms to make ends meet (Dureau 2012, 11). But it was in the Paris left bank of the postwar years where the ambitious rising star was noticed, where he met young actors Brigitte Auber and Jean-Claude Brialy, with whom he left for the Cannes Film Festival in May 1957. Spotted by David O. Selznick’s talent scout, he was immediately sent to Rome to perform a screen test for the producer, who offered him a golden seven-year studio contract, provided he improved his spoken English. In a surprising decision that later sealed his fate in Hollywood, where he failed to make it in the mid-1960s, Delon returned to Paris, becoming the lover of Michèle Cordoue, the wife of film director Yves Allégret, who cast him in a minor role as the hit-man Jo in Quand la femme s’en mêle/Send a Woman When the Devil Fails (Yves Allégret, 1957). Delon’s early roles, up to his breakthrough in Plein soleil in 1960, tended to emphasize either an element of sexual availability or youthful bravado—he was a playboy in Faibles femmes/Three Murderesses (Michel Boisrond, 1959) and a schoolboy in Le Chemin des écoliers/Way of Youth (Michel Boisrond, 1959). Film scholars Ginette Vincendeau and Guy Austin have argued that Delon’s early persona was a historical product of advertising in the context of postwar

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economic modernization. Vincendeau situates Delon’s body as a desirable, publicity-driven commodity, a product of 1960s consumerism (2000, 158–195). Austin reads Delon in contrast to his contemporary Jean-Paul Belmondo, highlighting his image as a remote outsider as key to his seductiveness for his audiences (2003, 48–62). Our collection extends the existing scholarship on the Delon persona, which also includes Graeme Hayes’s account of the actor’s spectacular masculinity (2004, 42–53), to consider historical, textual, and theoretical readings of Delon’s career, image, and persona, including a particular focus on the star in the context of transnational cinema culture and on the global reception of his image. Hence, the collection includes contributions, not only on Delon’s iconic performances, his famous affiliations and masculine image but also on less well documented aspects of his career, such as his early films of the 1950s; his international, English-language performances in the mid-1960s; his role as director, producer, and screenwriter; his later career on and off the big screen; his enduring role as style icon and his intermittent contributions to popular music. Before we provide an overview of the book’s rationale and orientation, it is worth situating Delon in relation to existing discourses of stardom and to the critical reception of his career in and beyond France. Austin defines film stars as commodities—“brand names, whose capital is their face, their body, their clothing, their acting or their life style” (2003, 2). Following Richard Dyer’s lead (1998 [1979]), Vincendeau defines them simply as “celebrated film performers who develop a ‘persona’ or ‘myth,’ composed of an amalgam of their screen image and private identities, which the audience recognizes and expects from film to film, and which in turn determines the parts they play” (2000, viii). Dyer’s original account of the golden age of Hollywood stardom emphasized the semiotic values and affective embodiment of classic film stars, their images or personae deriving from the “complex configuration of visual, verbal and aural signs.” Star images, Dyer argued, “function crucially in relation to contradictions within and between ideologies, which they seek variously to ‘manage’ or resolve” (1998 [1979], 38). Dyer’s description of the contrived projections of individual glamor, exclusive lifestyles and conspicuous consumption, juxtaposing the spectacular with the everyday (1998 [1979], 39– 43), drew on a previous account of stardom that had also bound the subject to consumer culture, seeing stars as mythic models of consumption for their fans to imitate. Edgar Morin’s early writing on stardom and popular culture coincided with Delon’s rise to fame in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Morin’s 1962 L’Esprit du

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temps (2008), presented as an essay on mass culture, engaged with many of the methodological questions that were to set the (more politicized) agenda for Anglo-American Cultural Studies in the decades to follow: the representation, value, and audience reception of emerging forms of popular culture (Macé 2008, 7–15). Morin’s earlier groundbreaking inquiry from 1957, Les Stars/Stars, had elevated film stars of the silent period to the status of icons, attributing them with quasi-mystical auras, seeing them as early twentieth-century equivalents of ancient divinities (1972, 36–64). The semiotic-cum-anthropological study of screen myths was, for Morin, located somewhere in the gray zone between belief and entertainment. But, as Austin observes, with the advent of sound cinema, there was a gradual shift toward the bourgeois accessibility of stars, “seen in villas, apartments and ranches. Magazine spreads feature their homely lives, their bourgeois interiors, their ordinariness” (2003, 3). Morin’s multidimensional account of stardom attempted to juggle critical attention to form, reception, production, and social context in an endeavor to translate the appeal and worth of individual film stars to audiences and fans. In his preface to the third edition in 1972, Morin retrospectively regarded the 1960s as central to the development of European stars such as Delon, Brigitte Bardot, and Catherine Deneuve, through the postwar economic boom that was conducive to the creation of a local starsystem fashioned around the beauty, glamor, and lifestyles of the chosen few. The on-screen Delon, the icon of a bracingly modern masculinity (following the release of Plein soleil in 1960) became so powerful off-screen through the decade that he was able to launch his own production company (Delbeau, later Adel Productions), coproducing and starring in L’Insoumis/The Unvanquished (Alain Cavalier, 1964), thereby having greater control in choosing his partners, screenwriters, directors, and coproducers. Delon’s financial worth outstripped that of Bardot, Belmondo, and Deneuve, making him the highest earning boxoffice star of French cinema of the decade (Morin 1972, 11). Historically, film stardom has relied for effect on the eroticization of the human face through the technological means of the close-up (Morin 1972, 120). The idea that the young Delon was troublingly beautiful has been articulated by many of the actor’s screen partners: Annie Girardot comments that Delon’s “insolent beauty” did not go unnoticed on the streets of Milan during the filming of Rocco in 1960; other men would turn in admiration at the sight of Delon and co-star Renato Salvatori walking arm in arm like members of a Sicilian clan (Dureau 2012, 29). Claudia Cardinale locates the actor’s beauty in his glacial gaze, restless physique, and ironic character; he was self-confident, sure of his

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beauty, charm, and sexual allure (Dureau 2012, 38). Critics have concurred that his youthful physique and facial perfection shaped the Delon myth of the performer as a cruel beauty: “the association of Delon’s beauty with sadism is so recurrent that the conclusion is inescapable: it is his beauty itself, in its excess, which is cruel” (Vincendeau 2000, 176). Equally, Austin has described the actor’s fragile face as signaling a move beyond machismo, concerned with doubling and mirroring, notable examples of which include the disavowed homo-narcissism in Plein soleil (Straayer 2001; Williams 2004) but also more subtle takes on narcissism in Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976) and Jean-Luc Godard’s ultimate statement on the star’s split image in Nouvelle Vague/New Wave (1990), in which he replaced one vulnerable Delon with his more assertive and manipulative twin. Delon’s eroticized image remained “literally self-regarding” (Austin 2003, 62) even in the “gloomy fatalism” of a character like Klein. Losey’s disturbing narrative of doubling and imagery of mirroring balanced a passing nod to the actor’s former pin-up status with a darker revision of Delon’s self-image (it remains self-referential and inward-looking nonetheless), while Godard stripped the preestablished Delon persona away altogether. As a promising (though as yet untested) young actor in the late 1950s, Delon’s natural gifts—his ambivalent gaze, dynamic allure, and magnetic charisma— made him perfect for the charmingly ambiguous killer Tom Ripley in Plein soleil, a disturbed young man obsessed with surface image (Figure 1). He was initially cast as the millionaire playboy Philippe Greenleaf, Ripley’s victim, but convinced the director to risk giving him the lead. The young star’s pretty face was a mask

Figure 1 Delon as Tom Ripley in Plein soleil/Purple Noon (1960)

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for the actor’s technical versatility; his angelic boyishness would also suit the naiveté of the good son Rocco, the role he played straight after Ripley. Beyond the combination of tenderness and harshness, it was Delon’s athletic body—his slim silhouette, imposing gait, and agile movements—that evoked the dynamic restlessness associated with a modern model of masculinity based on an ideal of European elegance. The problematic obsession with the actor’s beauty when playing evil characters such as Ripley has led critics to posit an uglier edge, even a quasi-fascistic identification (Darke 1997), echoing Visconti’s inquiry as to whether Tancredi, the character played by Delon in Il gattopardo/The Leopard, would in fact have become a fascist by the early twentieth century.1 The actor was visually striking in the role of the prince’s opportunistic nephew in Visconti’s lavish adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s 1958 novel, set in Italy of the mid-nineteenth century (Figure 2). Tancredi first appears on screen as a startling reflection in his uncle’s shaving mirror; the actor’s photogenic face, filmed without make-up, is prominently displayed before his body. The director was allegedly passionate about the actor, placing the relatively peripheral character (the cynical careerist; a man of his time unlike the fading prince) at the political heart of the film (Servat 2000, 73). The idea that Visconti symptomatically sublimated his desire for Delon through the embellishing cinematography of both Rocco e i suoi fratelli and Il gattopardo—as he is said to have done previously with Massimo Girotti in Ossessione/Obsession (Luchino Visconti, 1943)—has been questioned as a reductive assumption, underestimating the more complex ways in which screen technologies direct and codify visual pleasure to stabilize a hetero-normative gaze (Duncan 2000, 103–104). Morin remarked that the stars of 1960s European cinema, such as Delon, Bardot, or Cardinale, were able to move between popular entertainment genres and the contemporary director’s cinema that aestheticized the social life of the period (Morin 1972, 154). But from the 1970s onward, Delon’s box-office success at playing tough guys (either cops or hit men) was such that audiences preferred to lock him into the macho crime genre, thereby undermining his more ambivalent dramatic performances in films such as Mr. Klein, La prima notte di quiete/Indian Summer (Valerio Zurlini, 1972) or Notre histoire/Our Story (Bertrand Blier, 1984), performances for which Delon was cast against type, subverting his popular, assertively masculine persona. The commercial failure of Zurlini’s fatalistic professor or Blier’s alcoholic mechanic was due, in Delon’s account, to the audience’s reluctance to accept him as an unhappy loser. “For my audience,” he laments, “Delon is automatically a hero of good or evil. He must

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Figure 2 Delon as Tancredi in Il gattopardo/The Leopard (1963)

be a winner, not a loser … . This is the image of Delon that is expected” (Dureau 2012, 77). For Delon as producer, this meant appearing in gunslinger movies to be able to finance the more culturally prestigious films that showed off his considerable acting talents, such as Mr. Klein, for which he lost his investment (Servat 2001, 64). The critical reception of Delon’s career supports the actor’s own perception of an entrenched division between the films he made with a number of “master” directors (his term for the formative collaborations with Clément, Visconti, Melville, and Losey) and a prolific career in genre cinema that maintained his popularity. An account of Delon’s stardom, published in Positif in 2012 (Cieutat 2012), highlighted not only his physical and technical versatility

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as a performer—the good looks, elegant movements, and precise gestures— but also the surprisingly broad range of roles across a career spanning some 50 years: from the ambitious heroes and fragile victims to the more overlooked comic roles, such as his early light-footed performance in a comedy about Italian anarchism, Quelle joie de vivre/The Joy Of Living (René Clément, 1961). The cinéphile reception of Delon’s career dates back to an initial homage to the actor’s work hosted by the Paris cinémathèque in 1964, for which Henri Langlois raised the actor to the status of “greatness.” A later retrospective held in 1996 was an opportunity for the intellectual film journal, Cahiers du cinéma, to assess Delon’s singular place within the landscape of French and international cinema; the actor was perceived as the only French male film icon of the postwar period, known locally as the “French James Dean.” In terms of roles in classic films, Delon was on par with his near contemporary Marlon Brando, whose instinctive technique and gestural precision were similarly influenced by an earlier actor, John Garfield, the modern precursor of method acting, also known for playing brooding rebels (Jousse and Toubiana 1996, 27). Delon’s naturally graceful way of gliding through the frame broke with the more overtly theatrical style of 1950s French screen acting; in his debut role in Quand la femme s’en mêle in 1957, his slim body and edgy movements marked him out from the established leading men of the 1950s such as Jean Marais or Henri Vidal. The incongruous sequence in Plein soleil in which Delon is filmed strolling nonchalantly around Naples fish market documented the actor’s idiosyncratic presence on the French cinema screen of the period, much like his female contemporary, Bardot, whose physicality and fashion-sense also marked her out for audiences as resolutely modern (Figure 3). An out of character sequence spliced into the narrative for no reason other than visual pleasure, the scene illustrates how the actor’s early films enshrined him as a rising star simply by documenting his spontaneous presence in front of the camera. It was this subtle illusion of naturalness—a performance that seemed to position the actor at the creative center of the film—that marked Delon out (in the eyes of Langlois) as an enduring star.2 However, Delon has not always been held in such high esteem. In 1982, critic Serge Daney attacked the actor’s formulaic star-vehicle, the crime thriller Le Choc/The Shock (Robin Davis, 1982) as symptomatic of the implosion of the French star system, one in which Delon’s apparent narcissism overwhelmed the entire production. Rather than relying on the classic close-up to illuminate his stardom, Delon no longer bothered acting at all (according to Daney) but

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Figure 3 Delon out of character at Naples fish market (Plein soleil, 1960).

rather reproduced his familiar screen repertoire in a film structured as a series of adverts to showcase his versatility (Daney 1998, 159). The idea that Delon had become a caricature of himself (widely known for immodestly talking about himself in the third person) is one that gained currency as the star’s glory waned through the 1980s and early 1990s, despite notable roles in auteur films such as Nouvelle Vague that self-reflexively deconstructed his persona as a quotable text (Morrey 2005, 174). The middle and later stages of Delon’s career were indeed punctuated by a series of complex dramatic roles (particularly the overlooked performances in La prima notte di quiete and Mr. Klein in the 1970s) that actively sought to dismantle the cliché of fatal beauty and spectacular narcissism so redolent of his earlier work and the macho archetype of his crime films. Delon’s talent as a dramatic actor was only belatedly recognized through the César award for best actor in 1985 for his character study of the wayward mechanic Robert in Blier’s absurdist comedy-drama Notre histoire, which exposed him to a younger generation of actors such as Nathalie Baye, Gérard Darmon, JeanPierre Daroussin, and Vincent Lindon. Yet, while the international distribution of Delon’s later films focused almost entirely on his work for acclaimed directors, his enduring image in France has been sustained by regular appearances in more popular genres, particularly roles in comedies such as Le Retour de Casanova/The Return of Casanova (Edouard Niermans, 1992) and Une chance sur deux (Patrice

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Leconte, 1998), sharing the screen once more with Jean-Paul Belmondo, and in a self-mocking cameo playing Julius Caesar in the third installment of the live-action Asterix franchise, Astérix aux jeux olympiques/Asterix at the Olympic Games (Frédéric Forestier and Thomas Langmann, 2008). Since the start of the century, Delon’s public profile has extended beyond cinema to include roles on the Paris stage, co-starring with his daughter in Une journée ordinaire/An Ordinary Day in 2011 and in TV mini-series Fabio Montale (2002) and Frank Riva (2003–2004), which both echoed and perpetuated his established cinematic image as the solitary cop or tough guy. The fictionalization of his screen persona in Benjamin Berton’s humorous novel Alain Delon est une star au Japon/Alain Delon is a Star in Japan in 2009, in which two crazed fans kidnap their idol, and his surprising cameo appearing as himself in a Russian seasonal rom-com, новым годом, мамы!/ Happy New Year, Moms! (Sarik Andreasyan, Artyom Aksyonenko and Anton Bormatov, 2012) both acknowledge the star’s continued appeal beyond Western Europe. One of the key concerns of this book, beyond our historical examination of the star’s evolving place within French cinema, is to illustrate the inherent limitations of a singular approach to film stardom by considering Delon’s work beyond France as well as domestically. The collection begins with two chapters that engage theoretically with Delon’s career in terms of image, agency, and performance. Darren Waldron tackles the question of male objectification and narcissism attendant to the representation of beautiful male film stars like Delon, using an existentialist understanding of “agency” to inquire how some of the actor’s most emblematic roles might be read as attempts to negotiate his own problematic positioning as an object of desire. Laurent Jullier and Jean-Marc Leveratto also reference Delon’s mythical status as pin-up but situate his career in relation to the sociological concept of emploi, or the tension between the embodiment and identity of the individual performer, the role he is playing and the audience’s own framing of his persona. The following four chapters proceed roughly in chronological order, offering textual and historical investigations of different locations and periods of Delon’s career: Gwénaëlle Legras examines Delon’s early media profile, showing how he was positioned between the generic traditions of French cinema of the late 1950s and the modernity that he was seen to represent both physically and stylistically. Catherine O’Rawe takes Visconti’s Rocco as an extended case study of the young Delon within the cross-cultural context of Franco-Italian coproductions of the period, with their practice of dubbing the original voice-tracks into Italian.

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O’Rawe unpacks the cultural and linguistic factors involved in dubbing to assess how the practice supported or undermined the director’s famous objectification of Delon. Leila Wimmer focuses on Delon’s crime persona in the popular films he made partnering the most emblematic French male screen icon of the prewar era, Jean Gabin, highlighting the question of generational transmission through two conflicting representations of masculinity of the 1960s. Mark Gallagher examines Delon’s career outside of French national contexts. Combining industrial analysis with performance, Gallagher addresses the circulation of Delon’s persona beyond the context of French cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, using his English-language roles as evidence of a truly cosmopolitan (as opposed to a simply national) screen icon. The next three chapters shed light on Delon’s activities beyond acting, examining his roles as director, producer, screenwriter, singer, and fashion icon. Isabelle Vanderschelden argues that the launch of Delon’s production company was symptomatic of the star’s desire to take full control of his career by changing his image, to transcend the urban clichés of the popular crime flicks he was most famous for, and to test the ambivalence of his star persona, constantly attempting to position himself across the critical divide between auteur and popular cinemas. Barbara Lebrun analyses how Delon’s sung performances (most famously accompanying the pop icon Dalida) have sought to modify his star image particularly in relation to the question of gender, itself a central preoccupation of fashion culture, the focus of Nick Rees-Roberts’ chapter on the heritage of the star as a global style icon. Rees-Roberts brings Delon into the twenty-first century by addressing the House of Dior’s strategic manipulation of his image to project a timeless brand of French elegance. Finally, Sue Harris tackles the question of aging by addressing Delon’s late career, situating the now veteran 80-year-old actor within recent French film and television, in which he has largely reiterated rather than revitalized his image. As a collection of interventions on Alain Delon, this volume seeks to consider his image and persona as it relates to the cinema as well as to other areas of cultural production and consumption, including fashion and music. It attempts to paint as holistic a picture as possible of the forms and meanings of Delon’s image, in which his acting talents are recognized along with his acknowledged self-appreciation and promotion. Moreover, its focus on an actor understood as emblematic of a certain idea of modernity, even if this was within a period now confined to history, allows the volume to enter into a dialogue with contemporary issues—to bring together the “then and now,” both of the configurations and

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significations of Delon’s star persona and of the time periods during which he has enjoyed celebrity. Whether the object of reverence or ridicule, of desire or disdain, Delon remains a unique figure who continues to court controversy and fascination more than five decades after he first achieved international fame. That he has recurrently been recalled and revived by subsequent generations of pop stars (from Morrissey to Madonna) and consumer brands (from Dior to Krys) confirms the indelible mark that he has left on contemporary popular and visual culture. It is perhaps because of this that Delon can be placed alongside some of the groundbreaking international stars with whom he was compared when he first started acting in the late 1950s. It is Delon’s iconicity and longevity that render a scholarly investigation into his career, persona, and image both timely and necessary.

Notes 1 See David Forgacs’ audio commentary to the BFI DVD re-issue of the film (2004). 2 Henri Langlois quoted in Alain Delon, Editions de la Cinémathèque française: Paris, 1996, 9.

1

On the Limits of Narcissism: Alain Delon, Masculinity, and the Delusion of Agency Darren Waldron

In classical mainstream cinema, the male has been objectified despite himself, as if unaware that he is offered for the erotic pleasures of the audience. However, in the case of Alain Delon, as many commentators have observed, his early image was predicated upon the “narcissistic display of his face and body” (Vincendeau 2000, 174) (Figure 1.1). In the early films in which he starred, such as Plein soleil/Purple Noon (René Clément, 1960) and La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (Jacques Deray, 1969), the narrative flow is briefly suspended to afford a contemplation of his striking, sensual beauty. The actor embraced this pervasive camera, famously boasting that he was an homme idéal (ideal/perfect man) (in Jousse and Toubiana, 1996, 31), although Vincendeau characterizes him as an homme fatal that functions as “both object of the gaze and narrative agent” (2000, 177). And yet, the extent to which Delon can be described as an agent in the broader sense can be questioned. His characters are frequently marked by their inability to gain mastery over their existence, resulting in or caused by their alienation from the world, a lack of power that can be broadened out as a commentary on his star image as a whole. This discussion explores the narcissistic mode of representing men and of male stardom with specific reference to Delon’s emblematic gigolo roles as Tom Ripley in Plein soleil and Jean-Paul in La Piscine. It attempts a reading of Delon’s early image through the prism of Simone de Beauvoir’s discussion of narcissism in the “justifications” section of the second volume of Le Deuxième Sexe/The Second Sex (1949). Such an approach carries obvious tensions, given Beauvoir’s focus on the “condition” of woman. Yet, the homme-objet (male object) raises issues with regard to subjectivity not dissimilar from its female counterpart. This chapter probes how, in colluding in his construction as a male object and ideal,

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Figure 1.1 Delon in his prime as Tom Ripley in Plein soleil (1960)

Delon grants power in affirming his subjectivity to the objectifying other, that is filmmakers and the audience.

Narcissism and the delusion of agency The term narcissism, as is popularly known, originates in Greek and Roman mythology. Variations of the original myth exist, with the most popular casting it as a tragic tale of non-consummated self-love.1 Ovid’s version from his third book of Metamorphoses (8AD) frames the myth as a story of revenge between Narcissus and Echo, a mountain nymph doomed to repeating the words of others. After Narcissus spurns Echo, she spends the rest of her existence heartbroken, which Nemesis avenges by having Narcissus fall in love with his reflection in a pool of crystal clear water and then die through grief at not being able to consummate his erotic urges toward himself. Other interpretations, such as that recounted in Robert Graves’s “complete and definitive” edition of the Greek myths, have Narcissus commit suicide; after sending a sword to ward off Ameinius, one of his (male) suitors, Artemis punishes Narcissus for his vanity by making him fall in love with his image and stab himself. As Graves asks rhetorically, “how could he endure both to possess and yet not to possess?” ([2011] 1955, 287–88). In more modern times, narcissism has been attached to certain “personality” or “character” disorders, in which outer love of the self is often seen as a marker of inner low self-esteem. According to Freud, narcissism constitutes a “normal”

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phase of child development and is concerned with self-preservation. Primary narcissism refers to the infant’s love of itself (ego libido), in which, the child, in effect, represents for himself his own ideal (ideal ego). When the adult takes another person as the object of their libidinal energies, primary narcissism is diluted, but secondary forms of narcissism can still surface, partly as a consequence of repression (1998, 151). As the growing child becomes aware of the criticisms of others and those that come from within “him,” “he” seeks to “recover” the “narcissistic perfection of his childhood” in the “new form of an ego ideal” (1998, 151). Narcissism constitutes an erotic investment in the self, unlike sublimation, which “consists in the instinct’s directing itself toward an aim other than, and remote from, that of sexual satisfaction” (1998, 152). Freud’s account of narcissism (and those of the many scholars that build on it) can offer fruitful resources for interpreting Delon’s childhood and youth as they are reported in the press and biographies. In his self-proclaimed “unauthorized” study of the star’s life, Bernard Violet reveals how the infant Delon was first indulged by his mother and then, seemingly, rejected (2000, 13; 17). Following her second marriage, Édith Boulogne (Mounette) gave birth to a daughter, baptized with the first names of both parents to symbolize the reciprocity of their relationship (Paule-Édith). Delon, having been born to Mounette’s previous husband (Fabien Delon), still bore the name of his father. Delon misbehaved and was dispatched to foster parents and sent to boarding school, which he is reported as having experienced as a rejection (Violet 2000, 19). Carrying a sense of excess to the requirements of his parents in their new relationships, Delon continued to rebel and was apparently expelled from numerous religious educational institutions (Violet 2000, 19). His unruly behavior could thus be interpreted as the product of someone forced to elevate themselves as compensation for their sensed alienation from the external world. It was allegedly during this period that Delon became aware of his potential to disarm through his looks (Violet 2000, 20). Projections of omnipotence derived from a narcissistic valorization of his erotic appeal would feature among the most prominent markers of Delon’s star persona. Yet, such assertions of apparent power can constitute affectation and this is made clear in the frequent obvious signs of vulnerability and selfdoubt that traverse Delon’s career and image. Striking resonances emerge between Delon’s reported personal life and public image, and what Wilhelm Reich labeled as the “phallic-narcissistic character” (1933, 217–25). For Reich, the phallic narcissist is often raised by a strict mother and “his” desire for vengeance is then played out in “his” sadistic and selfish

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attitudes in “his” relationships with women. “He” tends to be “self-assured, sometimes arrogant, elastic, energetic, often impressive,” while “his” physique is “predominantly an athletic type” but often accompanied by “feminine, girlish features” (1933, 217). “His” narcissistic sensitivity leads to “sudden vacillations from moods of manly self-confidence to moods of deep depression” (1933, 221). Much of “his” behavior is concerned with defending against “anal and passive tendencies” and can thus be triggered by repressed homosexual urges (1933, 221). Some of this behavior is attributed to Delon, as evidenced in the recollections of former peer and friend Jean-Claude Brialy, who remembers his violent and/ or indifferent behavior toward his female partners, including Brigitte Auber and Romy Schneider, as well as his domineering attitude toward Brialy himself (2000, 131–32; 143–46). The idea that mastery of the self can be achieved through narcissistic forms of self-affirmation of the kind that Delon is said to have engaged in is delusory—or rather self-delusory. It is here that we might fruitfully turn away from psychoanalysis and to existentialism in order to elucidate better how this delusion/self-delusion plays out in material terms. Narcissism can be understood as a form of bad faith in the existentialist sense in that it allows us to avert our attentions away from the not-yet-known of our future lives and preoccupy ourselves within the already-known of our present (and past). As such, it is a means of evading the freedom to self-determine that existentialists believe characterizes human existence. As Jean-Paul Sartre famously argues in L’Être et le néant (1943), as human beings endowed with consciousness, we can transcend our current situations and act for ourselves. Although we may feel inhibited by our past experiences and current circumstances, to use these as justifications for not choosing our freedom is to engage in bad faith. While perhaps not narcissistic in its purest sense, the behavior of the café waiter famously described by Sartre illustrates this cogently. For Sartre, as the waiter invests meticulous attention in executing his duties perfectly, he plays at being a waiter. Although he might believe that he affirms mastery through his behavior, ultimately, his actions serve to limit his existence to a being-in-itself as a waiter (1943, 94). Owing some philosophical debt to Sartrean existentialism, as well as to phenomenology and Marxism, Simone de Beauvoir pursues these ideas further in her examination of narcissism and the “condition” of “woman.” Patriarchy, according to Beauvoir, works to bind woman to certain roles and situations, mainly marriage and motherhood, thereby imprisoning her within a realm of

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immanence and denying her transcendence. Somewhat controversially, Beauvoir reveals how women, as well as men, perpetuate this unequal distribution of power through an internalization of patriarchy’s values via gendered forms of bad faith, of which narcissism is a prime example (1949, 519–84; see also Boulé and Tidd 2012, 4–5). As Linnel Secomb notes, transcendence assumes a specific meaning for Beauvoir, it “involves reaching beyond the constraints of immanence, beyond entrapment within biology, social convention and repetitive domesticity, embracing freedom through active involvement in the public world” (2012, 87). The female narcissist embarks upon a strategy of selfdeception wherein she overinvests in her beauty and attractiveness, and seeks to convince herself that she achieves agency and power by virtue of her physical appeal. Such an endeavor is self-delusory because it involves attempting to affirm a free, transcendent subjectivity through the apprehension of the self as both subject and object, which for Beauvoir is impossible: “it is not possible to be for self positively Other and grasp oneself as object in the light of consciousness” ([1949, 520] 2009, 684). That Beauvoir was writing about the situation of woman in no way makes her points meaningless when discussing the situation of certain men. As a film star, Delon derives acclaim from putting himself, intentionally, in the public domain.2 Moreover, given that the substance of that stardom derives, in his early performances in particular, from his status as erotic male on display, he can be described, like the female narcissist, as a prisoner of that existence. Although not in the section that specifically addresses narcissism, Beauvoir uses the example of the female Hollywood star to illustrate the limitations of celebrity, reminding us that, while “she” thinks “she” enjoys some form of autonomy, “she” is nonetheless always someone else’s object (1949, 396; see also Boulé and Tidd 2012, 5–6). According to Beauvoir, that someone else is the producer, but, as we know, the star is also beholden to the audience’s wishes, expectations, desires, and fantasies (Dyer 1998 [1979], 19–22). Many stars are trapped within an externally defined identity, incarcerated within a realm of contingency determined by others. Like Sartre’s waiter and Beauvoir’s female narcissist, though, they are complicit in this entrapment; it is not that they are unable to escape their situation, but through their actions of seeking to reaffirm and revive their appeal, they perpetuate their dependence, arguably despite knowing the stifling impact of such a status for selfdetermination. The implications of this for Delon’s image and its manifestations within his performances in Plein soleil and La Piscine will be examined in detail in the next section.

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Plus ça change …: Delon’s gigolo persona and its implications As commentators have noted, Delon’s early persona was closely associated with the figure of the international playboy and/or gigolo (Vincendeau 2000, 175; Bruzzi and Church Gibson 2008, 165), and this is perceived as a convergence of his roles with his real life as reported in the press. Though semantically distinct—the playboy might be perceived as more independent than the gigolo, who lives from his erotic relationships with well-heeled and usually older women—both sustain their existence, attain a sense of self and attempt to affirm agency through an investment in their physical allure. Nowhere is this embodiment of the playboy/ gigolo figure more obvious than in Delon’s two iconic roles as Tom Ripley and Jean-Paul. In fact, La Piscine bears a complementary relation to Plein soleil; JeanClaude Carrière recalls that Plein soleil was a constant presence in the minds of the film crew during the shooting of La Piscine (DVD extras) and such congruence is evident in the casting of Delon and Ronet as rivals, the former as killer, the latter as his victim, murder plot narrative and southern European settings. The adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley (Patricia Highsmith, 1955), Plein soleil centers on Tom Ripley (Delon), a man of limited finances, who has been dispatched to Italy to bring Philippe Greenleaf (Ronet) back to America by Greenleaf ’s father, for $5,000. Tom envies Philippe’s playboy lifestyle, while Philippe exploits Tom’s dependency; during a yacht trip, he abandons Tom in a dinghy in the blazing sun and casts his girlfriend Marge’s (Marie Laforêt) manuscript on Italian Renaissance painter Fra Angelico into the sea. Tom attempts to avenge and affirm mastery over his friend by stabbing Philippe, dumping his body in the sea, and assuming his identity. However, his endeavors are frustrated by the suspicions of Philippe’s friend, Freddie Miles (Billy Kearns), whom he also murders, and chief inspector Riccordi (Erno Crisa). Realizing that his plan has failed, Tom fakes Philippe’s suicide by forging a letter as Philippe in which he bequeaths his estate to Marge. Tom seduces Marge, but even the compromise of attaining wealth through romance is, it seems, denied him. As he smugly sips his drink while basking semi-naked in the sun (Figure 1.2), the film crosscuts to shots of the yacht being winched from the sea, with Philippe’s corpse seemingly attached to the propeller and, later, of Riccordi waiting to seize and arrest him. Tom’s envy of Philippe is mirrored and extended in Jean-Paul’s jealousy over Harry (Ronet) in La Piscine. Jean-Paul is a writer in a relationship with his wealthy girlfriend Marianne (Romy Schneider), with whom he is staying

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Figure 1.2 Tom Ripley basking in the sun at the end of Plein soleil (1960)

at her summerhouse in the south of France.3 Harry, Marianne’s playboy ex-lover, visits for a few days, accompanied by his daughter Penelope (Jane Birkin). After seducing Penelope, Jean-Paul drowns a drunken Harry in the pool, which he then portrays as an accident. When inspector Lévêque (Paul Crauchet) suspects that he is Harry’s killer, Jean-Paul confesses to Marianne, who later denies his involvement to Lévêque. Beyond actor, plot and location, the sensual display of Delon’s face and body at a time when men were not commonly represented as erotic objects closely binds both films. As Bruzzi and Church-Gibson remark “Delon was one of the first male heroes to be stripped and fetishized on screen” (2008, 165), an image that the actor had partially honed for French audiences in his first film appearances. Where the crystal clear waters of a Greek spring reflected Narcissus’s beauty back to him, the deep azure of the Mediterranean Sea that laps against the shores of southern Italy in Plein soleil and the shimmering, translucent waters of a swimming pool in the south of France in La Piscine frame and illuminate Delon’s delicate facial features and toned and tanned body.4 The first time the audience sees Delon’s naked torso in Plein soleil comes during the yacht excursion with Philippe and Marge. When Philippe asks Tom to steer the vessel so that he and Marge can make out in the galley, Tom swiftly rips off his shirt to reveal his chiseled chest and stomach. The camera films him in medium long shot, the impression of voyeurism enhanced by its position behind the ladder leading down from the deck. For an instant, Tom stands

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motionless, as if wittingly exhibiting his body for the enjoyment of others. Marge and Philippe are, very momentarily, silent, their apparent surprise inscribing within the narrative the possible astonishment of the spectator as s/he witnesses this unexplained exhibition of naked male corporeality. Tom’s strip to his waist foreshadows what is arguably the film’s most famous sequence, in which Delon is sat, upper body exposed, behind the yacht’s large wheel, a version of which was used for the film’s poster. The intertextual linking of La Piscine to Plein soleil through the display of Delon’s physique is instantly evident in the later film’s opening sequence. A tracking shot slowly glides over the water’s surface to Delon in deep repose, basking in the bright sun, dressed only in his tight swimming trunks, before Marianne awakens him from his semi-slumber. Recollections of Tom/Delon sunbathing in the final shots of Plein soleil are immediately triggered, but the sexual connotations of the earlier images are intensified as Delon, his head resting on the slabs of the poolside patio, opens his mouth and empties a glass of juice into it (Figure 1.3). In such shots and scenes, Delon might be said to embody, seemingly without scruple, the epitome of the homme-objet, as defined by Laurent Jullier and Jean-Marc Leveratto: while the male subject “exists” … in other words, he perpetually projects himself outside of the materiality of his organs by torturing himself in his quest to know what great life decisions he should make based on their consequences, the male object has stopped paying a philosophical price. He delivers the merchandise, he rests in peace: his body speaks for him (2009, 6—my translation).

Figure 1.3 Delon’s body on display in the opening of La Piscine (1969)

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Such rendering of the male body as a source of erotic stimulation can be seen as progressive in that it opens up potential sexual gratification from visual culture to audiences irrespective of gender and sexual orientation. Moreover, as Jullier and Leveratto note, it divests the male of the pressures, incumbent with dominant masculinities, to affirm an active and authoritative subjectivity by allowing him to take pleasure in himself as an object of desire. This voluntary objectification departs from the “privileged” position that, according to Beauvoir, men have enjoyed as transcendent subjects within patriarchy: “man who feels and wants himself to be activity and subjectivity does not recognize himself in his immobile image; it does not appeal to him since the man’s body does not appear to him as an object of desire” ([1949, 521] 2009, 685). In the case of the homme-objet, the reflected image appears indivisible from its material source and agency (if we recall Beauvoir) is displaced. For Christopher E. Forth and Bertrand Taithe, Beauvoir’s conceptualization of  “man” in Le Deuxième sexe is monolithic (2007, 3). Yet, it is nonetheless predicated upon common qualities that have been advanced, across the centuries, as ideals of masculinity, grounded in notions of activity and power, courage and valor, will, and determination.5 It is in accordance with such models that men have been compelled to construct their identities and, quite simply, exist in the world. The importation of globalized consumerism and perceptions of broadening wealth in France from the early 1950s spawned new models of male identity that inspired young, middle-class men to dream about the rapid acquisition of wealth and the hedonistic pursuit of instant pleasure. Individualism was valued, and, as commentators have noted, this broader backdrop provided the perfect environment within which an actor such as Delon achieved international stardom (Vincendeau 2000, 184; O’Shaughnessy 2007, 195). Delon constitutes one of the most apposite embodiments of the “new” modes of masculinity, which is emphasized in films such as Plein soleil and La Piscine by explicitly juxtaposing him with more traditional representations of men, principally associated with the preceding generations. The final shots of Plein soleil make this generational dissonance obvious through the crosscutting between a semi-naked Tom passively sipping his drink and sunbathing, his skimpy swim-shorts emphasizing his body on display, and the other male characters (Mr. Lee (actor uncredited)), the purchaser of the yacht, Mr. Greenleaf (actor uncredited), Riccordi, and his deputy (Leonello Zanchi) cutting a deal and leading a police investigation, covered, from head-to-toe, in their suits. Masculinity in the egocentric narcissistic mode, represented here in transient

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pleasures and an arrogant disregard for received authority and morality, cannot be countenanced by traditional patriarchy for it risks compromising the male privilege of which Beauvoir wrote. Tom and Jean-Paul must be punished, not only for their crimes, rebellion and arrogance, but also because they reflect back to Riccordi and Lévêque their own complicity in a system that, ultimately, delineates their existence and, thus, subordinates them. They have not only failed to seize the freedom that, according to existentialists, inheres in human existence, but they also defend the very system that forecloses that freedom. Yet, while both films end with the assumed punishment or containment of the errant and conceited young male, they also tantalizingly deny patriarchy its traditional role as judge and jailer. Plein soleil stops short of actually depicting Tom’s arrest (and he evades lasting punishment in Highsmith’s literary series) while Marianne prevents Lévêque from acting on his suspicions by denying Jean-Paul’s involvement in Harry’s murder. Interestingly, then, particularly given the dubious portrayals of women in both films, actual power is transferred from aged patriarchs and male upstarts to upwardly mobile young women. Although an unwitting and possibly unwilling participant in this transformation, Marge shifts from melancholy girlfriend to proprietor and deal broker, highlighted as she enters the traditionally masculine space of negotiation to sell her yacht. Marianne already enjoys material power as the owner of the summerhouse in which the narrative of La Piscine unfolds and is endowed with actual omnipotence as the custodian of Jean-Paul’s future/fate. The problem, though, is that such a redistribution of power does not transcend the conventional active/passive structure that governs social and gender stratification. Consequently, although the casting of the male as an object of desire may well be democratic, rather than allowing men—and indeed women—greater freedom and autonomy, the broadening out of the bodies that can be eroticized transfers, onto men, the stasis of contingency and immanence that have, according to Beauvoir, constrained women. Whereas for Beauvoir it was patriarchy that denied woman agency, from the 1950s in particular, globalized forms of capitalism stifle self-determination for both men and women. In being an homme-objet, men, like women, are compelled to work toward the commodification of themselves as an end in itself. Consumerism encourages the complacent and misguided belief that self-affirmation can be gained through vanity and personal wealth, but narcissism serves as a decoy to an autonomous subjectivity and a fulfilled existence. It is precisely this dilemma that Delon’s image as object and gigolo represents; as mentioned, any sense of

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mastery over his existence is a delusion since he is reliant upon his erotic appeal in order to sustain his status. The constraints of narcissism and its threats to an autonomous subjectivity are implicitly conveyed in the much commented upon mirror scene in Plein soleil and then developed in the narrative as a whole. While Philippe and Marge embrace in the sitting room, Tom is dispatched to the bedroom where he dons Philippe’s stripy blazer, parts his hair and stares at himself in the mirror uttering in affected tones, as if Philippe, “ma Marge, mamie, m’amour” and then kisses his own reflection. By striving to “be” Philippe, Tom could be said to restrict his future existence to an already known entity—a (convincing) fake (even if, as Rees-Roberts notes in this volume, his performance as his rival constitutes an improvement on the original)—rather than seizing his potential for achieving autonomous selfhood. The mirror scene also has obvious significations for how Delon apprehends himself and his own image. Although he was not yet a star when he made Plein soleil, as we watch Tom as he revels in his reflection, we cannot help but think about Delon’s own autoerotic gratification in observing himself. As he moves in to embrace his reflection, his eyes slowly close as if in amorous thrall at the possibility of kissing, and being kissed by, himself. For Joël Magny, his contemplation of his reflection constitutes a form of schizophrenia, in which the inter-subjective dynamic of the gaze is averted, and this provides the basis for how Delon appreciates himself throughout his career: “from then on, Delon watches himself perform ‘Delon,’ through a series of interposed directors” (1996, 21).6 Remarks attributed to the actor substantiate such an interpretation; for instance, in 1999, he is quoted as saying “I surprise myself and am fascinated by myself ” (Violet 2000, 371). Yet, since it is impossible to hold the self up as object and, through that self-objectification, enjoy autonomy, Delon, rather like Sartre’s waiter, achieves a “being-in-itself ” as “Delon.” The doubling of the mirror scene later in the narrative, when Tom interrupts Marge as she plays the guitar and kisses her hand, illustrates the implications of this narcissism for the star’s image. Via a shot reverse-shot sequence of close-ups of both Marge and Tom’s eyes, the response his amorous act elicits in Marge preoccupies Tom and overrides the erotic pleasure he may gain from the visceral sensation of his lips coming into contact with her skin. Here, then, Marge serves as the affirmation of the sensual impact of Tom’s perceived erotic allure and, for the viewer, as a gauge of the danger he ultimately embodies. The issues with regards to Delon’s image and status remain the same; just as Tom requires Marge’s desires for him so that he can access her wealth, Delon needs the audience to

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invest erotically in him to secure his promotion from actor to star. Moreover, while he may appreciate his performances and elevate himself as unique, he sets the benchmark against which “Delon” will subsequently be evaluated, thereby cultivating a subjectivity that can only be confirmed by others and whose value comes from a retrospective comparison between what he is now and once was. Plein soleil and indeed La Piscine inscribe this sense of doomed and immanent selfhood within the sequencing of their scenes. Images of Delon as erotic spectacle precede, coincide with and follow moments where the precariousness of his situation is brought to the fore. In Plein soleil, shots of him steering the yacht with his chest exposed occur moments before Philippe casts him off in the dinghy. Later, when Riccordi visits Tom in Rome to question his statement about Philippe, the ubiquitous image of Delon’s torso framed by an open shirt reappears, here in the form of a pajama top. Tom’s momentary vulnerability is conveyed by the three-shot composition in which a suspicious Riccordi is shown leaning against the wardrobe on the right with Tom’s reflection coming into view on the left as the door opens to reveal Philippe’s incriminating blazer in the center. Furthermore, if we are to believe what is suggested by the narrative, although the ending does not confirm whether Tom is actually arrested, his murderous plan appears to have been foiled, the very last images showing him nonchalantly walking toward his presumed condemnation, again his shirt-jacket open, its tails fluttering slightly in the warm breeze. La Piscine renders the precariousness of such an identity even more explicit in that Jean-Paul’s whole being is confined, from the outset, to his role as the emotional, financial, and sexual dependent of his female lover. He is reliant upon his ability to seduce and satisfy Marianne, whose behavior reflects and reinforces his dependency. At times, Jean-Paul attempts to reaffirm a complacently macho identity, casually sitting back in a deckchair and feigning indifference in gruff tones when Marianne informs him of her ex-lover Harry’s impending visit, for instance. Yet, for all Jean-Paul’s attempts at appearing disinterested, it is he who is shown to seek out Marianne’s attentions and who strives to please her, scratching her back, kissing her arm, and caressing her legs. In an early scene, he orders Marianne not to undo her hair and then proceeds to untie it himself. He embraces her and then leaves her, torso naked, arms outstretched, against a trellis, before taking a branch from a shrub and, at first, tickling and then whipping her back with it. Sadomasochistic symbolism abounds, but rather than master to Marianne’s slave, it is Jean-Paul who is required to satisfy his female lover’s sexual needs by performing the acts she requires of him.

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The implications of this for Jean-Paul and masculinity more broadly, as well as for Delon’s star image, are implied in a subsequent shot, which shows him, again in medium close-up, lying, again torso naked, on the bed, his preoccupied gaze directed off screen. His apparent gloomy look can be interpreted as the expression of his existential ennui, his frustration at not being able to break free from his present contingency. As in the mirror scene in Plein soleil, this moment has resonances for Delon’s own self-appreciation. If, as Austin states, he is always “self-regarding” (2003, 62; see endnote 6), his distracted, troubled look implies Delon’s awareness of his paralysis and precariousness. Again, he is Delon in the immanent mode, pure object, locked in a delimited space, existing for others, and not able to exist for himself. As the ineluctable knowingness of his look implies, he is acting in bad faith. The fictional villa might have all the trappings of luxury, as did, we assume, Delon’s life at the time, but it remains, ostensibly, a prison, with Marianne as symbolic jailer serving as an allegory for those who, ultimately, control his celebrity and status (producers, filmmakers, audiences). That Delon implied in interviews that he would not continue in the public eye later in life (Servat 2001, 57) illustrates the extent to which he appeared aware of his dilemma. While it may be true that he displayed considerable acting talents, witnessed in his appearances in Italian movies Rocco e i suo fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960), L’eclisse/The Eclipse (Michaelangelo Antonioni, 1962), and Il gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963), and took on bigger roles later in his career, as in Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976), forging a public persona that withstood objectification proved difficult. Moreover, when his ventures outside of acting enjoyed limited, if any, success, including organizing boxing championships, horse racing and collecting art, he courted celebrity once again. In fact, his screen reappearances, even when they appear to constitute self-derision, appear to be intended to remind the audience of his past importance and to rekindle what he once represented.

Escape without issue: Rebranding “Delon” and parodying the gigolo The reconfiguration of Delon’s persona from the mid-1960s to project a supplementary image7 as a cooler, tougher and more virile gangster/flic figure (Vincendeau 2000, 179) failed to enable him to transcend his earlier associations with vulnerability and dependency. While these characters, as famously

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illustrated in Le Samouraï/The Samurai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967) and Le Cercle rouge/The Red Circle (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970), exude silent aloofness and thus represent one of the most ubiquitous constructions of hegemonic masculinity, they also embody weakness and an inability to act for themselves. As Forth and Taithe note, “masculinity is always subject to scrutiny, lapses, and failed performances, and is thus forever in a contested state” (2007, 4). Such a “failed performance” is central to these roles, seen most obviously in Delon’s incarnation of Jef Costello in Le Samouraï. Costello’s inability to express and exteriorize his emotions portrays him as prisoner, again locked in and paralyzed, unable to escape himself, hard, but empty. He survives, but does not exist, and resigns himself to his fate, literally leading himself to his place of execution in the final sequence in which he strives to carry out orders and shoot a nightclub pianist (Cathy Rosier) in front of her audience. When she asks why, he replies that he has been “paid to do it” thus figuring himself as a killing machine, a being unable to choose his own course of action and which, like the gigolo, exists initself and for-others. Interestingly, Delon emphatically identified with Costello, declaring “le Samouraï, c’est moi” (Austin 2003, 59), which could be said to serve as the ultimate bad faith statement since it implies the actor’s belief that he cannot be the architect of his own existence. Self-mockery, which would feature more heavily later in Delon’s career, has also had limited success in establishing a rupture between his earlier image and his later persona. An example is Delon’s performance of Émile, the remote lover who endures his partner C’s (Annie Cordy) lamentable monologue about her unrequited love for him in Jean Cocteau’s Le Bel Indifférent (1939), adapted for French television by Marion Saraut and broadcast on January 14, 1978. Émile never utters a word, which may mock through excess the silent gangster figure for which Delon was most famous in France, but the play really satirizes his gigolo persona. Cocteau’s stage notes implicitly refer to the immanence of the gigolo role, describing Émile as a “magnificent gigolo” who is about to lose his looks ([1939] 1989, 85). The play thus ironically gestures toward the very precariousness of Delon’s situation at precisely the point when he appears to deride his persona. Conscious and playful derision of the self can be seen as a form of selfpromotion, a means of trying to keep an image alive when its constitutive components appear to be on the wane. Delon projects himself as capable of accepting criticism and of holding himself lightly, but it is he and those with a vested interest in his image who set the parameters of that playful mockery.

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His appearance in the advertising campaign for Krys spectacles in 2011 illustrates this. Here he is seen, at the age of 75, rehearsing for an imaginary audition. Struggling with his lines in the waiting room, uttering “he used to be intimidating,” pacing up and down and then stating “he used to be … he used to be, what was that again?” we see him recall “he used to be Alain Delon” before putting on his spectacles and adding “but that was before.” It could be argued that Delon’s performance manages to assert the distinction between the actor’s (past) image and the man behind that image, while parodying the parody of him on the television show Les Guignols de l’info (see Jullier and Leveratto in this volume). However, in exploiting those features that are perceived as the fundamental core of his image (his looks and third person mode of self-referencing/addressing), he can be said to perpetuate the links between present and past self rather than undermining them (see Harris in this volume). The advertising campaign, then, epitomizes his difficulties in affirming real mastery over his image and, by extension, symbolizes the star’s struggle to assert control over his situation.8

Concluding thoughts Offering men up for erotic contemplation constitutes a democratization of images and pleasures, as the shots of Delon in Plein soleil and La Piscine attest. And yet, although we might enjoy looking at his face and body in these films, the anxieties generated by such images are inescapable. When Delon displays himself for his diegetic and non-diegetic onlookers, it seems, crisis either lurks around the corner or stares him—us—in the face. Such crisis manifests itself in the obstacles represented by narcissism for achieving actual agency. It plays out in Delon through the concurrent vacillation between his gigolo and gangster/flic personas. Delon may have been compelled to perform different identities, either from within or without, but his failure to move on completely from his object status, despite various attempts, illustrates the contingency of an existence based upon a star subjectivity. Delon thus represents a recurring conundrum of celebrity culture; even when their popularity has waned, many of those in the public eye seem helpless in preventing themselves from continuing to court the attention and affirmation they think they once enjoyed. Narcissism and self-sublimation are clear drivers here; the lure of the unquestioned adulation of others, either because of their apparently striking physicality or assumed talent, or both, is what perpetuates such urges to return

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to the limelight, alongside financial incentives and external pressures from audiences and the industry. But, in succumbing, such individuals, and Delon is a prime example, foreclose creative becoming and allow their past selves to control their present and future subjectivities. According to Servat, Delon never hid his fascination for asocial characters, bandits and adventurers/defenders of lost causes (2001, 58). Yet, despite the promise he represented in the 1960s, since the passing of that moment, he has been compelled to uphold the status quo. Much like the inspectors Ricordi and Lévêque, who serve as the gatekeepers of the very patriarchal system that delimits their ability to claim a free subjectivity, Delon keeps alive the same structure that maintains him as its prisoner. To fail to defend that system could be seen as an avowal of the existential “bad faith” with which his persona and career appear to have been managed. This may be why he is drawn to speak out against evolutions in social morality, as evidenced in, for example, his castigation of France’s introduction of same-sex marriage laws. The paradox here derives not so much from the veracity or not of rumors about his sexuality, but from the fact that he ends up supporting a conservatively patriarchal set of values that, throughout his career, he often claimed to stand against.

Notes 1 2

3

4

Pausanias diverges somewhat by framing the story as one of a lost love for Narcissus’s dead sister. Delon and his supporters within the industry appear to have been keen to appropriate and project the qualities of what Dyer terms as “magic and talent” that inhere in the discourse of star as myth (1998 [1979], 18). Delon never wanted to become an actor (Jean-Claude Brialy 2000, 125), but he was apparently so hounded by producers that he acquiesced (Violet 2000, 371). That Delon considered himself, and was deemed by others, to be innately endowed with a celestial talent is implied through words attributed to him, in which he claims that stardom cannot be explained, that stars can be seen but not touched and cause awe (see Violet 2000, 367). La Piscine explicitly alludes to Delon and Schneider’s real-life affair. The duo became France’s most high profile celebrity couple in the early 1960s, but their relationship ended in 1963 because of Delon’s suspected infidelities. The allusions to the original myth in La Piscine are inescapable from the outset; the superimposed opening credits shimmer across the image track as the camera

On the Limits of Narcissism

5

6

7

8

29

zooms out from the pool’s still, phosphorescent surface, which reflects white doves in the branches above, momentarily recalling the “shining peace” of the pool in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 3 (1986, 63). For R. W. Connell, hegemonic masculinity “can be defined as the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (2005, 77). According to Connell “the majority of men gain from its hegemony, since they benefit from the patriarchal dividend,” that is, the advantages afforded by their institutionalized “superiority” over women (2005, 79). In similar terms as Magny, Guy Austin observes “Delon’s star image is … eroticised … and is valued more by female fans, but it remains literally selfregarding” (2003, 62). Delon did not entirely shy away from exhibiting his body, as illustrated in the topless wrestling scene in Parole de Flic/Cop’s Honor (José Pinheiro, 1985) and, most astonishingly, the sequence in the bizarre, yet fascinating Traitement de choc/Shock Treatment (Alain Jessua, 1973) in which he runs naked in the sea and splashes around in the waves. Where self-mockery may become more subversive is, perhaps unexpectedly, manifest in his role as Casanova in Le Retour de Casanova/The Return of Casanova (Édouard Niermans, 1992). The sadism and moral dubiousness of the Don Juan figure is highlighted, as Delon as Casanova violates a young woman. However, Delon did not qualify his performance in these terms (see Servat 2001, 69–70).

2

Delon and Performance: Emploi and the Interaction Between Individual, Role, and Character Laurent Jullier and Jean-Marc Leveratto

This chapter will approach Delon’s career using the theoretical framework developed by Erving Goffman in Frame Analysis, to analyze how a film’s staged reality is anchored “in the everyday unstaged world” (Goffman 1974, 248). Analyzing the impression produced by an individual within a film involves the interplay of two distinct “appearance formulas”—one based on the distinction between the individual and the part they play, and the other on the perceived fit between part and character. Goffman describes the “person-role formula” as the connection we ordinarily establish between “the person, individual, or player, namely he who participates” and “the particular role, capacity or function he realizes during this participation” (Goffman 1974, 269). By contrast, the “rolecharacter formula” denotes the relationship between the subject and “transformed versions of the whole, namely, parts or characters” (Goffman 1974, 275). Our perception of the character is not only embedded in the world of fiction (the knowledge of which allows us to assert that a professional actor fits a given part), but also, through the actor’s own body, in the real world. The shared experience of actor and spectator determines whether an act or a pose suits the character it embodies. In other words, the actor’s technical performance is embedded in everyday social experience, which itself informs the experience of spectatorship. Traditionally, star studies have used the vague term “persona” to negotiate between the actor’s on-screen performance and off-screen reception. This approach is reductive, however, because it does not take the spectator’s experience into account, and uses “the view of a given star as simply reflecting some aspect of social reality that the analyst cared to name” (Dyer 2003, Preface, vii). In the French context, film analysis can have similar recourse to a concept inherited

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from theatrical performance, namely the key notion of an actor’s emploi.1 This category accounts for the close interaction between performance and reception resulting from the spectator’s physical involvement in the spectacle. This allows us to reintroduce, in the analysis of the film actor’s delivery, the role played by both film technique and the spectator’s “practical sense” to use Pierre Bourdieu’s terms, that is to say the intuitive, experience-based understanding of the conduct required in any given social situation (1980, 96–97). Emploi refers at the same time to the requirements of the role, the impression made by the actor’s physical appearance, and the experience the spectator has of the actor’s ability to adjust to the role according to how they perceive the character that they are performing. The point here is to return to the concrete dimension of Delon’s performances throughout his career to observe how he gradually shaped his emploi either to match the requirements of directors or of specific genres, or in accordance with his own personal ambitions. Between the handsome young lead of a cloak-and-dagger film like La Tulipe noire/The Black Tulip (Christian-Jaque, 1964), for instance, and the male sex object that he embodies in La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (Jacques Deray, 1969) there are a number of differences on both sides of the screen: in, that is, the performance and how the performance is received. Considering the spectator’s “direct” perception of the actor also implies being sensitive to how this emploi evolves as the actor ages, while the latter’s public persona conversely remains unchanged. It is therefore important to distinguish between Delon’s hallowed image projected by recent English-language scholarship (Vincendeau 2000, 158–97; Hayes 2004, 42–53) from the very down-to-earth image Delon conveyed in France for millions of mass cinema consumers from the 1960s to the 1980s. On the one hand, Delon is an actor modeled by directors who valorized his eroticism and manly beauty to serve their art, and idealized by academics who, in the name of Cultural Studies, did not hesitate to make of him a prototype of the “homme fatal,” as Ginette Vincendeau has described him (2000, 177); on the other hand, he is an actor specializing in action movies, in which he plays tough guys who do not have any fatal qualities at all. What is at stake here epistemologically is to show that the concept of emploi is a triangular construction based on the actor’s body (to get a role the actor has to pass the casting test), the actor’s performance of the role, which gradually defines his emploi for an audience, and, finally, the spectators’ corporeal involvement in the film, which allows them to be attentive to the actor’s performance. These spectators are therefore able to assess an individual

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performance in aesthetic terms (emploi), in technical terms (how it contributes to the success of the film), and in ethical terms (the life-lesson delivered by the character). Furthermore, a number of key methodological questions need addressing since the notion of emploi also demands that we take into account the researcher’s own sensibility and sensitivity, given that he or she is also an ordinary spectator, even when choosing to be a privileged external observer (Leveratto 2006, 183–84; 311–12).

Persona and emploi On November 13 2011, Krys, a French optician, launched a print and TV advertising campaign. Entitled Le Casting, it was directed by Patrice Leconte, using a number of stars, and, like previous Krys campaigns, it used a slogan based on a recurrent strapline: “I used to be … .” For instance, popular actor Michel Blanc states: “I used to be bald,” which would imply that now, with his new Krys spectacles, he is obviously still bald, but he no longer cares. Alain Delon agreed to participate in this campaign, but was asked to vary the slogan, preferring instead: “he used to be Alain Delon.” This self-referential strapline requires prior knowledge of French public debate. Speaking of himself in the third person is one of the characteristics of Delon’s puppet on the show Les Guignols de l’Info, broadcast on the French cable channel Canal+ since 1988. Through this characteristic, journalists aim to laugh at the actor’s apparently oversized ego, whether he refers to himself in the third person in the media or launches a new commercial venture (his perfume “a.d.”), or simply signs his own creative output.2 Yet, the choice of strapline is not only an opportunity for Delon to show that he can laugh at himself (which he had already done in 2008 when he accepted to play the role of Julius Caesar in Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques/Asterix at the Olympic Games (Frédéric Forestier and Thomas Langmann, 2008)). It also points to the aging process, underlining the fact that the Alain Delon of the Krys ads, a 76-year-old man, is no longer the Alain Delon whose myth was fashioned around his striking good looks enshrined in the celebrated films of the 1960s. The fashion house Christian Dior played on this image when it launched an advertising campaign for its Eau sauvage perfume in 2009, based on a black-and-white photograph of Alain Delon aged 33, taken by Jean-Marie Périer in 1968 on the set of the film La Piscine outside Saint-Tropez, as discussed by Nick Rees-Roberts in his chapter.

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Christophe Lafarge, President of H, the advertising agency that supervised the Krys campaign, explains how he wanted the audience of Le Casting to understand the ads: “we especially wanted stars to come and speak in front of the camera to state quite simply that, in spite of their star status, they also have issues with their appearance.”3 The campaign is obviously humorous, but also plays on the notion of revenge in which ordinary people may derive pleasure from witnessing the decrepitude of a man once placed on a pedestal due to his physical appearance and natural talents. An example of such elevation of Delon because of his assumed good looks comes in his first ever screen appearance; in Quand la femme s’en mêle/Send a Woman When the Devil Fails (Allégret, 1957), Edwige Feuillère says to him: “well, you’re good-looking, Jo,” a line clearly aimed at the man as much as the character he played. When considered in relation to the notion of “emploi,” it becomes clear that two mechanisms are at stake in Delon’s appearance in Le Casting. On the one hand, he has always been able to fully adapt his emploi to the roles he was offered, instead of resorting to make-up or plastic surgery. By choosing to appear in the Krys campaign, Delon does not attempt to hide the fact that he has aged. On the other hand, this campaign plays on the dissociation between persona and “emploi.” In France, Delon’s persona, namely the image we have of the man in the media, has never failed to establish a link between some of the characters he played on screen and his real life personality and identity. The Krys campaign reinforces the fact that, for a few years, some of Delon’s very striking film performances, from Le Retour de Casanova/The Return of Casanova (Édouard Niermans, 1992) to Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques have allowed him to separate this persona from its “emploi.” In these films, the actor showed himself as a seducer now unable to seduce, and then as an actor able to laugh at his own smugness. “Alain Delon” signifies the public character he used to be, a one-dimensional character like Rocco Parondi or Jef Costello,4 whose appearance will never change. The difference between this public character and Delon (the man animating this character) was blurred until more recently. The Krys campaign ironically mocks Delon’s established star persona while simultaneously enabling him to be free of his former “emploi.” Unlike the character he plays in William Wilson (Louis Malle’s section of the omnibus film, Histoires extraordinaires/Spirits of The Dead, 1968), in which the hero fails to grasp that he is under the command of the double that he himself has created, in the Krys campaign, Delon seems finally to have discarded his own creation, the Delon star persona.

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The Krys ad campaign considers Delon’s career by factoring in the audience’s ability to distinguish not only between the actual man and his media image, but also between the three distinct entities that interact in the notion of cinematographic emploi: the individual, the actor, and the character.

Creating Delon’s emploi Admiration for Delon the actor cannot be reduced to the impact of his physical appearance on audiences. It results more from his ability to interpret roles written for him, as well as from the way the directors of his films exploited his body, thus drawing the public’s attention to him. The role played by the gaze certain directors cast on the actor is still obvious today. The way they embraced his body as the object of the director’s desire (either fictional or sexual) remains particularly strong, and this clearly played an instrumental role in launching Delon’s international career. Two roles are stand out in this respect—those Delon played in Luchino Visconti films, Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (1960) and Il gattopardo/The Leopard, (1963). The international success of the latter ensured that Delon was nominated as Most Promising Newcomer at the 1964 Golden Globe awards and as Top New Male Face at the 1964 Laurel Awards. As will be seen, these two films reveal how Delon took advantage of how Visconti “used” his body, valorized his beauty, and modeled his physical appearance. The scenography of Rocco e I suoi fratelli seems to be almost entirely structured around the expression of a desire for Delon’s “feline”5 body. When Rocco, wearing satin shorts over his jogging pants, boxes with his own reflection in a mirror, the camera frenetically zooms in on him to focus on his body. Unlike the slow forward zooms in Morte a Venezia/Death in Venice (1971), Visconti’s later film, the effect here is not meant to mediate the desiring glance of a character (Von Aschenbach for Tadzio) but that of the director (or of a spectator captivated by handsome young men). Morini (Roger Hanin) meets Rocco to offer him a job during the homoerotic shower scene, which plays on the contrast between the tall silhouette of Hanin, clad from head to toe, and Delon’s naked torso. Yet, Visconti has the same type of relationship with Delon as Von Aschenbach does with Tadzio: he is the aesthete enjoying a beautiful spectacle. At the end of the film, exactly as Tadzio is transformed into a Michaelangelo statue when he poses on the beach, Rocco only exists in the form of a poster printed in hundreds of

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copies, which his younger brother is stroking with his hand as if it were a lucky charm. Rocco’s inaccessibility in the film is explained by the fact that, as Nadia (Annie Girardot) tells him, he is an angel. He is shy; he speaks in a gentle voice, darns his clothes himself, sings a sweet song a capella with his feet exposed; he is afraid of women or indifferent to their charms (in the launderette where he works, a girl kisses him on the mouth—in vain). The manly uniform of soldiers does not suit him: Nadia remarks that he is in disguise when she sees him dressed this way. He is also angelic in the way he is emotionally attached to his family, especially in how he submits to his brother Simone’s desires whereas the latter is a brutish bully, shown in another homoerotic scene—with a sadomasochistic dimension—when he beats Rocco up, whom he wrongly accuses of having stolen his girlfriend This feminine dimension also characterizes Tancredi in Il gattopardo/The Leopard, even if the character is a passionate young hothead, obviously conscious of his own beauty and willing to use it to his own advantage. As can be seen from these examples, youth and enthusiasm make him a typical young male lead in the original sense of emploi as it is used in theater, that is to say an actor whose age, appearance and disposition predispose him to play the young lover, the male equivalent of the ingénue. Natural erotic appeal was essentially a pre-given attribute for Delon the actor—the primary facet of his star image. A secondary facet was his tough guy persona, that is to say his roles as strong and secret men, roles as the young sidekick in crime films that contributed to fixing this other quality of his physical appearance. From Mélodie en sous-sol/Any Number Can Win (1963) to Le Clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (1969), Henri Verneuil’s films undoubtedly shaped this darker side to Delon. In the first film, Delon played a young gangster (Francis Verlot) who, due to his lack of professionalism and his habit of constantly trying to pick up girls, ensures that the extraordinary plot devised by an art amateur, Charles (Jean Gabin), is doomed to fail. Later he played Roger Sartet, the violent jewel thief and cop killer, who will eventually pay with his life for the brief affair he had with the wife of one of the members of his clan, irresistibly seduced by his beauty. Yet, in different respects, Jean-Pierre Melville’s films best illustrate how Delon the actor overcame this tough guy image, especially due to the aesthetic singularity of the director’s behavior when transferred to Delon’s performance, reaching an ultimate form of film noir poetics while neutralizing any kind of psychological realism or spontaneous empathy with the character. In the case of Le Samouraï/The Samurai (1967), Jef Costello’s personality added to

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the fact that the character does not speak and is reduced to what he shows us of himself. In the film’s opening scene, the hero is lying on the bed, neither sleeping nor having sex. These fundamental needs do not seem to concern him. He is simply lying on the bed. When he leaves his home and gets into his car, a beautiful unknown woman tries to flirt with him; but like Rocco, Costello remains indifferent. “He’s not a normal guy,” the superintendent (François Périer) says, and this remark refers not only to the character, but also to the actor playing the role, that is Alain Delon. Jef Costello is a hit man, like the character Delon had already played in his first film (Quand la femme s’en mêle), already with the same absolute, though less overtly dramatic, composure. Quand la femme s’en mêle was a film that mixed different genres, and Delon only played a supporting role in it. This time, in Le Samouraï, he plays the leading role in a film noir that introduced French audiences to a form of tasteful glorification of the bad guy. Costello is self-sufficient, feline, and dandified—he lives at no. 1, rue Lord Byron. Le Cercle rouge/The Red Circle (1970) offers a subtler variation on this theme. The film stages a man’s world, based on physical strength and will. Delon plays Corey, a thief released from prison. In a jewel heist he enlists Vogel (Gian-Maria Volonte), who has just managed to escape from the superintendent Mattei (Bourvil) during a train transfer. Corey and Vogel will be the victims of the tenacity of the cat-loving superintendent who launches a manhunt to catch Vogel. In contrast to the feminine features of the character played by Bourvil, Delon embodies a tougher and more impenetrable figure than the Samouraï.

Managing emploi The characteristics of Delon’s emploi in the films that led the actor to international fame shed light on the way this emploi could generally be used, including by the actor himself. The star-vehicles—from Borsalino (Jacques Deray, 1970) to Parole de flic/Cop’s Honour (José Pinheiro, 1985) and Ne réveillez pas un flic qui dort (José Pinheiro, 1988)—sought explicitly to exploit this short range of possible performances, consequently imprisoning Delon in a repetitious cycle. The exploitation of his creative talents became an exhibition of a behavior revolving around erotic seduction and the ritual expression of his masculinity—such an exhibition becoming predictable from film to film. Only a few of the actor’s performances retrospectively appear as particularly

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striking illustrations of his ability not to get imprisoned in a specific genre and to singularize his recognizable performance style. Among these are Plein soleil/Purple Noon (René Clément, 1960), L’Insoumis/The Unvanquished (Alain Cavalier, 1964), La Piscine/Swimming Pool (Jacques Deray, 1969), and Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976). In Plein soleil Delon plays the part of a man born into a poor family who insanely wants to become someone else—namely a rich man with an easy life: his friend Philippe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet). The actor’s performance is dependent on the director’s talent and his own ability to exploit his emploi. The cinematographic narrative may be read as a metaphor for those actors who can take advantage of their physical resemblance to a character: Tom Ripley (Delon) plays at being Philippe while showing himself in the form of Ripley. A scene showing him training to be Philippe is a pretext to stress the parallels between the actor’s professional desire to look like his character, and the character’s desire to be loved: after putting on his friend’s expensive clothes, Ripley expresses his love to himself in front of a mirror, calling himself Marge, the name of Philippe’s girlfriend, played by Marie Laforêt. As in Melville’s Le Samouraï/The Samurai Clément’s direction here distances the character from the audience, which strengthens the overall aesthetic effect of the actor’s performance and reinforces Ripley’s own opacity. Long after he has killed Philippe and slept with Marge, he continues to address her with the formal “vous” instead of using the more familiar “tu,” which in postwar French cinema was the conventional sign used to indicate that two characters had become lovers. In this example, however, the detail serves to suggest that he only plays at being Philippe without actually being under Marge’s spell. L’Insoumis had a limited release in France in 1964, as it dealt with the controversial issue of the French war in Algeria. The film gave Delon the chance to play a role fully adapted to his emploi, that of a young professional soldier in Algeria, at the beginning of the 1960s, who joins the OAS (a dissident group of French paramilitary soldiers, opposed to the independence of Algeria and fighting the members of the FLN—National Front of Liberation—and its supporters by kidnapping and murdering them) out of a love of discipline rather than out of any ideological conviction. Now a henchman for the OAS, he is led by circumstances to free a young female lawyer kidnapped and imprisoned by his commando in a flat in Algiers. He is wounded in the process and attempts to escape the revenge of his organization with the young woman’s help. The actor plays the role of a lowly upstart, who is stubborn and introverted but whose

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individualism does not prevent him from being humane. Given the existential focus of the script, he could even be said to resonate with Albert Camus’s fictional characters, notably Meursault, the main character of L’Étranger/The Stranger described by Camus as “foreign to the society in which he lives … condemned because he does not play the game” (2001, 19). The success, both commercial and critical, of La Piscine (1969) is undoubtedly the result of the psychological complexity of Delon’s character, Jean-Paul, a frustrated writer married to Marianne (Romy Schneider), a successful collaboration between director, scriptwriter, and actor. Delon makes his character particularly credible and unpredictable from the point of view of both narrative and emploi. He pushes things much further than usual in both these respects by becoming a slave to jealousy by killing his rival and playing the role of a frustrated man—both professionally and personally. Delon’s acting shows how this taciturn character confuses love with ownership and the unhealthy desire to fight for what belongs to him. This role is now so emblematic of Delon’s overall career, reactivated through the recent Christian Dior advertising campaign, showing how the director and script-writer were able to exploit both the erotic dimension and the psychological toughness which were perceived as the core characteristics of Delon’s emploi. One further example showing how Delon successfully adapted his performance style and persona is Mr. Klein, which prefigures the crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, mentioned here for the quality of Delon’s acting, itself inseparable from Losey’s direction. By agreeing to collaborate with an esteemed director, Delon confounded his critics, who, on the basis of his roles and his political positions, identified him as a “fascist.” The value of this performance lies in Delon’s ability to embody a Frenchman mistaken for a Jew in 1942, who subsequently becomes the victim of Vichy’s collaboration with the Third Reich and its participation in the Nazis’ Final Solution. As in the case of Ripley, Delon’s emploi very directly serves his performance here, as he plays the role of an ordinary man who eventually takes on an identity that is not his own, becoming the character he is mistaken for. This sacrifice—Klein dies for having assumed this false identity—gives meaning to his life and transfigures it. These roles are often quoted today as among Delon’s best. They evoke the time when the actor was flourishing—both physically and professionally. Yet, Alain Delon had problems dealing with this fixation, most probably because he was afraid of disappointing “his” audience. But he was also a victim, during this period of his career, of his own reluctance to accept that he was aging.

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The gradual adjustments of emploi One of the sections of the French Wikipedia entry on Delon is entitled “1980s–1990s: repeated failures.” The failures listed here are commercial, but also, at times, artistic or critical. They mark Delon’s professional aging and his difficulty in adjusting his emploi to changes in audience expectation. Professional quality is not only a matter of physical adjustment to the role, but also of the ability to justify the casting through the performance. For instance, if we focus on the thriller through which Delon attempted to return to the limelight (Le Battant, Delon and Davis, 1983), the problem does not come from the actor’s physical appearance (he is the same age as the character he plays), but from the artistic ambition to reproduce what has already been done, which limits the actor to mere imitation. The film multiplies references to Delon’s legendary performances (the script refers to Le Cercle rouge and to the musical theme to Le Samouraï), forgetting the director’s own contribution to the expansion of the actor’s emploi outside the usual part of the handsome tough guy. Delon overacts in Le Battant. One reference may suffice in instances of cultural transfer (HongKong gangster movies recycled the Delon-samurai figure and John Woo used Delon sunglasses for the heroes of his 1986 film Ying huang boon sik/A Better Tomorrow (1986)), but it does not work when the performer caricatures himself. Instead of being Delon, Delon does Delon. The script ironically stresses this discrepancy by making him a gangster, a newly released prisoner, out of place in society, still wearing the suit he had bought ten years before (roughly the same type of suit he wears in Le Cercle rouge): this trick stresses the idea that the film attempts to recreate an early 1970s French thriller ten years later. Like all great actors, Delon eventually found roles adapted to his aging face and body by abandoning repetition, avoiding getting trapped in the emploi which had made him successful, and leaving behind the off-putting smugness of an actor who had become a caricature of himself. The first scene of Notre histoire (Bertrand Blier, 1984) already used a humorous process of mise-en-abyme to show the need to adjust to the consequences of aging: it shows Delon reading a newspaper with a headline calling for “a necessary evolution.” In parallel, Un amour de Swann/Swann in Love (Volker Schlöndorff, 1984) was the first point at which Delon took stock of his career, past and present. Delon plays the role of the Baron de Charlus, whereas in Visconti’s own planned adaptation he was supposed to embody the narrator. He moved from the role of a young man

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facing Charlus’s desire to that of a mature man who is a victim of his predilection for young men. He also had to take the visible marks of aging into account—we see Delon reapplying his make-up in his carriage after he has broken up with a young lover. Following his appearance in Dancing Machine (Gilles Béhat, 1990) as a disheveled dance instructor who uses a walking stick, Le Retour de Casanova marks a crucial moment of change in Delon’s career. He ventures into uncharted waters by laying bare the artificial construction necessary to preserve his appearance. The actor wears a wig and puts powder on his face—two costume devices imposed by the historical character emphasizing the actor’s age. The young woman he covets, Marcolina (Elsa Lunghini), resists him because she finds him too old for the part: “I don’t like the way you make up,” she tells him, “or the smell from your mouth when you speak. You belong to a world on the verge of extinction.” In an earlier film Le Battant (1983), he had played the part of a man who had no trouble seducing Anne Parillaud, some twenty-five years his junior in real life. Yet, the actor of Le Retour de Casanova acknowledges he is getting old, which now prevents any possible confusion between fiction and reality, or between his emploi and his own person.

Conclusion The concept of emploi is a way of refocusing on the essential roles played by cinematographic and corporeal techniques, that is to say “the ways in which from society to society men know how to use their bodies” (Mauss 1973, 70) in the understanding of the visual effect that an actor’s body makes on the spectator. It particularly offers the opportunity to understand, from a local point of view, the international scope of an actor’s body: the way in which Alain Delon’s emploi could give pleasure to a wide range of different audiences and spectators, above and beyond their cultural differences, as well as the wide range of interpretations of his technical ability as an actor and of assessments of his value as an actor, according to the specificities of the emploi. In the later stages of his career, Delon’s emploi is more multifaceted than a mere focus on physical attractiveness or his ability to project virility. Delon has played some ninetythree roles to date. The best of them allowed him to singularize his usual emploi instead of just exploiting it.

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Notes 1

2

3 4 5

See Goffman (1974, 269–87). In the context of performance, the term emploi has referred from the eighteenth century onward to the kind of roles stage actors are known to play. This explains the French expression “avoir le physique de l’emploi” meaning “to look the part.” In the theatrical context, the idea of emploi is not exactly limited to the conflation of the part with the body. Rather it specifies the capability of the actor to play a part in a truthful way (truthful according to the mind and sensibility of the audience). Consequently, emploi cannot be translated exactly as type, since typecasting deals more precisely with the necessary selection of physical types given the length of a screen or stage appearance. Typecasting for Goffman implied giving “a quick onstage impression of the characteristics sought” (Goffman 1974, 280). For instance in Le Battant (1983), directed by and starring Delon, his name is framed and his hand-written signature happens to appear in the final shot. Then a finely crafted frame is added in order to give the image the appearances of an old painter’s masterpiece. Philippe Larroque, “Alain Delon a joué le jeu de l’autodérision” (Delon played the card of self-mockery (2011)). The name of the characters he played in Rocco e i suoi fratelli and Le Samouraï. Cf. Jullier and Leveratto ( 2009, 70).

3

France’s “new Don Juan”: The Representation of Alain Delon’s Youth Gwénaëlle Le Gras

In 1957, when Alain Delon first appeared on cinema screens, French society was about to undergo immense political, economic, social, and cultural changes. This dawning period of extensive transition, marked by the leading figure of General de Gaulle, would see France and its way of life shaken by rapid economic modernization, decolonization (which swept everything in its way, including the Fourth Republic), growing political unrest (which included strikes and the emergence of the far right-wing movement under Poujade), important intellectual debate, and the arrival of new icons of mass culture. Delon’s emerging persona was inevitably shaped by this broader historical context. In order to understand his image, this discussion adopts the approach developed by star studies—in which scholars attempt to understand how and why, at a particular moment in a particular society, actors or actresses playing a particular type of role become famous. Stars express the values, myths, and dreams of their time and highlight the desires, fears, and expectations of the society that models their image. Rather than concentrating on his films, this chapter will pay particular attention to the emergence of Delon in the media preceding his rise to fame at the beginning of the sixties. Cinémonde, the popular French cinema magazine with the longest publishing record and the highest distribution rate in France between 1928 and 1971 will serve as a major source for studying the actor’s emergence. Suspended during the Nazi occupation of France, the magazine resumed activity in March 1946, still directed by Maurice Bessy, and took over the magazines Cinévie-Cinévogue and Pour tous. The number of copies doubled to reach 250,000 at the end of the 1940s and 370,000 in the 1950s, respectively. This chapter focuses specifically on the changing tastes of the magazine’s readership, reflected in its correspondence column, called “Let’s gossip” (“Potinons”). The column aimed

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primarily to reply to readers’ queries but gradually became a forum for debate and exchange between readers and the columnist (writing under the pseudonym Jean Talky) and, by association, between the readers themselves. Analyzing the responses of audiences and fans of the fashionable film stars of the period allows us to grasp the changing trends in popularity among a predominantly young and female readership, actively engaging in critical discussion. Stars are part and parcel of the consumer society that evolved in France in the 1950s and left its mark on the new generation, providing role models and heroes. Faced with the arrival of American films on French screens, fashions, cultural transpositions, and resistance became part of a growing worldwide star system, which revolved around the Cannes Film Festival. The sudden arrival of Alain Delon was part and parcel of this cultural upheaval and the inherent tensions between tradition and modernity that marked that upheaval are the essence of the construction of his image (Figure 3.1).

A star in the making In 1956, Alain Delon arrived in Paris and landed a number of jobs related to the world of gangsters and gigolos. He got his break thanks to his magnetic beauty. In Saint-Germain-des-Prés he met Brigitte Auber, an actress older than himself,

Figure 3.1 Delon as Jo in Quand la femme s’en mêle/Send a Woman When the Devil Fails (1957)

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and soon moved in with her. She had just played a secondary role in Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief (1955). Their relationship would be decisive for him, although the actress never encouraged him to take up acting. As Auber explained: “he was fascinated by the world of cinema. He kept telling me: ‘I’ll make it! Fuck them all, I’ll make it.’ What he really wanted was to become famous, not necessarily to become an actor.” (Violet 2000, 60). Indeed, Delon stated in a number of interviews that he didn’t have any kind of vocation at this time, only a desire to succeed. As he subsequently reminded journalists, Delon’s unhappy childhood, contained internal violence and search for discipline and father figures fueled unlimited ambition and a burning desire to live life to its full. This partly explains the rigor and professionalism he developed thanks to contacts with older men and women: René Clément, Luchino Visconti, Jean Gabin, or Edwige Feuillère. However, in the spring of 1957, while on holiday in Saint-Paul de Vence in the company of Brigitte Auber, he decided to go to the Cannes Film Festival. There he met Jean-Claude Brialy, who was just beginning his career as an actor, and Georges Beaume, then a journalist with Jours de France and Cinémonde, which, as mentioned, was the most widely read cinema magazine of the time. Beaume took him in after his break-up with Auber and again during his later relationship with Romy Schneider. According to Georges de Caunes, Delon made a show of himself by driving a sports car to attract attention at the Film Festival (1961). The journalists immediately compared him to James Dean, who had died two years earlier. Delon fascinated both sexes and his power of seduction enabled one of the most meteoric rises to fame in French Cinema. It was in Cannes that Henry Wilson, an American talent scout specializing in handsome young men (Hofler 2005, 582–89), noticed him and arranged a screen test in Rome where David O. Selznick offered him a golden contract for seven years on condition that he learned English. Delon, who had no training as an actor, signed the contract and prepared to leave for Hollywood in August. However, through the intervention of Auber and Brialy, he met Michèle Cordoue who fell for his charms and pushed him into the arms of her husband, film director Yves Allégret, who gave Delon his first role in Quand la femme s’en mêle/Send a Woman When the Devil Fails (1957). Thanks to the influence of Edwige Feuillère, the star of the film, the producers were forced to hire Delon instead of Gil Vidal (Violet 2000, 71). Allégret advised Delon to renounce his Hollywood contract, certain that he could become a great star in France whereas he would be just another actor in Hollywood. Delon took his advice and used the anecdote to create the myth of the

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determined actor: the man who said “no” to Selznick in favor of French Cinema. In his very first interview for Cinémonde, or Jeunesse cinéma which published a long interview spanning three issues (July, August, and September 1961), Delon romanticized his rise to fame as a self-made man, using and re-using the same sentimental details in order to highlight his social mobility: running away as a child in order to leave for the United States; his boarding school education and religious convictions; his unhappy childhood; and the old underground ticket he kept during his time in the Far East which would remind him of Paris.

Let the charm do the rest … “You don’t stop a thoroughbred at full gallop,” Edwige Feuillère told her agent Olga Horstig-Primuz when she recommended Delon (Horstig-Primuz 1990, 92), and these two intelligent women taught him a considerable amount, allowing his career to sky-rocket right from his very first performances. Transformed into an actor in spite of himself, Delon opened doors with his sheer will and good looks and began his career in 1957 in the role of a seductive petty criminal. Quand la femme s’en mêle did not do especially well at the box office, but Delon was particularly well served by close-ups, the camera lingering on his perfect facial features, enhanced by the lighting. He benefited from his appearance in a few important scenes, even though his role was passive, with the action taking place off-scene when he was involved. Yet, the press had noticed him even before the film was released thanks to Georges Beaume who never tired of promoting his protégé in the pages of Cinémonde. This “young nobody” thus found his way into Cinémonde as early as July 1957 in an article enhanced by a photograph. The following month, he illustrated a feature (“The Way to Conquer Glory, How to Become a Star in 1957”) in which he was presented as “The New Don Juan Discovered in France.” He was compared to “James Dean” and represented as “The New Anthony Perkins” but with the hope that he would develop “a real personality” (1199, August 1, 1957). While Henri Magnan, writing in Les Lettres françaises in November 1957, predicted that he would have “a brilliant career” as he “attracted all the sympathy of the viewing public” (1957), in fact only Cinémonde instantly promoted the young actor in 1957, presenting him as the revelation of Quand la femme s’en mêle (Cinémonde, 1214, November 14, 1957). In early 1958, they toyed with their readers’ curiosity by placing him in what they termed the category of “promising

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young talents: the leading few” of the “Tout-Cinémonde,” a kind of “Best of the Year” organized by the acting world (Cinémonde, 1223, January 16, 1958). Delon was, of course, Beaume’s choice, which he explained comparing him to Jean Marais, Montgomery Clift, and, once again, James Dean, commenting that “our cinema is totally lacking in young stars of his age!” Beaume managed to promote Delon as a star in a way that could not be done with the young actors of the French New Wave because of their lack of classical beauty. This kept Delon on the margins of the New Wave, strategically positioning him somewhere between classicism and modernity. And the photograph in Cinémonde that followed in February 1958, which showed him seductively murmuring into the ear of an ecstatic Edith Piaf, a key cultural icon of the era, further underlined his distance from the New Wave (Figure 3.2). In his first film (Quand la femme s’en mêle) as well as in his emerging public image, Delon surprised viewers by his appearance, shifting between the classical suit and tie and the modern sweater and suede jacket, driving a sports car at high

Figure 3.2 Delon with Piaf (Cinémonde, February 1958)

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speed, on screen and in real life. Cinémonde followed up on this first presentation by publishing a full-page portrait that set the tone for his image: “still a beginner, already famous, Alain Delon has become, in just a few months, the most soughtafter newcomer of French cinema. A dazzling talent … a brilliant debut … a “style” that is an image of our time …” (Cinémonde, 1230, March 6, 1958). The article went on to describe, as if referring to a legend, the incredible rise of Delon, who could no longer count the number of films he was offered and who “captured public attention, especially that of the younger generation, who see him as the modern image of their favorite heroes.” Paradoxically, the official box office figures for his first film implied that he was not quite the popular success that had been anticipated, but this did not matter. Cinémonde had the power to make and unmake fashions or, as in this instance, to preempt them, in the same way as the film industry had, in which producers and directors were already fighting over the young actor. Interestingly, the article desperately tried to give a legitimate aura to him; while they recognized that he had a “lucky face,” they nonetheless painted a picture of a discerning actor who “has decided only to take part in worthwhile films and to refuse roles that he is not convinced are good.” Testimony from Feuillère, Bernard Blier, and Henri Vidal praised his camera presence, his modernity, “taste for life, violence, brevity, intensity,” and his virility. And yet, his extreme beauty, often seen as ambiguous and troubling, was also recurrently used to question this virility, until the beginning of the sixties. Moreover, weight was added to the idea that he had arrived in the nick of time to play the part of the new young star of French cinema: “the very immediate successor to the two great actors who have been jointly holding the title for the last fifteen years, the luminous Jean Marais and the dark Gérard Philippe.” The foundations of Delon’s ambiguous beauty were established. Nevertheless, if his natural acting style reinforced by his refusal of make-up brought him nearer to actors of the budding New Wave, the parts he was announced to play (Chéri with Feuillère, although this never happened; Le Jugement de Salomon by André Michel, and Liebelei, which became Christine), and those his entourage endeavored to have him play (Feuillère tried to get him into En cas de malheur/Love is my Profession (Claude-Autant Lara, 1958)) placed him on the side of classical popular cinema against which the New Wave had emerged. The New Wave had abandoned French stars seen as symbols of French post-war bourgeoisie (Michèle Morgan, Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, Gérard Philipe) in order to give roles to young unknown actors, to new faces (Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anouk Aimée, Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy, Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre

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Léaud, and Jeanne Moreau). And the acting style cherished by the New Wave was perceived as new. As Ginette Vincendeau explains, “New Wave films foregrounded improvisation through filming on location, using available light and vernacular language. Performances matched this. Casual elocution and underplaying made performances appear ‘modern’ and blurred the distinction between fiction and document (references to New Wave films as ‘documentaries’ on the actors are frequent). Lines are blurred and movements are charmingly gauche” (Vincendeau 2000, 117). The acting style became purer, actors no longer played “fashion models” as in the past. The stylistic norms of classical photography were banished in favor of “naked” ordinary faces, rather unlike Delon’s. From Brigitte Auber to Brialy, Selznick, Beaume, Feuillère, Cordoue, then Schneider, Clément Horstig, and Visconti, Delon gained celebrity thanks to important connections before learning his trade through contact with great actors.

Early success After Sois belle et tais-toi/Be Beautiful but Shut Up, directed by Marc Allégret, Yves’s brother, in which he was given a small part similar to his first, but which received a larger audience of 1.9 million, Delon became a national star thanks to two leading roles and a high-profile love affair. Romy Schneider picked him from a photograph to play her lover in Christine (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1958), a remake of Liebelei (Max Ophüls, 1933), in which he was a romantic and classical hero in full uniform, although, at the beginning of the film, he was cast as the gigolo of a married woman played by Micheline Presle. In January 1961, Cinémonde revealed that he had refused a film called Le Gigolo and an adaptation of Chéri. In 1959, he acted in Faibles femmes/Three Murderesses by Michel Boisrond who had recently triumphed with Bardot in Une parisienne/La Parisienne in 1957. He played the role of a more modern seducer this time, winning the favors of three women while being engaged to another. The succession of these two roles set him up as the perfect object of desire, followed by a camera that focused on his physical beauty—bare chested, or in a tight-fitting uniform, or yet again wearing a skin-tight sweater under a leather jacket similar to the one he wore along with a triumphant smile in the opening shots of Faibles femmes. Such a following was confirmed on the set of Le Chemin des écoliers/Way of Youth (Boisrond, 1959) where, chased by groups of teenage girls, Delon was the reason behind improved on-set security. His insolent luck bound up with his good looks and passivity

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made him into a much envied and criticized actor. He remained so for the rest of his career. Classically handsome, like Gérard Philipe, Delon’s good looks—the line of his cheek bones, the elegant curve of his eyebrows that gave depth to his stormy gaze, and the fragility of his lips—fascinated his admirers. And yet, he was also often perceived as too refined. He was associated with youth and a desirable modernity, which, in the case of his appearance in Christine, made him “inauthentic as an Austrian officer” (Jacques Siclier 1959). The press was critical of his acting skills and dismissed him as a young man with no training who was given leading parts after only two secondary roles. Delon did not respect the unspoken rules of gradual advancement in the cinema world. Even if, for journalist Michel Aubriant, “his inexperience itself has charm” (December 25, 1958), and Steve Passeur in L’Aurore on December 31, 1958 commented on “his very advantageous physical appearance,” his good looks mostly annoyed and raised questions. Because for many critics he was basically a “pretty face” or a “teenage lover,” he was perceived as lacking “warmth and depth, but with his looks, his career is secured” (Le Canard enchaîné, January 7, 1959). If, in the letters from readers to Cinémonde, some wrote that Delon “deserves his star status” (Cinémonde, 1286, April 2, 1959), other readers found him dull. These two films, however, gave him important press coverage and honorable box-office takings, earning around 2,850,000 for Christine and 2,360,000 for Faibles femmes, which, in addition, found success abroad, especially in Japan. Cinémonde made him into a pin-up, the masculine equivalent of Bardot, with whom the magazine rapidly associated him in a sensual double-page photo spread taken by Sam Lévin, in which the fictional couple kissed, framed with naked shoulders (1238, May 1, 1958). The following issue also featured Delon with several photographs showing his sculpted muscles and animal suppleness as the Apollo of the beaches of the Cannes Film Festival, in which he is shown water-skiing, swimming, and sailing in the company of Bella Darvi (1239, May 8, 1958). In fact, there was little difference between the hedonistic image he portrayed on screen and depictions of his real life, as Delon simply carried on playing “Delon.” Later, he appeared on the cover of Cinémonde first with Schneider (1249, July 17, 1958), and then on his own (1286, April 2, 1959, Figure 3.3), or again on the cover of Jeunesse cinéma (January 1959). And just as Cinémonde organized a contest to win a day with Romy Schneider in 1959, a year later, it was Delon’s turn to be offered to readers as a trophy, with an unbuttoned shirt advertising “the prize of a day in his company” (1286, April 2, 1959).

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Figure 3.3 Delon the cover boy (Cinémonde, April 1959)

In a similar way, he entered the star page of Cinémonde by the back door, featuring in the column entitled the “year of luck” along with Pascale Petit and Lino Ventura (“Tout-Cinémonde 1959” 1272, December 25, 1958). Seen as the outsider in French cinema whom all producers covet, Delon entered what was referred to as the “four aces” on the same stars page in 1960 (Cinémonde, 1327, January 1, 1960), alongside Pascale Petit, Jean-Claude Brialy and Jacques Charrier. However, from then on, critics began to recognize his talent because he managed to work with confirmed directors and also because he was about to do his theater debut, which was still perceived as the classical way in which actors trained in France. And as his projects became reality, Cinémonde was able to publish a portrait of the actor to confirm his image and establish him among the

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family of young leading actors of the moment: “watching him, you feel the same shock as when you saw L’Éternel retour [Love Eternal, Jean Delannoy, 1943], Le Diable au corps [Devil in the Flesh, Claude Autant-Lara, 1947] or Rideau cramoisi [The Crimson Curtain, Alexandre Astruc, 1953]” (Cinémonde, 1276, January 22, 1959). Even if he was considered as modern, as a real product of his time (Cinémonde, 1317, November 3, 1959) and as corresponding to the new model in vogue, that of the “juvenile adult,” defined by Edgar Morin as the “new trinity of love, beauty and youth,” (1962, 180), the press nonetheless constructed Delon as belonging to the continuation of classical cinema. In fact, the tension between classicism and modernity embodied by Delon and his image can be said to exemplify Christophe Lasch’s critique of the perception that so-called modern culture constitutes a clean break with traditional culture: now that modern history has begun to recede into the past, we are able to realize that artistic modernism was more deeply linked to tradition than its pioneers believed. And the same applies to the whole of modern culture. A truly modern culture is never summarized as simply repudiating “traditional” schemes. On the contrary, a great part of its strength is found in their persistence (2001, 64).

Delon, as mentioned, remained relatively impossible to define with his beauty composed of animal virility, a cold predator stance and feminine fragility. His preoccupation with his physical beauty is exemplified in the lines from Quand la femme s’en mêle when he says to Jean Servais “if you want to kill me, go ahead, but don’t beat me up.” Nevertheless, the media coverage of Delon’s private life served him well at a time when the first major mass media French star, Brigitte Bardot, had already shown the way for this new style of celebrity. Delon’s affair with Romy Schneider was usefully timed. It began when Schneider was at the height of her celebrity, as the heroine of the Sissi films, whereas Delon had only just begun his career. Their relationship contributed to the promotion of his image, both for a domestic and international audience, especially when they announced their official engagement on March 22, 1959, during a show organized for the world’s press by Romy’s mother and stepfather in order to save their daughter’s reputation. Schneider taught Delon how to behave in good society and he freed her from her golden cage. His career took off whereas hers dwindled and mutated. Already in 1959 Delon was on front covers of German magazines (Bravo magazine, Piccolo, Zondagsvriend) thanks to this affair, which brought him European media visibility. In the same vein, it was with Schneider that

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he was granted access to the front cover of Paris Match in February 1961. A number of articles focused on the engaged couple, but gradually readers tired of waiting for their wedding, as attest a number of letters to the editor until 1963. As the love story continued, journalists concentrated increasingly on Delon, with Schneider becoming an accessory. Thus, in an article on the filming of Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960), Cinémonde commented: “Romy is in Milan. She is not involved in a film, but is comforting her ‘warrior’ … Romy is there, holding her fiance’s hand” (1338, March 29, 1960). Both in France and in Germany, she remained stuck in the sweet and sticky image of Sissy. She was never forgiven by her mother country for complaining publically about her image as Sissy and for her exile in France. At one point, she grumbled “in Germany, I’d been struck off, in France I didn’t exist as an actress” (Tissier 2012, 94). Even her fan club was rapidly invaded with requests for photographs of her lover Delon who, as yet, lacked this accessory of success (see Jeunesse cinéma, March 1960).

A star is born After Le Chemin des écoliers, in which he was mishandled by two naive and underhand father figures (Ventura et Bourvil) and which managed to sell 2.5 million tickets, the ambivalence of Delon’s image grew stronger still in 1960, with Plein soleil/Purple Noon (René Clément 1960) and Rocco e i suoi fratelli. The dramatic tone and his opposition to other masculine figures, including the intellectual dandy Ronet and the rough peasant Renato Salvatori, distanced him from the lighter films of his debuts. His toothy smile condemned him to the tradition of male objects of desire (promoted in part by Henry Wilson), in other words masculine beauty as a pure consumer product, with no other talent, although Delon was not exactly a muscle man. Thanks once again to Beaume’s intervention, Delon was approached by Clément to play the role of Philippe Greenleaf, an American millionaire, alongside Jacques Charrier initially cast in the role of the private assistant Tom Ripley (1283, March 12, 1959). Charrier ended up passing up the role, occupied as he was with his affair with Brigitte Bardot. Delon decided to persuade Clément to give him Ripley, the petty criminal, the real hero of the film, and a character socially closer to Delon himself, instead of Maurice Ronet, who went on to play Greenleaf, Ripley’s victim who is murdered half way into the film. However, it was yet another woman—this time Clément’s

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wife—that actually enabled Delon to get the part. The producers, the Hakim brothers, had refused to give Delon Ripley because they were not prepared to acquiesce to the pressurizing strategies of an overzealous young trainee actor. Once again, Cinémonde paved the way by organizing a star match between Charrier and Delon, who, naturally, won the contest over his rival according to the votes cast by the editorial members (1294, May 26, 1959). Divided into various categories, Charrier won the one pertaining to experience simply because Delon had never trained in the theater. However, Delon did succeed over his rival in the category of “professional qualities” for his sense of publicity and the photogenic and “personal qualities” in that his private life, elegance, and charisma were judged as distinguishing him from Charrier. Yet, not all the readers of Cinémonde were taken in by the magazine’s biased stance concerning Delon. For “Moussaki,” the Delon-Charrier match was suspicious. Charrier must have received four times as many votes as Delon who had only played “small parts and sentimental roles” (Cinémonde, 1310, September 15, 1959), whereas “Caroline” felt that he “mainly owes his success to well-placed relationships in the world of cinema” (1315, October 20, 1959). He owed his part in Rocco e i suoi fratelli to the talent of his agent, Olga Horstig-Primuz,1 to whom Visconti had previously spoken of his project and who was having difficulty finding the leading actor. Convinced that Delon was Rocco, she arranged a chance meeting between the two men and the charm worked. However, if chronology again shows the indulgence from which Delon benefited, one must nonetheless recognize the intuition that fueled the position of Cinémonde and that of Beaume who became his agent in the middle of the 1960s. His casting as Ripley proved decisive for Delon who became a star thanks to Plein soleil, the film that offered him, according to one critic, a “1960s Julien Sorel” character with “ambiguous and casual charm” (Chazal 1960), or allowed him to become, as another puts it, a “loner” with an “animal instinct” and “perverse ingenuity” (Baroncelli 1960), or, in the words of yet another, transformed him into a “son of James Dean or Marlon Brando” (Charensol 1960). For contributors to Cinémonde including “Zouzika,” thanks to this film, “Alain Delon, has gained a certain respect for his performance as an actor even among those who don’t really like him.” “Unforgettable Esmerelda” writes that “Plein soleil is a masterpiece thanks to the nuanced and intense acting of Alain Delon” (1382, January 31, 1961). A sure sign of this change, Delon was given the front cover of the specialist British magazine Films and Filming

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in October 1960. More than simply Romy Schneider’s fiancé, Delon was now recognized as an actor. Even if he had never met with unanimous approval, because his good looks always attracted suspicion and rejection from members of both press and public, the actor in Delon seemed to have emerged. Although, concerning his performance as the leading part in Rocco, Marcel Huret in Télérama wrote “Alain Delon’s looks are those of a young man spoiled by life, too attractive, perhaps, who does not seem to act according to his nature” (1961), the majority of film critics respected his acting talents and forgot the “handicap” of his good looks, as indeed did the readers of Cinémonde. For instance, “Piranha” declares “Alain Delon is the surprise in this film. He appears unfettered, unsophisticated, escaping at last from his physical appearance. He is, of course, still extremely good-looking, he hasn’t been disfigured, but Rocco has to be good-looking because he’s an angel. An attractive angel, part-time boxer, as good as he is stupid” (1400, June 6, 1961). His relaxed attitude coupled with his underlying image of cynicism permeated the film Plein soleil, turning Delon into what Michel Aubriant in Paris-Press called “a cinema animal” (1960). More than in his earlier films, Plein soleil showed the kind of actor Delon really was, the sort who could only perform well in roles that resemble his own personality, and this particularly annoyed some viewers. Thus “Franzi” made an interesting comparison: despite his charming face and his intelligent acting, Alain Delon irritates. He is too close to his unlikeable characters (especially in Plein soleil). The relaxed attitude that I love in Brialy annoys me in Delon. It’s a question of subtlety. Brialy does it with panache and this adds to an already rich personality. But Delon seems to have no values, to wallow in impertinence, even in cruelty, like a smalltime Valmont (Cinémonde, 1346, May 24, 1960).

Delon fascinated his audience not only because of his beauty but also because of the unhealthy nature of his character. However, the handicap of his “excessive beauty, almost prettiness,” as Cinémonde called it in 1961, was balanced by the violence of his character and his internal conflicts as shown in Rocco e i suoi fratelli. As Hayes (2004, 47) and Brassart (2004, 167) have shown, his body, in his first roles, was often mistreated and suffering, and this is what was criticized while critics still admired and recognized the performance of the actor.

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In Plein soleil, Delon plays a demonic angel and a class traitor. Humiliated by a rich man who reminds him of his lower station, he kills him with no further explanation and assumes his identity in order to take advantage of his victim’s privileged lifestyle. What is particularly apparent in the film is its conscience of the specific visual value of cinema that would then color Delon’s image by framing Ripley’s ascension in a new social space that he tamed mechanically by repeating physical movements, by imitating Greenleaf. Thus the scenes in which he forges Greenleaf ’s passport, learns to manoeuver the yacht and controls his body with new clothes rely on the silent power of the actor. Delon here transcends his ambiguous attraction-repulsion relationship with the upper classes, at the heart of his identity. Whether in his relationship with Schneider or with the world of cinema, Delon, in the film, plays out his own personal situation in a part that synthesizes and crystallizes two different social backgrounds: his modest origins in which he flirted with criminality and his new professional and artistic upper-class surroundings. Ripley personifies the coming together of incorporated past and a different, contradictory present brought on by his success and which forced him to juggle between two memories, two stories that could not be brought up to date in the same context. This dual social inscription seems to have condemned him to a permanent shifting between the two social groups, which he resolved in fiction, where his duality fascinated and fed on a schizophrenic quest for identity, a deep suffering, to give consistence to one of his most spectacular roles in Losey’s Mr. Klein (1976). This also partly explains his reputation in French cinema as a misanthropist, his radical about turns between avant-garde and popular cinema and his playing what Vincendeau has called a “masculine autistic identity” (2000, 180). If he had always remained on the margins of the French New Wave, this, as mentioned, is probably partly because of his beauty, which, for Vincendeau, would have cast shadows on the directors’ images. In the company of Brialy, son of a senior army officer, or Belmondo, son of famous artists, Delon, lacking the origins, the cultural codes, and the professional training of his friends, had little in common with this emerging intellectual elite. His sudden success made him quite as suddenly move from one social class to another, like Ripley or Rocco. Yet, one of the components of Delon’s persona was its duality and constant ambiguity. He was able to function in different and contradicting social spaces, to split his career neatly between two worlds, the elite and popular culture, as he was able to move from cop to criminal, masculine to feminine, past to present, France to Italy while remaining an unknown quantity, indefinable and impossible to capture.

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Conclusion In less than a year, between June 1959 and January 1960 Delon’s financial value grew from two million to thirty-five million francs (Cinémonde, 1348, June 1960). However, this new, free Delon, who surprised through his intuitive handling of his career, made him one of the young actors who refused the most films. For even if his debuts were easy, he worked to compensate for his inexperience and lack of training in order to stay at the top, selecting films and projects, working with film and theater directors who would enable him to evolve into “the super star of the future” (Cinémonde, 1379, January 10, 1961).

Note 1

Olga Horstig-Primuz was one of the most influential agents in post-war French cinema. She was agent to Michèle Morgan on her return from America, then to Edwige Feuillère, Brigitte Bardot, and many more.

4

Dubbing Delon: Voice, Body, and National Stardom in Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960) Catherine O’Rawe

The major French/Italian coproductions starring Alain Delon (Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960), L’eclisse/The Eclipse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962), and Il gattopardo/The Leopard (Visconti, 1963)) have been little studied from the viewpoint of Delon’s star image and performance style. One of the reasons for this is the relative neglect of star studies until recently within the discipline of Italian film studies: additionally, work on star studies in the Italian context has emphasized the need to view stars as “cultural symbol and conduit for ideas about gender, values and national identity” (Gundle 2008, 263) and so has been unable to account for the influence and importance of non-Italian stars working in Italian cinema. Much attention has also been paid to the female stars of postwar Italy such as Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida and their relation to changing conceptions of national identity; the reason why male stars have been comparatively neglected may be due to their perceived universality, in the sense that masculinity is presumed to be invisible or transparent while femininity is the marked, overly visible category.1 The naturalizing of the connection between femininity and beauty (and, indeed, between femininity and women), and the marginalizing of male beauty, have allowed masculinity and male stardom to be taken for granted and to elude analysis in the Italian context. Similarly, Alain Delon’s star persona has been read, most influentially by Ginette Vincendeau, as tied to the context of French national cinema and identity: Vincendeau has said that Delon and Jean Paul Belmondo “redefined French stardom and offered parallel yet divergent visions of French masculinity” (2000, 158).2 In this chapter, for reasons of space, I will examine only Delon’s

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performance style in Rocco e i suoi fratelli, probing the established definitions of his “impassive acting style” (Hayes 2004, 52) and “expressionless face” (Austin 2003, 82). I will raise the question of whether Delon’s critical status as an homme fatal who is “too beautiful” (Vincendeau 2000, 173) has obscured his performance style in these French/Italian films; I will also consider how the fact of dubbing his voice into Italian works to support or undermine his position as erotic object of the camera’s gaze. Finally, I will relate these questions of Delon’s mute beauty and vocal ventriloquism to the film’s use of melodrama, where silence and gesture take on a complex and significant status.

Beauty and stardom Delon has conventionally been considered within a paradigm of national cinema, which has been unable to fully account for his career outside French cinema. Recent contributions, however, have started to reassess him from a transnational perspective: Mark Gallagher (reprinted in this volume) has noted that Delon should be detached from the French context and read through the lens of cosmopolitanism, both in terms of his work across different cinemas and production systems and in terms of the model of pan-European stardom he represented in the 1960s: “in the industrial makeup of films in which he stars, in their settings and locations, and in his casting, as characters of multiple nationalities and social classes, Delon belongs indisputably to interand transnational film industries and screen cultures” (2013, 77). This reading of Delon in terms of a “cosmopolitan masculinity” (2013, 78) chimes with Vincendeau’s earlier assessment of him as “cosmopolitan playboy” (2000, 158) and also accords with Nick Rees-Roberts’ assessment of Delon’s “continental look” (2012, 85) and cosmopolitanism.3 As Gallagher notes, as well as the prestige collaborations with auteurs such as Visconti and Antonioni, Delon played Italian characters in eleven films between 1960 and 1974, including in comedies such as The Yellow Rolls Royce (Asquith, 1964) and Che gioia vivere/The Joy of Living (Clément, 1961). Thus it is difficult, he argues, to fix Delon’s star persona in terms of its indexing of a notional Frenchness rather than of a “charismatic European masculinity” (2013, 82). At the risk of reinstating the model of auteurist prestige, I am going to focus on the collaboration between Visconti and Delon on Rocco; the aspect I want to concentrate on is Delon’s transnationalism (manifested in Rocco of course at a

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linguistic level, by the fact that he was dubbed into Italian) and how this interacts with the critical trope of Delon’s “excessive” beauty. In Visconti’s film Delon plays the eponymous Rocco, one of the five Parondi brothers who move with their mother from southern Italy to Milan in the throes of Italy’s economic miracle of the late 1950s. The saintly Rocco sacrifices himself endlessly for the good of the family, becoming a boxer in order to pay off his brother Simone’s debt and giving up the love of his life, the prostitute Nadia, after she is raped by Simone, who is also her ex-boyfriend. It is interesting that the mass of criticism on Rocco pays little attention to Delon’s performance; Italian criticism, in particular, has been much exercised about the film’s status as meticulously researched document of the Italian boom period or as excessive familial melodrama. Sam Rodhie’s BFI Classic book on Rocco, for example, does not mention Delon at all (1992).4 Equally, the general attention to Delon’s star persona, physicality, and charisma has not allowed for an equivalent attention to his modes of vocal performance: although Mark Gallagher notes that Delon “lacks cultural specificity” and says of Rocco that “even the realist Rocco and his Brothers, produced with the Italian industry’s standard postsynchronized dubbing, defines Delon’s character in physical and psychological terms, and does not require him to speak in a voice evocative of Rocco’s rural, working-class background” (2013, 82), he is virtually alone in mentioning the fact that Delon was dubbed into Italian. This lack of discussion of the dubbing is, in all likelihood, due to the general neglect of the voice in theories and analyses of performance. Pamela Wojcik has noted how the “privileging of the visual over sound in most film theory” reinforces the idea of sound as secondary, and she asserts that voice acting and dubbing are normally viewed as “somehow lesser forms of acting, an assumption that posits the actor’s body as his true instrument and the voice, if unfastened from the body, as somehow lacking” (2006, 71). The bodily focus in star studies means that the expressive characteristics of the voice, its manipulation through technology and sound design, and its relation to miseen-scène are rarely addressed.5 It is interesting to think about some of the ways in which Delon’s supposedly “excessive” beauty might intersect with these neglected questions of voice and accent: Delon, as mentioned above, has been read by Vincendeau as “too beautiful” (2000, 173) and as an homme fatal whose “cruel beauty is deadly to those around him and often to himself ” (2000, 176). She argues that “Delon’s beauty and objectification by the camera bring to the fore the issue of accommodating an eroticized male figure in the context of mainstream cinema,

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traditionally seen as a ‘problem’” (2000, 173–74). Graeme Hayes agrees, talking of Delon’s “narcissistic spectacle of erotic male display” (2004, 47);6 this is clearly visible in the many languorous close-ups and in the framing of Delon in Rocco, to the extent that it might certainly be plausible to include this film in the category suggested by Vincendeau, of “films which simply narrativize Delon’s beauty” (2000, 174). The established trope of Delon’s “femininity” is obviously contiguous with this: Hayes talks of Delon’s “ambiguous masculinity” (2004, 42), his passivity, and his lack of “hypermasculine performativity” (2004, 52), while Danielle Hipkins mentions how Delon-as-Rocco’s “delicate features and silken hair feminize him” (2006, 201, her emphasis).7 The idea that the male star who is the object of the look is rendered passive and “feminine” relates to Kenneth MacKinnon’s view that the male star “who presents his body as an object of the cinematic gaze seems to forfeit his reputation for unassailable masculinity” (1997, 34).8 D. A. Miller says that when Delon turns his face to the camera in one of the lingering close-ups, “he is letting himself be looked at, offering his exquisite face and flesh to the camera with the thrilling submissiveness of an odalisque” (2008, 16, his emphasis). One of the principal ways in which the camera’s lingering on Delon’s face and body in Rocco has been read is through the prism of biography (or anecdote, or gossip), drawing on the frequent, though never substantiated, rumors about the romantic relationship between director and star. This is a common type of reading of Visconti and his male stars: for example, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith has written of Visconti’s “erotic investment” (2003, 212) in his male stars, including Massimo Girotti in Ossessione/Obsession (1943), Delon, and Helmut Berger in La caduta degli dei/The Damned (1969), Ludwig (1972), and Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece (1974). Referring specifically to Girotti in Ossessione, Nowell-Smith notes what he calls the “excessive focus” on Girotti’s body and claims that the film’s “homosexual subtext” pushes focus from the character’s actions onto the body of the actor.9 Derek Duncan has pointed out how this reductive notion of Visconti as a “gay director” (Nowell-Smith 2003, 212) and the fixation on Girotti’s body as a “symptom of Visconti’s homosexuality” (Duncan 2000, 103) ignore the ways in which sexuality and artistic production are linked and fail to take into account how a film like Ossessione “reveals something about how the technology of cinema encourages spectators to look at bodies in a certain way”—the muscular, vest-clad Girotti is constructed as an “improper” object of desire “in a medium that depends on the stability offered by the heterosexual, male gaze” (Duncan 2000, 104).10

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Delon’s beauty and impassivity in Rocco are also yoked to readings of his body as “implausible” (Nowell-Smith 2003, 125)—repeatedly, critics have noted that Delon is unconvincing as a champion boxer, purely because of his physique, and that the excessive attention on his face, via extended close-ups, speaks to an acknowledgment by the film that his body type is incorrect or inappropriate. So Cynthia Grenier declares him “too pretty” to convince,11 while Miller comments on the film’s “extraneous display” of “extraordinary male beauty” (2008, 13) and the “exquisitely handsome” Delon’s implausibility.12 Vernon Young is most hyperbolic, alleging that it is “difficult to accept this long-fingered faun as a career boxer” (1961, 17).13

Dubbing the star This reading of Delon’s implausible physique, however, ignores the language issue: Delon was of course dubbed into Italian for Rocco, as with all his Italian films. This is something that the spectator on a certain level knows but might ignore or disavow when watching the dubbed print subtitled into English. Delon was not alone in being dubbed in Rocco, which was a polyglot production from the point of view of the recording process: French actress Annie Girardot (Nadia), like Delon, spoke her lines in French, as did Corsican Max Cartier (Ciro), while the Greek Katina Paxinou (Rosaria, the mother) was a veteran of Greek stage and screen, and the actor playing Vincenzo (Spiros Focas) was also Greek. All were dubbed into Italian.14 Of the main characters, only Simone (played by the well-known star Renato Salvatori) spoke his lines in Italian. Mark Betz has written interestingly of the “loose play between actor and language, voice and body that is everywhere in operation in not only Italian but also French art cinema of the period” (2009, 86–87).15 Dubbing becomes, as Betz suggests, a “site of incoherence” (2009, 56) in much European art cinema of this period and in films such as Rocco in which there is no authentic cut of the film, no “original” sound track. But it is also supposedly a site of incoherence in the sense that Mary Ann Doane, in her seminal essay on the voice in cinema, pointed to: Doane notes that the synchronization of voice to acting body on screen is partly about “perpetuating the image of unity and identity sustained by this body and staving off the fear of fragmentation.” As she goes on to argue, “synchronization binds the voice to a body in a unity whose immediacy can only be perceived as a given” (1980, 47). Alongside Doane’s view of the fragile union of synchronized voice to

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visible body, we can read that of Shochat and Stam, who argued that dubbing, which can never create a match with the peculiar individuality of the original speaking voice, is “a kind of cultural violence and dislocation” (1985, 52).16 However, Doane’s influential idea that synchronized sound is a bearer of presence, and that synchronization of voice and image forges a harmonious “imaginary unity” (1980, 45) of the fantasmatic on-screen body, offering “the possibility of re-presenting a fuller (and organically unified) body” (1980, 34) has recently been robustly critiqued by Tom Whittaker, in relation to countries such as Spain and Italy that have routinely used dubbing and post-synchronization for a long time. Writing about Spain, Whittaker notes that the ubiquitous presence of the dubbed voice “pointed conspicuously to its technological mediation, at once throwing into doubt the homogeneity of the speaking subject and revealing the visibility of the post-production process” (2012, 295). Whittaker thus argues that Doane’s “harmonious imaginary unity,” which is based on the sound practices of Hollywood cinema, cannot account for the experiences of nonEnglish-speaking audiences, accustomed to seeing their own language often “quite conspicuously out of synch,” emanate from the mouths of foreign stars. As he puts it, “unmoored from the body, the voice would appear to carve out its own space within the film” (2012, 295). Whittaker’s work is in dialogue with that of Antje Ascheid, who has argued convincingly, against Shochat and Stam’s view of dubbing as violation, that “for those spectators well conditioned to accept the dubbed motion picture the impression is a radically different one. In these cases the dubbed film is perceived as an entirely new product.” She suggests that the dubbed version produces “new” characters, “uttering a translated, which always also means interpreted, appropriated and recreated new text” (1997, 33, her emphasis). Ascheid is of course talking about the dubbing of entire films into the target language rather than the mixed practice on display in films such as Rocco. However, it is true that, as dubbing and post-synchronization were standard industry practices in Italy since the 1930s, Italian spectators were indeed well conditioned to accept it.17 The prevalence of post-synchronization in Italy, since the passing of the law in 1933 that required all foreign films to be dubbed into Italian, and the rejection of subtitling, have created, it can be argued, a highly aware spectator who takes on an active role in “anchoring the image to the sound” (Valentini 2007, 177). As Valentini argues, dubbing “imposes a mode of listening that is aware of the heterogeneous character of the sound and images, and constructs a spectator who is complicit but also savvy at attaching voices to faces, accustomed to create a soundtrack for the film out of the sonic signs

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coming from the speakers” (2007, 175). In this way, the labor of the spectators is that of suturing the rupture between voice and body, a labor for which years of watching and hearing dubbed and post-synchronized films have prepared them. This labor goes relatively unnoticed and little comment is passed upon it, apart from in cases where the dubbed voice is deemed flagrantly inappropriate. It is in this context that, in relation to performance and voice, Betz argues that “in the Italian-dubbed, English-subtitled version of Il gattopardo Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon become, are, Italian as an effect of the spectator’s own desire for imagined nationhood through his or her interlingual relation to the film” (2009, 88, his emphasis). The professionalization of dubbing in Italy, which led to a kind of vocal star system whereby the dubbing artists became as well known as the foreign stars in some cases, also, however, led to a standardization of the Italian dubbed voice.18 It is generally a voice that is “impersonal and non-regional” (Ferrari 2011, 31) and has been described as “a standard voice, metallic and slightly echoing” (Fink, quoted in Valentini 2007, 197). The idea of dubbing as inevitably effecting a kind of “cultural leveling” or blandness is a familiar one, and it is certainly true that the dubbed voice replaces the “acoustic signature” of the original with another kind of vocal signature.19 In addition, the case of Delon in Italy is slightly peculiar, as unlike other foreign actors, he was not regularly dubbed by the same dubbing artist and therefore there is no consistency in his vocal “fingerprint” or signature. Delon was dubbed in Rocco by Achille Millo, a Neapolitan-born actor, although Rocco’s voice is not marked by a Neapolitan accent.20

The face and the voice These reflections on the voice and its distinctiveness become more pressing when we view the film using its French dialogue track: one of the things that we notice about Rocco, in fact, is just how little he speaks.21 For much of the first part of the film he is a near-mute, even mocked by the girls with whom he works for his shyness and is called “Sleeping Beauty.” As a consequence, there is an increasing focus on his body and his face, via extensive close-ups, with several moments where he appears to gaze directly into the camera silently. In the scene where Rocco and Simone lie in bed after Rocco has passed on the message to Simone that Nadia has left Milan, there is an excessively long and tight close-up on Rocco’s face as he appears to gaze at the camera (Figure 4.1). This narratively

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Figure 4.1 Delon as Rocco in a prolonged close-up in Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

unmotivated gaze, which lasts over twelve seconds, accompanied by the main motif of the melodramatic Nino Rota score, represents the moment that Miller described as “Delon letting himself be looked at,” although Miller qualifies that reading by asserting that the close-up here becomes so extreme that “it transforms the homoerotic image into a deathly one” and “the living pin-up droops into almost a morgue slide” (2008, 16). The terms of this discussion, though, illustrate the degree to which Delon is here read as silently passive, as an erotic and/or deathly beautiful image. The nature and significance of Rocco’s silence need to be interrogated: this silent, hyperbolic close-up comes at the end of Simone’s long, bitter speech about Nadia’s worthlessness. Although Simone keeps turning his gaze to Rocco as he speaks, the camera does not follow that gaze as we might expect and remains focused on Simone. It is only when Simone has finished speaking and has turned over in bed, pulling the covers over him, that the camera pans over to the other bed where Rocco is lying. Rocco’s response to Simone’s last injunction (“if I ever see her again I’ll turn the other way. If you see her, tell her that!”) is to turn his face to the camera and lift his arm behind his head. Rocco’s mute face here, which dissolves into the next shot, of him leaving the army barracks after which he will bump into Nadia, is the face of destiny, signaling a decisive narrative moment and the direction the film will go in. The meaning of Delon’s contemplative silence here has to be read through or against his facial expression: if the closeup, in Doane’s words, “requires no language” (2003, 93), it offers itself as “an intense phenomenological experience of presence, and yet, simultaneously, that

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deeply experienced entity becomes a sign, a text, a surface that demands to be read” (2003, 94). She also reminds us that it is the facial close-up that, “together with the voice, allow[s] us a privileged access to the humanity of the other” (2003, 106). Alongside these charged silences and lingering close-ups runs the film’s strong current of melodrama, which is often interpreted through its most emotionally charged and hysterical scenes—the rape of Nadia, her dramatic murder crosscut with Rocco’s boxing victory, the high pitch of hysteria when Rocco finds out Simone is a murderer. But it is important that we also bear in mind the sense of melodrama as, in the work of Peter Brooks, the “text of muteness” (1995, 56). In classical melodrama silence operates as an index of innocence, of victimhood, often standing for the inability to defend oneself against the Law. As Brooks says, mute gesture “is an expressionistic means—precisely the means of melodrama— to render meanings which are ineffable, but nonetheless operative within the sphere of human ethical relationships” (1995, 72). Rocco’s silent close-ups elsewhere function as an index of sacrifice: when he and Ciro and Vincenzo visit the corrupt boxing promoter Morini to find out how much money Simone owes him, again the close-up on Rocco’s face as he swings round to face the camera signals his acceptance of his destiny. The spectator knows that Rocco is deciding to sacrifice himself for Simone, by agreeing to the boxing career he does not want, in order to pay Simone’s debt. Close-ups thus position Rocco as inexplicable victim: when Vincenzo bewilderedly asks Rocco why he is doing this as he hates boxing, Rocco’s close-up is accompanied by his words “is there another way to save Simone from his fate?” and a further, lingering, close-up. The inexplicable nature of Rocco’s sacrifice is of course heightened by the fact that by this point in the film Rocco has witnessed Simone rape Nadia, punishing her for her betrayal of him when she started secretly dating Rocco. The rape scene also shows us Rocco’s muteness, as after being forced to watch Nadia being raped, he weeps, and she staggers over to him, begging him to “say something.” Rocco merely covers his face, and Nadia walks off, watched by all the men. This moment, which Hipkins (2006, 204) terms “a moment for which few spectators can really forgive [Rocco],” nonetheless aligns Rocco and Nadia as victims of Simone and of a malignant destiny. The climax of this shared victimhood is reached during the film’s use of crosscutting between Rocco and Nadia, when Nadia is murdered by Simone at the end of the film. The crosscutting between Rocco’s championship bout and Nadia’s stabbing by Simone sees Nadia raise her arms in resignation as Simone approaches with

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his knife and Rocco raising his arms in triumph as he wins the bout, having committed his life to the redemption of Simone and the payment of his debts. Rocco/Delon’s silence, however, must be read in tandem with his mode of speech and its presentation in the film. This is particularly evident in key scenes, such as the encounter between Rocco and Nadia on the roof of the Milan Duomo after the rape, when Nadia begs Rocco to take her back. We can note several things here: firstly, Nadia’s impassioned diatribe against Simone, shot from above, with Delon’s face obscured from the camera, is received impassively by Rocco, who tells her merely that she must return to Simone. Rocco then presses his face into the wall as he delivers his short speech of recrimination for himself and Nadia (“we thought we could start a new life together, without thinking of the harm we were doing to others”). It is only when Nadia impatiently cries “why are you tormenting me so?” that Rocco turns his face toward the camera, and a lingering close-up shows his beautiful face marked by bruises and a band-aid, with a single tear running down his cheek, eyes half-closed in suffering (Figure 4.2). His only response to Nadia, apart from the tear, is to say simply “we will never see each other again.” Rocco’s lack of language is compensated for by the lingering close-up here which reveals his own victimhood. The single tear of melodrama, for Steve Neale, occurs in the space or gap where emotional meaning cannot be fully conveyed: “it is a gap marked not only in the significance of gesture and the inarticulate cry, but also in the non-coincidence of points of view and knowledge” (1986, 19).

Figure 4.2 Delon as Rocco suffering in close-up in Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

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The knowledge the spectator has of Rocco’s motivations is never adequate, and the frustration that Nadia has as she shouts “you’ll regret this, but it will be too late! I hate you! I hate you!” and runs off articulates the spectator’s frustration at Rocco’s pointless sacrifice. On the level of dialogue, Italian speakers will note here that the dubbed dialogue of Rocco in the last part of the scene becomes significantly more dialectal  in quality, as he talks about his relationship with Nadia and his betrayal of his brother, inviting us to reflect, on the level of character, on Rocco’s destructive attachment to his family and roots. Listening to the French soundtrack, in which both Delon and Annie Girardot perform in French, we hear the timbre of the voices, the intonation (of course even the French dialogue was post-synchronized), reminding us of Roland Barthes’ words in “The Grain of the Voice,” in which the “grain” is “the materiality of the body speaking its mother tongue” (Barthes 1977, 182) that sets up an erotic relation with the body of the performer. Both Delon and Girardot have a much softer intonation in French, and Delon’s dialogue in particular sounds much harsher and more metallic, in Fink’s sense, in Italian. His pronunciation of the line in French, “we thought we could start a new life together” (nous avons cru pouvoir recommencer ensemble une vie nouvelle) gives a sad weariness to the intonation, which is attenuated in the more clipped Italian dialogue. Rocco’s sacrifice becomes, in the original speaking of the dialogue, if not understandable, at least more emotionally grounded. Doane’s thoughts on the “pleasure of hearing” are relevant here, as she describes the “specificity of the pleasure of hearing a voice with its elements escaping a strictly verbal codification—volume, timbre, rhythm, pitch” (1980, 43). Delon’s “acoustic signature,” his Parisian accent, of course would be nonsensical for Rocco, the southerner transplanted to Milan; yet, hearing it reminds us of the importance of accent and intonation in thinking about characterization, performance, and the relation to the body of the performer. In a later scene, after Rocco has improbably become world champion, he offers a toast to this family, again resorting to southern Italian dialect. The Italian audio track, in conjunction with Nino Rota’s melancholy score, once again emphasizes this atavistic attachment to the rural south, which the move to Milan has destroyed. Yet again, the climax of Rocco’s sententious speech (“it takes a sacrifice for the house to become strong”) is delivered in an extremely tight and hyperbolic close-up, this time side-on, lingering on his cheekbone and on the plaster above his eye, the mark of the sacrifice of himself and Nadia, as the wound was inflicted by Simone after the rape of Nadia. This silent contemplation

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of Rocco’s face, which almost overwhelms the vocal performance, does the work of positioning Rocco again as the sacrificial victim because of whom the Parondi house might flourish; the French track reiterates that in French Delon’s speech is more soulful and heartfelt, as opposed to the crisper pronunciation of the Italian dubber. The interplay between face and voice is here important in underlining the complex nature of how Delon’s performance is constructed in this film, both vocally through the dubbing of his voice and in terms of cinematography that makes proximity to his face its key characteristic. The melodramatic climax of the film, as Rocco and Simone writhe on the bed after the revelation that Simone has killed Nadia, is the magnificent height of Viscontian male melodrama, and it is significant that Delon’s dialogue in the scene is mainly restricted to sobs and inarticulate cries of grief and anguish. Comparing the French and Italian audio tracks, the quality of his sobs and of this phatic communication is subtly different. Delon sounds as though he is sobbing authentically on the French dialogue track, pausing between sobs to draw breath, while the Italian version has him almost shouting or screaming, at a much higher and more insistent emotional pitch. This affective quality is important: not only does it speak to different cultural modes of emotional expression but the French version suggests that the communication of voice and body are merged and gives the illusion of authenticity of expression, that external emotion is the outpouring of inner feeling. As Jacob Smith writes in relation to language, sound, and performance style: “timbre and inflection of the voice trump words as the site of authentic or truthful expression” (2008, 96).

Conclusion If Delon’s physique is “wrong” for the film, his fragility calling attention to the mimetic implausibility of fit of the actor to the role, his face is overdetermined by the camera. Rather than understanding that overdetermination of the face as a symptom of a homosexual director in love with his actor, can we instead read it as an attempt to overcompensate for the idea that both Delon and Rocco lack a voice, in the sense that Rocco is a dumb, feminized Sleeping Beauty and sacrificed innocent and also in the sense of Delon as dubbed star? Delon’s voice is elsewhere (in what Tom Whittaker (2012, 293) calls the “ubiquitous yet elusive location of dubbing”), though it can now be reclaimed through DVD technology. If the voice of the actor is a confirmation of their authorship of the

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role (thinking of Doane’s description of speech “as an individual property right,” 1980, 34), it is one that audiences are frequently surprisingly happy to overlook. The restoration of a spoken language is a reminder of the uncanny vocal effect caused by Delon’s nationality and also makes us think further about the link between language, nationality, and the relation of face, body, and voice to the cinematic apparatus.

Notes 1

See Grignaffini (1988) and Gundle (2007). On Loren, see Gundle (1995) and Small (2009); on Lollobrigida, see Buckley (2000). On masculinity and male stars in Italian cinema, see O’Rawe (2014). 2 Graeme Hayes agrees that Delon is a “significant figure for the construction of French national and masculine identities” (2004, 42). 3 Rees-Roberts argues that Delon shared this cosmopolitan persona in the 1960s with Marcello Mastroianni. Soila also aligns Delon and Mastroianni as “pan-European stars” in the early 1960s, to be read in opposition to forms of “vernacular stardom” (quoted in Gallagher 2013, 83). 4 Cinotto (2006) and Foot (1999) offer readings of the film that root it in the historical context of 1960s Italy. 5 The three principal characteristics of the voice that Wojcik identifies are the rhythm of speech (including the use of silence and pauses), the grain of the voice, and the accent (2006, 72). 6 Rees-Roberts similarly refers to Delon’s persona in terms of “homo-narcissism” (2012, 86). 7 A 1962 profile of Delon in Italian sports newspaper Totocalcio describes him as a “mannequin” and an “actor-young lady” (attore-signorina) (Ponti 1962, 13). It also fixates on his beauty, claiming that “Apollo would have had to award him the prize in an all-time beauty contest,” though also suggests that Delon is troubled by discussions of his beauty: “Alain is upset. He would prefer to be the Burt Lancaster type [his costar in Visconti’s Gattopardo], who is all man. Instead, as he is, he appears almost to be wearing make-up.” 8 See also Neale (1983). 9 “It does not require a special antenna to recognize the director’s erotic investment in the performance of certain actors” (Nowell-Smith 2003, 212). 10 Miller’s reading of Rocco is interesting in its avoidance of this kind of biographical speculation: although he comments on the narratively unmotivated beauty of Rocco and Simone and the use of “appreciative close-ups or long shots” (2008, 13),

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Alain Delon he is more interested in the homoerotic tension between the brothers and in the ways that the erotic passivity of Delon is ultimately consigned to the “nostalgic, bereft form of the photograph,” referring to the montage of photos of Rocco as champion boxer that ends the film. “Title brother Rocco, played by the French matinee idol Alain Delon, seems rather too pretty to be the champion boxer that the plot requires him to be” (1960, 28). “No-one can pretend for a moment that Rocco Parondi, country boy and worldclass boxer, looks like anything but the exquisitely handsome movie star who plays him, Alain Delon” (Miller 2008, 12). See also the contemporary review by Joseph Bennett, who says: “Visconti cast Alain Delon, a Frenchman, as Rocco–at some cost in terms of his skinniness, which makes him only the unreal shadow of the boxing champion he is supposed to be” (1962, 283). The review in the Italian paper L’Unità complained that Delon was “perhaps worshipped a little too much by the camera” (Muzii 1960, 3). Rocco and his Brothers, as mentioned, was a French-Italian coproduction (produced by Titanus with Les Films Marceau), which explains at least the economic imperative for the casting of French stars. As he notes, “to demand a unilingual Italian soundtrack” for films such as Rocco and Il gattopardo is to “erase the linguistic polyvocality that registers the political economy of art filmmaking in the country from the 1950s through the 1970s” (2009, 87). “To graft one language, with its own system of linking sound and gesture, onto the visible behavior associated with another, then, is to foster a kind of cultural violence or dislocation” (1985, 52). They describe voices as “as irreducibly individual as fingerprints” (1985, 49). See also Sisto (2014, 9) on dubbing as “cultural and semiotic violence” in Italian film. Nornes concurs that “dubbing is mired in corruption because it completely erases the experience of foreign sound, one of the most crucial material aspects of language” (1999, 34). As Luyken states in relation to television audiences used to watching dubbed programs: “the strong polarization in the use of method between the ‘dubbing’ and ‘subtitling’ countries is of significance, as audience research has shown that television viewers are very strongly conditioned by the respective predominant methods and, therefore, attitudes to, as well as acceptance of, different or new methods take a long time to mature” (1991, 38). Shochat and Stam term this a “parasitic star system” (1985, 50). The notion of “acoustic signature” was used by Neepa Majumdar in her keynote talk, “Listening to Stardom: Considerations of Voice in Star Studies,” given at the conference on “Revisiting Star Studies” at Newcastle University, 12 June 2013. The term “cultural leveling” is used by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (1968, 146). Bordwell

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and Thompson (2004, 388) talk of the “bland studio sound” of dubbed voices and go so far as to say that “dubbing simply destroys part of the film.” 20 In Il gattopardo Delon was dubbed by Carlo Sabatini, a Roman, despite the fact that Delon’s character is Sicilian. Delon’s performance as Rocco was generally praised by the Italian press, and I have found no reviews that mention the fact of his dubbing. 21 The French dialogue track is now available as an option on the Eureka! Masters of Cinema DVD of the film (2008).

5

Delon/Gabin/Verneuil: Modernity within Tradition Leila Wimmer

Delon made his film debut in 1957 playing a young hit man in Yves Allégret’s Quand la femme sans mêle/Send a Woman When the Devil Fails. After a string of internationally recognized performances in René Clément’s Plein soleil/ Purple Noon (1960), Luchino Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (1960), and Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse/The Eclipse (1962), in 1963, Delon returned to French cinema and to the crime film of his debut appearing opposite Jean Gabin in Henri Verneuil’s hugely successful Mélodie en sous-sol/Any Number Can Win (1963). Delon was keen to achieve popular stardom in French cinema at a time when Jean-Paul Belmondo’s appearance opposite Gabin in Verneuil’s comedy Un singe en hiver/A Monkey in Winter (1962) had granted him mainstream star status. Delon hadn’t yet established the tough guy persona that would become his trademark and this return to the gangster genre marked the beginning of a transition in his star persona, between Clément’s Plein soleil and his tough gangster image of the later 1960s, notably in Le Samouraï/The Samurai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967), Le Clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (Verneuil, 1969), and Borsalino (Jacques Deray, 1969). Given Gabin’s status as the godfather of French cinema, it is important to examine the significance of this cinematic couple and what this reveals about the tensions between modernity and tradition, which are the crucible of the Delon persona. This chapter explores the pairing of Delon and Gabin in the popular heist movies Mélodie en sous-sol (1963) and Le Clan des Siciliens (1969), both directed by Henri Verneuil, one of the most successful French popular auteurs of postwar cinema. Mélodie en sous-sol, the first film uniting the young Delon with the

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mature Gabin, is a seminal crime film of the early 1960s, both in terms of its boxoffice success and in terms of the formation of Delon’s popular tough guy image, marking a turning point in his career (Brassart 2004, 180). Similarly, Le Clan des Siciliens was successful as a vehicle for both stars, this time alongside Lino Ventura, yet another iconic figure of French on-screen masculinity. Verneuil’s films reiterate a similar scenario with Delon as the surrogate son offering Gabin, the symbolic father, a narcissistic (and nostalgic) mirror image of masculinity. However, as we shall see, in Le Clan des Siciliens, the father-son relationship has evolved. Delon is not an inexperienced young apprentice anymore and is totally isolated from the clan. He is killed by the patriarch. This chapter examines how Delon’s projection of an increasingly wounded melancholic masculinity is constructed in a dialectical opposition to the bourgeois patriarchal figure incarnated by what Ginette Vincendeau has described as “the Gabin paradigm” (Vincendeau 2000, 70). Detailed attention will be given to the contradictory values these two masculine archetypes incarnate and how they yield “both connections and oppositions” (Brassart 2004, 186) that reflect on some of the tensions and contradictions of postwar French society. Reference will also be made to their final pairing in Deux hommes dans la ville/Two Men in Town (José Giovanni, 1973) in order to account for the specificity of this cinematic couple. Considering the pairing of Gabin and Delon is helpful in order to elucidate the specific representation of masculinity that has underpinned Delon’s star persona and allowed him to build such a long lasting career in popular French film. Although he has been paired with many international male stars, the duo with Gabin offers an illuminating insight into the articulation of the Delon persona when confronted with the structuring figure of dominant French masculinity represented by the older star. In all their films together, the staging of masculinity is shaped through the aforementioned father–son relationship and I argue here that it is possible to read them together in terms of the changing configuration of a filial bond which is organized according to a three act structure; the establishment of their relationship and the world they live in; the antagonism and crisis; and finally the reconciliation and the resolution of their story. While Mélodie en sous-sol and Le Clan des Siciliens differ in terms of their narrative dramatization of generational conflict, with Deux hommes dans la ville, they provide a setting for the unraveling of symbolic relationships centered on the figure of an aging criminal patriarch and his unruly gangster “son.”

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Henri Verneuil and popular French cinema Between 1962 and 1963, Verneuil directed two films based on the same premise: pairing Gabin, the doyen of French cinema, with an emblematic figure of the emerging generation of French film actors. Gabin appeared opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo in Un singe en hiver (this was their only partnership). In contrast to Belmondo’s comic persona, Delon developed an ambiguous homme fatal image through his association with the thriller genre, which had begun his career. Mélodie en sous-sol was Delon’s first French mainstream film after his interlude in prestigious Italian auteur films and, as mentioned, it also marked his return to the policier after his debut in Quand la femme sans mêle where he played Jo, a cold-blooded but also sentimental and vulnerable young hit man who comes to a tragic end. A character blending both feminine and masculine traits, this role fashioned his star persona (Brassart 2004, 150). Both Delon and Gabin played an important role in the popularity of the policier. Touchez pas au Grisbi/Hands Off the Loot, Jacques Becker’s 1954 landmark film about aging gangsters set in the Parisian milieu, has been credited with marking both the flourishing of the genre in postwar French cinema and with reviving Gabin’s postwar career. Discussing the evolution of the Gabin persona, Ginette Vincendeau shows how the star had moved on to occupy the place of a patriarchal father figure, “a reassuring point of identification in a time of great change and modernization” (Vincendeau 2000, 76). In the majority of his postwar films, Gabin is placed within a male group where his manhood is structured by a dynamic where the narrative contrasts his virility with one or two masculine doubles which are either pale copies or frightening symbols of otherness. Vincendeau also observes that the narcissism of the glamorous proletarian hoodlum associated with the prewar Gabin persona is deflected away from his person and relayed through the figure of a young handsome hero positioned as a symbolic son “who is nevertheless a pale ‘shadow’ of himself ” (1995, 256). Verneuil was known for his popular thrillers, frequently featuring some of the biggest stars of French cinema, and enjoyed a career spanning forty years and over thirty films. Verneuil was born Achod Malachian and his Armenian refugee family had arrived in France in 1924, settling in Marseilles. Verneuil entered the film industry in 1949 after having successfully convinced Fernandel, one of the biggest stars of the era, to appear for free in his first short film. Fernandel subsequently appeared in Verneuil’s first six features, all of which had immense box office success. After traditional comedy, Verneuil moved on to thrillers

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and psychological dramas and the commercial success of his films opened the doors of Hollywood to him, as well as a number of big budget international productions, though they were not as successful as his French thrillers. Most of Verneuil’s films were big budget, commercial successes, often adapted from popular literary classics, featuring some of the biggest stars of the moment. In addition to the harnessing of star power, which made his films massively popular with French audiences, Verneuil also often chose to work with a regular set of scriptwriters and dialogue writers such as Michel Audiard. The reason why his films have not sustained critical acclaim is due in part because of the lack of general interest for French popular filmmakers (both in and outside France) and because he was at some point the bête noire of the French New Wave, a perfect manifestation of what they wanted to dislodge—a technically brilliant craftsman whose work often offers challenges to the notion of authorship. In addition, one could argue that rather than the director, the source of meaning and signification in the films of Verneuil are the stars. While much work on the French crime film has focused on Jean-Pierre Melville (see, for example, Vincendeau 2003), with whom he is often negatively compared, Verneuil has been largely ignored by film history and apart from a largely biographical study of his life and work (Vignaud 2008), little scholarly attention has been paid to the masculine world of Verneuil’s thrillers. Like Melville, and in the tradition of French crime cinema more generally, Verneuil’s noir thrillers are male stories and the male characters in his films inhabit a homosocial milieu that mostly exclude or marginalize women. However, in contrast with Melville’s “abstract, generic noir space” (Vincendeau 2003, 146), in the films of Verneuil, the social background of the characters is often carefully sketched. One difference between the two directors also lies in the way that they use the Delon persona. For instance, in contrast with Melville’s view of autistic masculinity and male existential loneliness where Delon plays an asexual tragic hero who has renounced sexuality (Pillard 2011, 91), in his Verneuil films, as we will see, he is both a gangster and a playboy who fails because of his sexual desire for and association with women.

Generational tensions in postwar France: Mélodie en sous-sol Mélodie en sous-sol was the first in a series of high budget crime thrillers directed by Verneuil (his seventh collaboration with Audiard and his fourth with Gabin after Des gens sans importance/People of No Importance (1956), Le Président/The

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President (1961), and Un singe en hiver (1962)). Partly produced by MGM, the second role (to Gabin as protagonist) was initially intended for Jean-Louis Trintignant. However, Delon, keen to appear in a big budget mainstream French film with Gabin, managed to get the part by agreeing to receive the distribution rights for Japan, China, and the USSR instead of a salary. With more than three million viewers in France, it was a big commercial hit though critics were divided about the film. Drawn from the American roman noir The Big Grab by novelist John Trinian, the film is a classic heist movie and a prime example of the French policiers of the postwar period, such as Touchez pas au Grisbi and Bob le flambeur (Melville, 1956). The film was loosely adapted by two of the best known scriptwriters of the era—Audiard and Albert Simonin—whose colorful dialogues foreground a highly recognizable form of vernacular slang that sets the tone of the narrative and establishes a tough masculine ethos as well as working to anchor the film’s identity in French popular culture. The film tells the story of Charles, an aging criminal just released from prison who returns home to the northern Paris suburb of Sarcelles, to find that his neighborhood has been converted into a high-rise council estate. Gabin/Charles is reunited with Viviane Romance/Gina of La Belle Équipe/They Were Five (Julien Duvivier, 1936), who plays his wife Ginette. Ginette wants them to settle down and become a respectable couple by buying a small restaurant in the south of France, but Charles has other plans. To purchase his projected retirement in Australia, Charles wants to commit one final heist—the vault of the Palm Beach hotel in Cannes. He enlists his ex-cellmate Francis (Delon) as well as Louis Naudin (Maurice Biraud), the latter’s brother-in-law, a mechanic. However, though they are able to pull off the crime, they are not allowed to escape with the money because Francis botches the job. Delon’s films with Gabin belong to the sub-genre of the heist film where skills, practice, and perfect timing are used as a remedy against masculinity in crisis, showing how the old social unit of family or clique can rise to defeat the manifestation of the new, impersonal social structure (see Kaminsky 1974). In French cinema of the postwar period more specifically, Thomas Pillard has pointed out that the crime film is marked by two major preoccupations: the confrontation of a patriarch with the figures of otherness of contemporary French society and the questioning of the compatibility between tradition (Frenchness) and modernity (American) (Pillard 2013, 576). French noir, observes Pillard, articulates a complex discourse on postwar French society by setting up a series of confrontations between a patriarchal protagonist and his others; the legendary

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figure of the aging gangster embodies “a certain idea of France and a cultural memory which needs to be preserved and transmitted.” French noir thus “insists on raising the issue of the difficulty of preserving the continuity of this memory in contemporary France by setting up a series of oppositions between the old generation and the young; French and foreigners; men and women; archaism and modernity” (Pillard 2013, 576). In the crime film of the 1950s, Pillard notes further, it is “Gabin who is the custodian of a communal heritage that threatens to disappear faced with the mutations of the post-war period” (Pillard 2013, 532). Verneuil begins Mélodie en sous-sol by deploying a quasi-documentary approach to immerse the spectator in the social world of the protagonists, carefully establishing their social background. The film can also be read as a commentary on postwar modernization by setting up an opposition between two social worlds, contrasting the suburban Parisian milieu of the first half of the film and its brutal urban modernity with the glamorous and fashionable ambiance of the French Riviera in its second half, its lavish setting underscored by widescreen compositions around Cannes and along the French Riviera where we observe a fashionably dressed young Delon, in dark glasses and riding an open top car. The film opens with a shot of Gare du nord and the suburban Parisian setting is then carefully established by the use of location shooting in Sarcelles. The first sequence and opening credits immerse the spectator into the urban alienation experienced by Gabin’s character and hints at a critique of postwar urbanization. Reflecting Gabin’s tense relationship with the new, modern France, his character is etched as the aging alienated victim of a world gone cold in the push toward modernization. The next sequence, in which he is wandering lost in the Sarcelles banlieue, also works to underline the clash between the old and the new and indeed some critics saw the film as a satire of a contemporary French society where individual gain and greed have replaced the working-class ethos of hard work (Chapier 1963). Shot on location in Sarcelles, previously a small village surrounded by farm land north of Paris, the opening of the film thus registers the shifts that France is experiencing during the new era of state-led modernization by showing us through Charles’s eyes the largest and most notorious prototype of the industrial housing of the so-called grands ensembles built throughout the 1960s. Lost in this concrete jungle, Charles can’t find his modest detached house, a symbol of the popular dream of the inter-war period, which is now surrounded by inhuman, gigantic tower blocks, a reminder that the world has passed him by. Thwarted by the monolithic uniformity of the collective housing, his figure is

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rendered minuscule by high angle shots that register his dismay. An alien in his surroundings, there seems to be no place for Charles in the emerging Sarcelles banlieue. The conversations of the travelers on the train that Charles had taken to Sarcelles earlier revealed the new preoccupations of French workers: holidays on credit in Greece, camping, and new automobiles, and the sequence aligned us with the aging gangster as his voiceover commentary conveys the intensity of his contempt for the new lifestyle and preoccupations of the average French man. Thus begin the opening credits, setting the scene to the sound of the hot jazz soundtrack by Michel Magne, which will underscore the narrative by alternating between kinetic energy and ominous tension. We are then introduced to Francis Verlot (Delon), a typical blouson noir delinquent of the youth subculture, which was emblematic of the increasingly strained relations between the generations produced by the forces of modernization (Dubet and Lapeyronnie 1992, 49–65). Clad in a black leather jacket, we see Francis idle in bed listening to jazz, establishing his outsider status and his rebellious nature. Francis is unemployed and has been to prison. Like Charles, he is constrained by a female figure, his mother in this case, who scolds him for not having a job. After this heated conflict, which exposes the problematic bond between mother and son, Francis leaves home and walks the streets of Montmartre, therefore anchoring his character within the traditional old-time territory of the French gangster films of the 1930s and 1950s. The film connects him to the prewar masculine values of Montmartre and the Gabin of Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier, 1937), a site of memory, which underlines the continuity of tradition and the survival of the past. However, the film also links with the new cinema of the late 1950s/early 1960s; in a scene reminiscent of Godard’s A bout de souffle/Breathless (1960), Francis pauses in front of a local theater displaying the posters of American B-movies The Enforcer (Raoul Walsh, 1951), The Great Sioux Uprising (Lloyd Bacon, 1953), and Back to God’s Country (Joseph Pevney, 1953). Francis thus acts as a bridge between the old and the new, reflecting the mutations of a France embarking on a process of rapid modernization. These mutations are largely played out in the terrain of masculinity. As Pillard has noted, one of the key characteristics of 1950s French gangster films such as Touchez pas au Grisbi or Bob le flambeur is the formation of a masculine group dominated by a symbolic father figure who has authority over a family of men (Pillard 2013, 532). In his postwar films, Gabin is a patriarchal tutelary figure, the nostalgic embodiment of pre–Second World War French cinema and of 1930s France; Gabin’s performance, thus

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“functions as a measure of what has changed, what is changing and what also has disappeared” (Pillard 2013, 532). In Mélodie en sous-sol, Charles dominates the dull, settled, and emasculated family man represented by Louis, who acts as a foil to the sense of mutual respect between Francis, the inexperienced son, and his symbolic father (Charles). The trio is thus crucial in setting up a parallel that underscores the similarities and differences between Charles and Francis and the notion that the young Francis/Delon offers an updated image of the old, merging a certain modernity with the traditional French values represented by Charles/Gabin. In the original source novel, the aging gangster reflects on the fact that “several times and not without irritation, the young hood had felt like a double of himself ” (Trinian 1961, 104). In Mélodie en sous-sol, the aging gangster hands over his experience to the young thug by educating him into the art of criminality. Though concealed by the minimalist performance of the two actors, Mélodie en sous-sol thus provides a metaphorical link between two generations and establishes the filial relationship that will be expanded upon in later films. We hear in voiceover Charles teaching Francis how to dress and speak, guiding him on how to proceed with the heist and indeed Roberto Chiesi contends that “Gabin can be compared to a film director who has found the ideal actor for an intricate miseen-scene” (2003, 24). The preparation of the hold-up is marked by a constant suspense stemming from Gabin’s doubts (and through him of the viewer) about Delon’s ability to carry out the heist, a testing of his masculinity, which comes to a crux during the final sequence. The two poles of French masculinity defined by the duo, which is thus a key concern of the film, comes to a climax in the final scene as they face each other across the swimming pool, surrounded by the police. Delon is tense; Gabin’s face is cold and impassive. Francis has been undone by his youth, arrogance, and inexperience and, more importantly, by his failing to retain the cool self-control required of the tough gangster during his seduction of the showgirl which they need to get access to the casino and by his decision to hide away the loot in the water. This new “feminized” masculinity is set as a contrast to Charles’ traditional macho virility, re-established once he had moved away from the “castrating” feminine space of the home where his wife had tried to remind him, in vain, that it might be time to retire. Throughout the film, Louis, the third member of this “family of men”, is, as suggested, completely emasculated by being associated with the bland masculinity of the average middle-aged working-class family man derided by Gabin on his train ride to Sarcelles. Louis is represented as a weak character (he has qualms about the

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heist) and contrasts with both Delon’s erotic charisma and Gabin’s monumental mentor figure. The film overall is thus in a sense emblematic of the ambiguous inflections of the Delon persona in its reflection of the contradictions of French society at the beginning of the 1960s, torn between fascination for and rejection of modernity; as Brassart has pointed out, “Delon embodies these contradictions” (Brassart 2004, 218). The ending is particularly revealing of the importance of the tension between symbolic father and son, tradition and modernity, as they stare at each other across the pool. Despite offering an ending that implies ambiguity, however, the reconciliation between the two generations is nevertheless marked by the dominance of the traditional virility embodied by Gabin and set against Delon’s vulnerability and youthful failure. The postwar period saw the extraordinary rise of crime narratives both in literary fiction and French cinema and, in an attempt to explain this popularity, Claire Gorrara has argued that in the context of rapid postwar reconstruction, crime’s valorization of violent working-class criminal masculinities provides “a site of countercultural politics, challenging the myths of a seamless and a-historical process of modernization” (2007, 158). Interwoven with this concern for capitalist expansion and technocratic modernization broader socio-cultural shifts were at play in relation to gender roles. The early 1960s were marked by the social prominence of the young cadre, a young male manager or engineer who served as a new model of masculinity and a symbol of the values of modernization and consumer society. Kristin Ross notes that this is a being whose “adaptability bordering on passivity … amounted to a distinct loss of virility” (1995, 175) and, in Mélodie en sous-sol, both Charles and Francis can be seen as the other side of the coin of the economic and social mutations of the postwar period. Deborah E. Hamilton has also observed that in the French new roman noir “the character of the anti-hero challenges the vision of a reconstruction and modernization of postwar France associated with the United States, depicted as portended by unequivocal prosperity and progress” (2000, 233). For Hamilton, “inherent within the roman noir’s impulse as a supposedly progressive genre, then, is its attempt to reconcile change within tradition by setting its innovations in the context of established gender relations” (2000, 234, 239). Modernization, then, does not challenge structural forms of male privilege and the hard-boiled male ethos of the policier can thus be read in the context of broader social and cultural shifts with regards to gender roles; the threat to traditional masculinity represented by the growth of a feminized consumer society and its technocratic new cadre who, as mentioned, rose to prominence in the transition to modernization after

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the Second World War and the decline of the strong paternal figure as the social changes of the 1960s unfolded.

Honor among thieves: Le Clan des Siciliens and Deux hommes dans la ville In Le Clan des Siciliens, the second meeting of Delon with Gabin, three symbolic masculine bodies of 1960s French noir are united, a legendary casting of three generations of major stars which this time was made possible by Twentieth Century Fox. Like subsequent others in the genre such as Le Cercle rouge and Borsalino, Le Clan can be considered as the epitome of the French blockbuster, designed to counter the “crisis of French cinema of the 1960s—genre films displaying cinema’s attractions of a massive scale, in terms of color, landscapes and stars” (Vincendeau 2003, 191). Lino Ventura plays tough commissioner Le Goff who is determined to find convicted cop killer Roger Sartet (Delon) who has escaped from custody and is enemy number one. Jean Gabin plays Vittorio Manalese, head of the Manalese crime family. With help from Sartet, the clan plans an airborne jewel heist that they pull off. However, Sartet’s seduction of Jeanne, the wife of Manalese’s eldest son, upsets the Sicilian clan’s family decorum and leads to his death at the hands of the godfather. The film draws on the 1966 crime novel by noir novelist and scriptwriter Auguste Le Breton (1913–1999), who was the author of several iconic polars adapted in the cinema such as Razzia sur la Chnouf/Razzia (Henri Decoin, 1954) and Du Rififi chez les hommes/Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955) and a writer whose work “highlights the fatalism of those trapped in the margins of society” (Hamilton 2000, 233). Le Clan des Siciliens was extremely successful at the box office; marketed on the basis of Delon’s stellar casting, Delon’s link to the scandal of the Markovic affair raging in the press at the time in which his former body guard was found murdered also brought the film further publicity and an additional layer of authenticity to his ambiguous star persona. From the opening sequence onward, the modern soundtrack by Ennio Morricone establishes an elegiac and mournful tone, mixing both suspense and melancholy. Though Le Clan des Siciliens plays on Delon’s iconic image in Le Samouraï (Delon had already appeared in Melville’s film which had cemented his iconic homme fatal image, mythologizing his persona of wounded nostalgic masculinity as a social type), its dominant concern is with the codes and values of patriarchy, foregrounding the problematic of honor among thieves

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while the fatalism of the noir narrative is channeled through the crisis of the anti-hero Sartet. Though it is important not to underplay the crucial impact of Le Samouraï on Delon’s star persona, there are some significant differences in terms of the staging of masculinity in his Verneuil films, not least because of the symbolic filial relationship introduced by his pairing with Gabin but also because of the sexual tensions generated by the introduction of female characters. For, if, as Vincendeau argues in the Melville films, Delon’s autistic, melancholy masculinity is associated with a loss of libido and withdrawal from Eros (2003, 179, 185), in Verneuil, Delon’s hoodlum doubles as a romantic lead and it is this involvement with women which leads to the failed trajectory of his doomed noir hero, most emblematically in Le Clan des Siciliens. Thus, while the centerpiece of the film, as in Mélodie en sous-sol is the spectacular thirty minutes long heist itself, the narrative is also concerned with sounding out the psychology of the main three characters. Here Sartet/Delon is confronted by two older symbolic father figures: the agent of the law represented by Le Goff (Ventura) and the primal totemic father represented by Vittorio Manalese (Gabin). Sartet has to assert his masculinity against both, though the narrative is more concerned with setting up a clash between young Sartet and the powerful and dominating patriarch. A lone professional, cold-blooded and excessive in his violence, Sartet is the emblematic new face of criminality. The clan’s insistent humanitarian refusal of killing, which is mocked by Sartet, contrasts with the narrative’s emphasis on his association with guns and killing; the young inexperienced Francis/Delon of Mélodie en sous-sol has mutated into a lone, hardened killer (hence the obvious intertextual reworkings of his character of Jef Costello in Le Samouraï). The opening scenes of the film establish this construction of Roger Sartet as a tough but wounded character, thus playing into the contradictions of Delon’s star image. At the start of the film, we learn through the judge that Sartet had been brought up by his father and only attended school until the age of eleven. We are also informed that, although as a young child, Sartet never ceased to smile, he had obtained a criminal record by the time he was fourteen. The course of the narrative is then inaugurated by Sartet’s spectacular break from prison, helped by the Sicilian clan. The dominating patriarch (Gabin) is then introduced by a point a view shot as Sartet looks up when he makes a grand entrance descending God-like from an upstairs lift. This entrance emphasizes his metaphorical role as the authoritarian oedipal father defined by a sturdy physique that dominates the space of the encounter.

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Although on the surface the film looks like a repetition of a successful formula pairing Delon and Gabin, with a story line that pits the wisdom of age against youthful rebellion, the themes of filiation and transmission are also mapped onto the aforementioned thematic of honor among thieves, which is typical of the mafia film. The hostility and lack of trust that exists between Sartet and Manelese at the beginning of the film is eventually transformed into hatred once the don has been humiliated by Sartet’s romantic relationship with his son’s wife Jeanne (Irina Demick). Sartet is an outsider who does not belong to the clan; his only family is his sister Monique (Danielle Volle). He is presented as a wounded man suffering a crisis of masculinity; twice during the course of the film we are given an insight into his traumatic past, which he hides behind the icy smile, and dangerous look that fascinates the don’s daughter-inlaw. In a symbolic spectacle of virility and sexual potency, which is repeated twice, Sartet points a gun at Jeanne and we consequently see him battering an eel to death on a rock after seeing her sunbathing in the nude. Delon’s cop killer character doubles as a romantic lead, who is both seductive and dangerous. His involvement with a forbidden female will prove fatal, setting in motion a narrative of masculine testing between him and the godfather. From the outset, then, the film has isolated Delon from the social matrix of both the law and criminality. The ultimate outsider, he is a marked man who is pursued by both the police and mob. Beyond the heist, the narrative is concerned with the dissolution of the relationship between Sartet and Vittorio Manalese, a relationship that grows from initial distrust on the side of the don to revengeful hatred once Sartet has attempted to affirm his power through possession of Jeanne. The film thus sets Manalese and his old-world masculine values of honor and solid tradition against Sartet’s lone angel of death, a killer on the loose with seemingly no such values. Malanese is distrustful of the outsider from the outset and sees him as a threat to the realization of the upcoming heist (he specifically tells Sartet that he does not trust him because of his sexual restiveness) and his traditional gender values are underlined when he asks his son to tell his wife Jeanne to stop wearing short skirts. The transgresssive woman is thus aligned with Delon’s modernity in two ways: through costume (by wearing fashionable mini-skirts) and metropolitan French identity (by being French as opposed to Sicilian). At the same time, Sartet is all too clearly Malanese’s heir since both characters are tough yet vulnerable, doomed heroes who cannot control their fate and whose trajectory is blocked in the tradition of the Gabin persona of the 1930s. This doubling suggests the

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enduring potency of certain aspects of the dominant paradigms of masculinity epitomized by Gabin and extended through Delon in the 1960s. In a self-reflexive moment commenting on Delon’s pretty boy image, we are offered sympathetic fragments of his past and an insight into his existential malaise and “melancholy masculinity” (Vincendeau 2000, 178), as Sartet muses that he started killing because “people were walking all over him; even with a gun in his hand, he didn’t look the part.” In the original novel, Sartet is also an ambivalent character: a figure of both desire and fear, a marked man with “a destructive power, a latent cruelty … he was a man who had killed and who would be fatally killed in his turn” (Le Breton 1967, 142). Delon’s performance is central to the meaning of the homme fatal and the scene in which Sartet points his gun at Jeanne and they exchange desiring looks is significant in that it seals their fate. Delon, then, once again, is feminized by his association with a woman and cannot sustain the detached and dispassionate subjectivity, required of the tough hard-boiled killer, showing as Frank Krutnick has pointed out in the context of American film noir that, the hero’s masculinity is undermined by the desire for a forbidden woman. As Krutnik observes, “the sexual drama—the hero’s desire for the ‘forbidden’ woman (the ‘mother’) often serves as a microcosm of a drama of transgression, which has broader ramifications. The hero of such films is a male overachiever who seeks, through his defiance of the law, to put himself above it and to set himself in its place, as omnipotent” (1991, 143). However, with this attempt to set himself against or above the law, “he also alienates himself from the structuring framework of masculine identification, and thus from the possibility of finding any secure identity which is actually livable. There can be no identity beyond the law” (1991, 146–7). Finally, this transgression of the law by the hero seeking to convince himself and others of his own masculine identity means that “he is irrevocably drawn towards an idealization of the ‘phallus incarnate’ against which he can be measured and through which he is defined and can recognize himself ” (Krutnik 1991, 147). It is in the light of such readings then that we can say that Sartet’s relationship with women, his liaison with Jeanne and his love for his sister Monique, leave him vulnerable, exposed and, as argued, feminized (the outsider status of all three characters is also underlined by their ethnic otherness to the clan). The association with the feminine is the crux of the film’s thematics and leads to the duel between the patriarch and the son that ensues and the hateful relationship that develops between them. Sartet’s resistance to the paternal figure of authority and the traditional standards of manliness he embodies

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will lead to his death. Sartet’s transgression represents a challenge to symbolic paternal authority and power and his outsider status is underlined in the way that he neither belongs to any social realm nor to the family of men whose rules he will eventually transgress. Foreshadowing the myth of honor among thieves dramatized in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy, we see the don rule over the dinner table. Here, though, the patriarch’s locus of power is firmly grounded within the private realm of the family home—patriarchal space displacing the traditional homosocial spaces of the French policier such as the bars and the street. The figure of the aging don thus also presents a nostalgic construction of ethnic fatherhood, which is contrasted with the younger generation, embodied by Sartet, marked by violence and the abandonment of tradition and community values. As in Mélodie en sous-sol, this is one last elegiac heist for the father, who dreams of a time and place, his native Sicily, he will never see. The film concludes with the don reaffirming patriarchal law by killing Sartet through the Sicilian ritual of revenge in order to return order to the community, which has been disrupted by the outsider. Yet, although the film appears to be a moral fable about what happens when the Law of the Father is transgressed, it also reveals the extent to which the patriarch’s tight grip on the family leads to destruction and loss. Hence, although the “honor among thieves” element in Le Clan des Siciliens maximizes the masculine potency of the don, at the end of the film his family is dismantled by his own doing. We see him arrested and handcuffed by Le Goff through a high angle point-of-view shot from the perspective of his doting little grandson who looks down on him as he is being led away by the ultimate representative of the law (Le Goff ). Manalese, the imposing monolith, is defeated and his loss of power is symbolic as well as material as the film closes in on the bleeding wound he has sustained during his duel with Sartet. Thus, while traditional standards of propriety have been protected and the breach of the ethic of loyalty which is fundamental to the patriarchal cultural order that underpin the family has been punished, the killing of Sartet has also devastating consequences (given that the patriarchal family is destroyed and the don caught by the police). Indeed, Vincendeau notes how, despite being seemingly a figure of great authority from the 1950s onward, Gabin’s patriarchal power was constantly threatened and in crisis (1995, 254). Intergenerational struggle and the tension between modernity and tradition are here dramatized through the clash between loner Sartet and the close-knit clan. However, these figures are still doubles of each other since they are both representative of masculinity in crisis. In the context of modernity, the morose

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ending of the film offers an image of traumatized males who, despite the advent of modernity are still under the same traditional pressures and norms. The difference between the two characters, a repetition of the themes of the old versus the new or tradition versus modernity in their previous film together, is exacerbated in Le Clan des Siciliens. Set against the Gabin paradigm, both films offer a problematizing of Delon’s masculinity, though the patriarch is not left unscathed. In Mélodie en sous-sol, Francis seems a definite potential heir to Charles but as a result of his youth and involvement with a woman, the heist fails and Gabin retains narrative dominance. In Le Clan des Siciliens, Sartet’s challenge to patriarchal authority ends in death at the hands of the patriarch. In other words, despite certain superficial distinctions, Delon, in these films, can be seen as an updated version of the Gabin persona, hero and victim, though in line with the social changes triggered by postwar capitalist modernization, Delon is almost completely isolated from the world of men, stripped of the mythical prewar community that surrounded Gabin during the 1930s. Such narrative structures must also be seen in the light of the discrediting of the paternal figure and the questioning of the dominant fiction of masculinity that accompanied the social changes of the 1960s. Hence, these figures of masculine suffering can perhaps be seen as part of a backlash—an “unconscious desire for a renewal of authority” (Brassart 2004, 352). The rebellion of the son and his killing by the father can thus be read using Krutnick’s analysis of film noir: “rather than simply giving voice to a frustration with the cultural parameters of masculine identity [film noir] can be seen to represent a desire for reassurance, a desire to have demonstrated in an unequivocal manner the inescapability and inviolability of identification through, and subjection to, the Law of the Father” (Krutnik 1991, 147). However, the structure of patriarchy has also been wounded, suggesting that Gabin’s position as the godfather of French cinema is in its final throes (he is also veering toward the end of his career). Deux hommes dans la ville reflects the intergenerational passing of a torch even more acutely than Delon and Gabin’s previous pairings. Giovanni’s film seals the reconciliation between father and son, with Delon literally being adopted by the aging star who this time plays social educator Germain Cazeneuve, while Delon plays Gino Strabliggi, a reformed character who after having spent ten years in prison for robbery is finally released thanks to Germain’s influence. Gino is determined to reinsert himself into society but is thwarted by the mob who tries to lure him back into crime and by a vicious representative of the law who refuses to believe in his social reinsertion. Again, we are offered three generations of

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French stars with Gérard Depardieu in a small role as a young hoodlum who tries to lure Delon back into crime and the narrative is strikingly similar to the gritty noir thriller Once a Thief (Ralph Nelson, 1965), Delon’s Hollywood debut under contract with MGM. Based, like Mélodie en sous-sol, on a noir novel by John Trinian, the plot is very close to Once a Thief, as Delon once more plays a criminal who is unsuccessful in trying to escape from a life of crime. Deux hommes dans la ville is a prime example of “the familiar territory of French victim males” and what can be summed up as “the active/passive duality in paradigmatic French masculinity” (Vincendeau 1995, 257). Delon’s victimization and eventual death in this as in most of his gangster films provides a definite link to the persona of a young Gabin. Gino, like Lucien in Jean Grémillion’s 1937 Gueule d’amour/Lady Killer is a typographer recalling the fate of numerous 1930s films such as Le Jour se lève/Daybreak (Marcel Carné, 1939) or Pépé le Moko, a film that is archetypal of the French gangster film, setting the agenda for the policier genre for decades to come (Vincendeau 1998, 30). Delon’s character reproduces the same mixture of traits that characterized Gabin in the 1930s; a doomed hero with striking blue eyes who combines feminine and masculine characteristics and whose fatalistic trajectory is violently thwarted.

Conclusion In this corpus of films, Delon is both hero and victim in the tradition of male victimhood that marked masculine French star images and harks back to the star persona of Gabin in the 1930s, despite modernity and generational differences. This would explain, in part, the appeal of the Delon persona as a marked man who is seductive but dangerous, given the centrality of the Gabin myth in French film culture. If these figures bring into focus a crisis of masculinity, registering the anxieties and tensions about gender and national identity brought about by the onset of consumer society and capitalist modernization, they also display a striking continuity with the dominant, paradigmatic masculinity in French cinema, embodied by Gabin, and the appeal of doomed male figures, which are made all the more authentic by their marginal and isolated status.

6

Alain Delon, International Man of Mystery Mark Gallagher

Alain Delon has earned a significant, if at times controversial, place in European and global film cultures. As a social actor, his activities and statements since the 1970s have tied him particularly to political and artistic currents in his native France. He has served as an unofficial spokesman for nationalist French politics and culture, acquiring prominent artifacts from the De Gaulle era, claiming longtime friendship with National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and loosely endorsing Le Pen’s xenophobic politics.1 Delon also came to decry Hollywood’s “colonization” of French cinema, though he had previously scorned the French press by invoking his own international popularity. Thus, the actor who claimed, in 1964, that “France doesn’t count in the global market for cinema. I don’t care about France! I’m the one they know in the USA and Japan” would by 1979 take the nationalist view that “France is colonized by American cinema.”2 While screen stars’ off-screen activities inform viewers’ attitudes toward them, many of us disengage stars from their biographies in our viewing practice. Nonetheless, Delon’s visibility in French culture strongly informs academic writing on him, which has emphasized his embodiment of a particular kind of Frenchness and French masculinity. Contrarily, this chapter argues that Delon in fact is quite easily detached from exclusively French contexts. In the industrial makeup of films in which he stars, in their settings and locations, and in his casting as characters of multiple nationalities and social classes, Delon belongs indisputably to interand transnational film industries and screen cultures. His own contradictory statements about his relationship to French and global film industries show the ways star personas expand and contract based on textual representations and extra-textual discourses. As an actor who earned a transnational reputation early in his career, Delon allows his star persona to be pulled in multiple directions, and he and industries use it across decades for different representational and commercial ends.

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Delon’s lasting reputation may not be as an actor or even personality, but as a global style icon. Stella Bruzzi claims Delon’s trench coat and felt-hat silhouette from Le Samouraï/The Samurai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967) as a key image motivating her work on film and costuming (1997, xiv–xv, 71). Filmmaker John Woo also cites Le Samouraï as the inspiration for star Chow Yun-Fat’s style in both men’s breakthrough film, Ying huang boon sik/A Better Tomorrow (1986). To English speakers, Delon may be best known as the figure on the cover of The Smiths’ 1986 LP, The Queen Is Dead, which pictures him lying dead in a still from the end of L’insoumis/The Unvanquished (Alain Cavalier, 1964). These associations supply evidence that Delon’s films grant him an iconic status based on physical beauty, comportment, and behavior. Delon’s screen masculinity, a product of his performance style and of the narrative situations and relationships in which his starring and costarring roles locate him, orbits chiefly around sexiness. As lover or fighter, paragon of virtue or reprehensible cad, glowering antihero or comic foil, Delon in scores of films offers a flexible and cosmopolitan masculinity that positions him as both a figure for emulation and an object of sexual desire. In his youthful roles and well into middle age, Delon on-screen exudes a strong sex appeal that partly accounts for the sentiments that continue to accompany discussions of his films in cinephile forums. Testimonials to Delon’s iconicity designate the allegiances that particular stars create worldwide through their accumulated roles. Delon’s sex appeal apparently translates well in diverse reception contexts and helps detach him from exclusively French film and culture, tying him instead to international film culture and popular culture. As we will see, Delon performs a mutable, cosmopolitan screen masculinity in an industrial and representational climate that greatly facilitates stars’ shape-shifting across roles. Emphasizing sexual and psychological intensity but capable too of rendering ease and playfulness, Delon’s acting style allows films to render his cultural identity as specifically French, as more abstractly European, and much more. Meanwhile, Hollywood and European industries’ broad sense of different national and ethnic identities in much of their 1960s and 1970s output enables Delon and other stars to play a wide variety of roles without substantive physical transformation or modification of performance style. Combining industrial analysis with attention to the creative labor of screen acting, this chapter addresses Delon’s circulation outside French-cinema contexts in the 1960s and 1970s. While cast in numerous domestic French productions, Delon from the start of his career also appears in European coproductions such as

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Plein soleil (René Clément, 1960) and Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960) that garner international distribution as part of the period’s flourishing traffic in European cinemas. He circulates further through his many roles in subsequent coproductions both high, such as Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse (1962) and Luchino Visconti’s Il gattopardo/The Leopard (1963), and low, such as the western Soleil rouge/Red Sun (Terence Young, 1971) and the campy Zorro (Duccio Tessari, 1975). And despite scholars’ emphasis on him as a resolutely French star, he was largely absent from France’s most celebrated film movement of his heyday, the 1960s Nouvelle Vague (though he did appear in three films from director Jean-Pierre Melville, a filmmaker sometimes yoked into the New Wave corpus and late in his career acted in films by Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda). In what follows, I address the performance attributes and intergeneric appeals of Delon’s stardom that facilitate his transnational circulation. Delon’s career mobility, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, represents substantial creative risk-taking and underscores opportunities and challenges for film actors seeking to maintain visibility and work continuously in eras of uneven fortunes for national, regional, and global cinemas. Arguably, Delon’s appeal at the French box office in the 1960s and 1970s comes not despite but because of his repeated forays into foreign production territory. His work outside French national cinema also expands his repertoire of performance skills—allowing him to play comic and historical roles, for example—and puts him into new narrative situations that facilitate his casting in a wider range of roles in later French productions.

Delon the cosmopolitan icon Delon’s star persona, his articulation of masculinity, and his relationship to national and regional identities depend not only on sex appeal but also on an overlapping quality of cosmopolitanism. Ginette Vincendeau observes that “as [a] screen icon in the early 1960s, Delon … inhabited the world of the cosmopolitan playboy, whose favorite playgrounds were Paris and Rome, trading on the display of … youthful muscles and fashionable Italian clothes” (2000, 158).3 In terms of film culture and representation, we can regard cosmopolitanism as referring to a globalized lifestyle and attitude evident through travel and mobility, through style choices legible as bridging discrete national or regional categories, and through the ability to take on attributes

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associated with particular places and cultures. We should distinguish too between cosmopolitan film characters and cosmopolitan stars or cultural workers. The paradigmatic “cosmopolitan playboy” character would be at ease in every place but rooted to no place, displaying what Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen call cosmopolitanism as “socio-cultural condition” (2002, 9). Delon in Plein soleil, permanently on tour in the Mediterranean, superficially represents this type if not fully embodying it (as he is first understudy to and then murderous impersonator of the film’s actual playboy). In his parallel breakthrough role in Rocco e i suoi fratelli, Delon’s character is thoroughly grounded in Italy, not at all a playboy and never far from his immediate family. Here, cosmopolitanism emerges from the French actor crossing borders to work in a new geographic and industrial context. Delon himself thus displays cosmopolitanism as “an attitude or disposition” (Vertovec and Cohen 2002, 12). For Ulf Hannerz, this attitude entails “an intellectual and aesthetic stance of openness toward divergent cultural experiences” (1990, 239). Delon’s willingness, like that of many actors of his generation, to work outside his home country’s film industry marks him as cosmopolitan in outlook. By developing skills to perform fluidly in foreign contexts and alongside performers of different origins, Delon exhibits another aspect of cosmopolitanism that Hannerz proposes and that Vertovec and Cohen emphasize, that of cosmopolitanism as “a practice or competence” (2002, 13). In Hannerz’s terms, such competence involves “a personal ability to make one’s way into other cultures, through listening, looking, intuiting and reflecting” as well as “a built-up skill in manoeuvring more or less expertly with a particular system of meanings” (1990, 239). Delon’s screen characters sometimes adopt cosmopolitan attitudes and practices, but it is the actor’s industrial and geographic mobility that distinguish him most as a cosmopolitan, worldly star. As the 1960s unfold, Delon’s cosmopolitanism is a facet of some individual roles but also a product of an overarching persona composed of multiple characters of different origins. The cosmopolitan dimension of Delon’s persona arises from the accumulation of disparate roles and as such depends on viewer knowledge of both the actor’s French nationality and his broad filmography. Cosmopolitanism involves diversity of experiences and encounters, but viewers and scholars tend to reduce performers to discrete clusters of defining features to render them coherent as star figures. While typically understood through a narrow range of iconic roles, Delon appears in so many different films that efforts to fix the parameters of his star persona and masculinity can only be selective and contingent. His characters are routinely misogynistic, except

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when they are not. He plays amoral loners, except when playing warmhearted family men. He plays predators or victims, except in films that cast him as neither. He either dies or is undone by the ill-fated unraveling of a plan, except when embroiled in no schemes at all. Even the designation of Delon as sex icon cannot fully account for reception activity, as viewers may find many of Delon’s characters pompous or sociopathic, overcoming other appeals. Existing accounts of Delon acknowledge a multitude of roles while building interpretive frames from a selective range of texts, French-language policiers in particular. Delon appears repeatedly in studies of French cinema and its stars, yet almost without exception, scholars ignore his roles in non-French films and do not address his films’ frequent status as coproductions.4 In her comparative analysis of Delon and his contemporary Jean-Paul Belmondo, Vincendeau claims that “although clearly they and their films interacted with American cinema, both Delon and Belmondo cut distinctly French figures, in their language, gestures, names and in the preoccupations of their films” (2000, 186). While his greatest popular successes come in policiers that place him among France’s top male stars of the 1960s,5 Delon routinely transgresses national-cultural categories, appearing in Hollywood films or transnational coproductions and repeatedly playing non-French characters. His ability to embody multiple European identities renders him a quintessential Europudding star. Partly owing to France’s intermediate position among European industries, many of its 1960s male stars—including Belmondo, Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and even Jean Gabin—repeatedly played roles as non-French characters, most commonly as Italians. In the French/Italian coproduction Borsalino (Jacques Deray, 1970), for example, Delon and Belmondo play Marseille gangsters of Italian heritage, to great popular acclaim—the film led the French box office in 1970 (Hayward 2005, 278). Delon played Italian characters in eleven films between 1960 and 1974, along with Spanish in the Hollywood comedy-western Texas Across the River (Michael Gordon, 1966) and the drama The Assassination of Trotsky (Joseph Losey, 1972), a Latin American from the fictional “Nueva Aragon” in Zorro,  and American in Plein soleil, the first adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955). Seen through a Francophone prism, Delon’s cultural heritage stands out. In his many appearances on French television talk shows (or tellingly, in his first live interview on US television, in August 1970 on The Dick Cavett Show (initially 1968–1972)), in his singing performances and recordings across decades, and in his public statements in defense of France and French culture, Delon is unmistakably French. His polyglot

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filmography, less embedded in French culture by virtue of its international circulation, tells another story. While Delon’s persona cues particular associations in French and Francophone milieus, its elasticity enables a range of reading strategies unfixed from French cultural or linguistic contexts. His two 1960 roles, in Plein soleil and Rocco e i suoi fratelli, in neither of which he plays a Frenchman, arguably define his career: the former by placing him as a highly sexualized con artist and chameleon in a world of luxury and the latter as a working-class Italian just reaching adulthood and embroiled in earthy family drama as well as a burgeoning boxing career. Most of his roles across the 1960s and into the 1970s alternated between these psychological and physical dimensions, as he repeatedly played both aristocratic fops and proletarian toughs. His angular features and frame allow him to channel patrician breeding or sinewy blue-collarness. Across his career, he mixes upperand working-class roles and shifts too between playing erotic victimizers and victims. The commingled arrogance, aggression, and sexualized physicality of Delon’s persona suit industrial agendas across genres, modes, and regional and international cinemas. Delon also takes advantage of the lack of cultural specificity called for in popular and transnational cinemas of the 1960s and early 1970s. Lighthearted or anti-realist genre productions such as Texas Across the River, the Borsalino films, Soleil rouge, Zorro, and others define his characters’ national and ethnic identity in broad strokes. Thrillers and auteurist works from Plein soleil and L’eclisse to Scorpio (Michael Winner, 1973) and Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976) largely eschew plausibility in favor of expressive visual style, arch performance, and artcinema narration or storytelling that obeys generic but not real-world logics. (Plein soleil, for example, shows little investment in cultural verisimilitude, with French actors playing most of its “American” characters and making no efforts to mimic American speech or behavior.) Even the realist Rocco e is suoi fratelli, produced with the Italian industry’s standard post-synchronized dubbing, defines Delon’s character in physical and psychological terms and does not require him to speak in a voice evocative of Rocco’s rural, working-class background. In the prime of Delon’s career, then, loose codes govern representation of ethnicity and nationhood in numerous genres and modes. Delon’s screen persona arises not only from his embodiment or performance of a charismatic European masculinity but also from industries’ and texts’ relaxed view of what it means to be Italian or Spanish, or even American or Latin American, in 1960s and 1970s productions. These relaxed codes contribute to the textual construction of Delon

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as cosmopolitan. Representing the specificities of people who inhabit the world at large in a broad-brush manner, films of Delon’s heyday set a fairly low bar for successful performance of difference. These films do relocate Delon via extensive location shooting, however, so as a cultural worker, he gains the experience of working in multiple production contexts, on projects of varying scale. To understand the industrial agents that drive and benefit from Delon’s circulation in the 1960s and early 1970s, we can look to the multiple companies supporting films in which he stars. He appears in films from, among many others,  French producers Cité Films, CIPRA (Compagnie Internationale de Productions Cinématographiques), CICC (Compagnie Industrielle et Commerciale Cinématographique), and SNC (Société Nouvelle de Cinématographie); from Italian companies such as Cineriz and Titanus; from US studios MGM and Universal, and also Columbia, 20th Century Fox, and AVCO Embassy as distributors; and even the UK’s British Lion— for Girl on a Motorcycle (Jack Cardiff, 1968). By the 1980s, he had returned to chiefly French productions, though he appeared occasionally in European coproductions into the 1990s, even playing a supporting role in Teheran 43: Nid d’espions/Assassination Attempt (Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov, 1981), principally overseen by the Soviet Mosfilm studio. From fairly early in his career, Delon also maintained partial control of his roles through his production companies: first, with Delbeau Productions, cofounded with Georges Beaume in 1964 for L’Insoumis, and then with his own company, Adel, which from 1970 through the mid-1980s produced twenty-six films, most starring Delon. Rather than being associated with a particular studio or even a single national cinema, then, Delon shows considerable agency in his career maneuvers and remarkable mobility for a performer in the eras across which he has worked. Particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, Delon not only worked in location productions in many countries but also managed to attract investment from across Europe and from the United States based on his perceived marketability in different release contexts. While he plays many criminal roles in a realist style, Delon’s scores of characters and characterizations reveal a flexible screen persona, shifting to suit requirements of genre, mode of narration, cultural surround, and more. Delon’s prolific output across his career further complicates efforts to specify a singular Delon type. He has appeared in eighty-four films to date, along with multiple small-screen and theatrical roles. For more than two decades since his 1957 film debut, he routinely appeared in two or more films per year, reaching the zenith of his output in both 1971 and 1973, years in which he appeared in

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five feature releases. Only in the 1980s did his appearances shrink to one or two roles per year. While reduced in some accounts then to a more or less fixed icon of French cinema, a long view of his career shows consistent, abundant screen work, linked to a willingness to join productions of multiple companies housed in different countries. Investigating European stars, Tytti Soila identifies forms of “vernacular stardom” involving particular figures’ local inflections, alongside “a passing pan-European star phenomenon” in the late 1950s and 1960s, exemplified among men by stars such as Delon, Italy’s Marcello Mastroianni, and West Germany’s Curd Jürgens (2009, 28). As with his European peers, Delon’s choice to work in multiple industrial contexts partly ensures that he will be cast not only in roles as French characters but in whatever guise production financing and scripts dictate. To understand the ways star personas forged in particular regional contexts adapt to new geographic and cultural locations, this chapter next looks at select moments from Delon’s costarring roles in US films: the crime drama Once a Thief (Ralph Nelson, 1965), the war film Lost Command (Mark Robson, 1966), the antic Texas Across the River, the CIA thriller Scorpio, and the air-disaster exercise The Concorde: Airport ’79 (David Lowell Rich, 1979). Delon’s work for producers outside France reveals how global exchanges preserve or transform a popular star’s image. Delon’s limited roles in Hollywood films extend attributes of the French or continental-European persona manifest in his surrounding career activity. These roles can also amplify or distort particular attributes, as with his depiction in Texas Across the River as a cartoonish ladies’ man and in The Concorde: Airport ’79 as a static if not wholly schematic embodiment of continental sophistication. All these roles for Delon reshape the persona built through paradigmatic roles in European films such as Plein soleil and consolidated in crime films such as Le Samouraï.

Delon in Hollywood Delon’s first move into English-language filmmaking came in 1964, when he dubbed his own voice for the English version of the French production Les Félins/Joy House (René Clément). At the end of 1964, he also costarred in the farce The Yellow Rolls-Royce (Anthony Asquith) produced by MGM’s UK division. In the middle section of this portmanteau film of sorts (though made with a single production team, it includes three separate stories joined by the car of its title), Delon plays a predatory Italian photographer who romances a bored

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tourist (Shirley MacLaine) after her gangster fiancé (George C. Scott) is called back to the United States on mob business. Exuding oily charm (and bronzed to within an inch of his life), Delon alternates between comic performance and poignancy, matching the tone of his costars MacLaine, Scott, and Art Carney. Beyond continuing his succession of Italian characters, the role develops his English-language performance skills, his facility at comedy, and his ability to work alongside major American stars. While not calling upon his evolving comic skills, the following year’s Once a Thief, Delon’s US debut, builds on his recent experience with Englishlanguage, major-studio production. Once a Thief stars Delon as Eddie Pedak, a native of the Italian border city Trieste, now an ex-con married to a woman played by Ann-Margret and living in San Francisco (also the film’s shooting location). The Eddie Pedak character, prone to violence and saddled with family responsibilities, shows a clear continuity with Delon’s Rocco Parondi character in Rocco e i suoi fratelli. Pedak seeks an honest life but is reluctantly drawn into the criminal enterprise managed by his domineering brother (Jack Palance). Once a Thief, a coproduction between France’s CIPRA and MGM in the United States, thus casts Delon within a previously tested template. His character also speaks some lines in Italian, and indeed, Delon played Italians in most of the films he made that received US distribution during this period.6 Once a Thief’s component parts owe much to his preceding European films. His working-class home life recalls Rocco e i suoi fratelli; his American paramour is the third in a series, following Jane Fonda in Les Félins and then MacLaine; and the scenario of a would-be straight shooter led into crime by a male ally from his past strikes similar chords to L’Insoumis, in which Delon’s character agrees to participate in a kidnapping, the final outcome of which is his death, leaving behind a woman and a child. Once a Thief thus imports virtually all the elements that complement Delon’s existing persona. As in the European precursors, Rocco and L’insoumis in particular, Delon delivers a largely realist performance, and his good looks and soulful gaze help the films flirt with romanticism or existentialism. Genre prescriptions, the limitations of social class, or the deus ex machina of fate doom his characters’ schemes and relationships. Once a Thief ends with Pedak, after having joined forces with the policeman (Van Heflin) pursuing his brother’s gang, accidentally shot by another policeman as Pedak’s wife and daughter look on. While Once a Thief borrows a template used in many of Delon’s French films and Italian coproductions—a promising romance brought to a halt with his

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character’s death by gunfire—none of his other Hollywood or US-affiliated films repeat that formula. Delon next received second billing in his first purely US-financed film, the Columbia release Lost Command, which adapts a French novel and narrates French soldiers fighting in Algeria. (Spanish locations stand in for the film’s settings in Algeria and Indochina.) Delon does play French in the film, helping offset the culturally indistinct lead casting of the Mexican–Irish Anthony Quinn as a French officer of Basque origin. Because Quinn does not modulate his performance to signify Frenchness in any way, the film takes advantage of Delon’s authentic Frenchness to clarify its ostensible cultural perspective. To the same end, Lost Command casts principally French actors (as well as the American George Segal and Italy’s Claudia Cardinale, both playing Arab characters). This explicitly French role for Delon contrasts with his use in his other US films and many coproductions, in which he is reformed into a more generic European or repacked as a type—sexually predatory and scheming or working-class and well-intentioned—linked to a different national or ethnic origin. Lost Command bows to Hollywood convention in making all its characters speak in English, but Delon’s and others’ French accents add a marginal cultural verisimilitude. Delon’s performance also exploits the moral uncertainty that underpins his English-language dramatic roles. Graham Hayes argues that a series of Delon’s 1960s criminal roles involves “the manipulation or betrayal of those closest to him” (2004, 50). In Delon’s films made with US involvement, though, his characters routinely experience moral conflict and ultimately personify the films’ ethical stances. In Lost Command, he supplies the unheeded voice of reason in the French military’s battle against Algerians, and in the final scene, he conscientiously rejects an army medal and smiles at a graffitied sign of the continuing independence movement his fellow soldiers have failed to inhibit. Only in broadly comic roles in genre films does he fall on one side or the other of an ethical divide: in Soleil rouge, he is the exaggeratedly villainous partner to Charles Bronson’s frontier bandit, for example, and in Zorro, he is the exaggeratedly virtuous folk hero of the Americas.7 Delon’s third US-backed production, Universal’s 1966 Texas Across the River, locates him squarely in comic territory. Shot at Universal and on central and southern California locations, the film exaggerates the ladies’-man dimension of Delon’s persona. Again second-billed, he plays the culturally tone-deaf Spanish aristocrat Don Andrea Baldazar, who manages to run afoul of the US Cavalry, romance an American and an Indian woman, and adventure Rat Pack–style

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with Dean Martin and Joey Bishop (the latter playing a wisecracking Native American). In keeping with his European roles’ persona, Delon’s character is irresistibly attractive to women. The film also inflates the androgynous dimension of Delon’s erotic appeal. Having established Don Andrea’s ardent heterosexuality, the film adds elements of sexual ambiguity for comedy and to distinguish Delon further from his American costars. His aristocratic clothes (swapped early in the film for Western wear) and his gestures appear feminine in comparison to those of the manly soldiers and frontiersmen he encounters. Even more pointedly, he habitually kisses other men on the cheek, first the father of his Texan paramour and twice later his flummoxed costar Martin, against whom he finally stands off in a climactic slap-fight. These moments mine for comedy the homosocial or homoerotic activity that underpins earlier efforts such as Plein soleil as well as his later European crime-film roles. While Texas Across the River negotiates its male stars’ squabbling-couple dynamic through comedy, US and European producers only occasionally cast Delon in comic roles. Repeatedly, though, they strip him of specifically French attributes. In his return to Hollywood production for the United Artists release Scorpio in 1973, Delon is narratively displaced from France after the opening sequence. The film presents him as a CIA operative managed by a field agent, Cross (Burt Lancaster), who he is then assigned to kill when Cross attempts to retire. Addressed mostly as “Scorpio,” Delon’s character does retain Frenchness via his accent, his given name of Jean Laurier, and the provision of a sister character who works for Air France. Apart from scenes set and filmed in Paris and Vienna, most of the film’s action takes place in Washington, D.C., and the Agency promises Cross’s job to Laurier on completion of his murderous assignment. With its setting and the premise of his character as a de facto US government employee, the film strongly deterritorializes Delon, transforming his performative attributes into signs of a generic Europeanness that can be used to position the film as a globe-trotting action and suspense thriller. Scorpio particularly relies on Delon’s intensity, which helps paint his character as a cold-blooded strategist who viewers could imagine killing Lancaster’s equally formidable agent. The narrative exploits viewer uncertainty about Laurier’s motives, with Delon’s performance facilitating the film’s bait-and-switch plotting. Focused chiefly on Laurier and Cross’s rivalry, the film finally reveals Laurier’s sweet-faced lover, Susan (Gayle Hunnicutt), to be both men’s true adversary. In a preclimax scene, Laurier studies film footage revealing Susan’s deception, and an extreme close-up of his eyes emphasizes his emotional and psychological

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distress. The film then cuts to a series of shots of Laurier smashing a mirror and upending his bedroom, calling on Delon’s ability to exhibit inarticulate rage. Beyond the narrative efforts to render Delon a pan-European figure, formal choices here emphasize physical features and genre-bound psychology, completing Delon’s transformation from French subject to international-thriller protagonist. Laurier finally kills Susan, fitting with what Vincendeau and Hayes identify as the cruel or misogynist shade of Delon’s persona but also consistent with the summary judgment of early-1970s Hollywood films on powerful women. Still, this pessimistic thriller spares no one—Cross and then Laurier also die in the film’s final minutes (Figure 6.1). Scorpio’s depiction of Delon’s character as a master strategist pursuing the equally wily Lancaster highlights another characteristic of his roles in US films and coproductions: a modified persona of an educated professional. Buoyed by his facial features, posture, and in some roles the connotations of Frenchaccented English, Delon repeatedly plays men of intellect if not breeding: researchers, medical doctors, and even academics. Cast alongside Charles Bronson in the French/Italian production Adieu, l’ami/Farewell, Friend/Honor Among Thieves (Jean Herman, 1968), Delon plays a character who is both a military officer and a doctor, his relative intellect enhanced by his pairing with doughier American tough guy Bronson. Delon plays a more diabolical doctor in the 1973 Italian/French coproduction Traitement de choc/Shock Treatment (Alain Jessua), departing from what French scholars and critics routinely identify as his “instinctual” characterizations and performance style.8 As with other expansions

Figure 6.1 The globe-trotting Delon accepts a CIA assignment as the title character of 1973’s Scorpio

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of his profile, he would eventually play a doctor in a French production, as a surgeon catapulted into battlefield activity in 1979’s Le Toubib/The Medic (Pierre Granier-Deferre). The same year, in his final Hollywood role in The Concorde: Airport ’79, he plays another mature professional, earning top billing as the captain of the titular plane. Here again, co-casting alongside an American star magnifies his relative sophistication, as he shares the cockpit with the older, much homelier George Kennedy. While also playing a wide range of gangster figures in French and Italian films in the preceding years, Delon departs from his tough-guy peers in this ability to embody men of apparent intellect and insight (Figure 6.2). Delon’s US-backed roles also usually present him as part of ensemble casts rather than as a solitary hero or antihero, accentuating the socialized strand of his multivalent persona. As mentioned, the Franco-American coproduction Once a Thief complements most of Delon’s other roles as Italians in locating him in a world defined jointly by family and crime. In his other US roles, Delon’s characters invariably have strong ties to male partners or to institutions—to his costar Quinn’s army commander in Lost Command; to Lancaster’s fellow CIA operative in Scorpio; and to Kennedy’s co-captain/copilot in The Concorde: Airport ’79. Even as the displaced Spanish aristocrat in Texas Across the River’s Old West, he plays a straight man and comic foil to Dean Martin’s gregarious cowboy. His contribution to US films depends on his engagements with American male costars as well as on his frequent romantic and sexual encounters with American and other women. Soila argues that “recognition in a foreign country requires an air of glamour and exoticism from a popular  star” (2009, 11). For Delon, those features derive

Figure 6.2 In The Concorde: Airport ’79, the top-billed Delon mostly fills space across from costar George Kennedy

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strongly from his positioning among American or other European (but, Lost Command aside, usually not French) actors. For Delon to bring value to US films, he must signify a kind of foreignness not in isolation but in relation to others on screen. Narrative framings and his own performances thus take shape around the industrial determinants that motivate his casting. Like other actors then and now who shuttle among multiple production environments, Delon’s performance attributes include ways of acting, and interacting, that allow him to be regarded as a local figure or a foreign one, a close partner or a threatening outsider, a confidant or a con artist. His body language and facial expressions can convey primal fury (in, for example, Soleil rouge and as noted in Scorpio), moral outrage (in Lost Command), alienation (in Plein soleil), fraternal devotion (in Rocco e i suoi fratelli), and more. Conversely, he can radiate a coolness legible as professional self-control in his many roles as either police or criminals, or suggestive of the passivity and affectlessness of his privileged characters in such films as L’eclisse and La Piscine (Jacques Deray, 1969).

Delon at large and at home The multiple signifying possibilities of stars such as Delon’s performances become particularly apparent when his films, and his own work activity, uproot from a perceived point of origin. On this point, Soila observes that a star’s “fame in his or her native country is based on a real-life correlation—authenticity— and ordinariness” (2009, 11). Correspondingly, one notable critique of Delon’s roles and career, from Pierre Maillot, concerns the actor’s apparent renouncing of French settings and cultural referents in favor of jet-set playgrounds emblematic of global consumer culture. Maillot regards Delon’s geographic displacement and his characters’ globalized lifestyles as a betrayal of French values.9 Paraphrasing Maillot’s argument, Vincendeau notes that some of Delon’s (and also Belmondo’s) characters “lust after American goods in Americaninspired thrillers” (2000,  74).10 The deterritorialization of Delon’s characters both follows from and contributes to his industrial location outside the confines of French national cinema. Geographic displacement and cosmopolitanism can be regarded not as crises for Delon’s incarnation of French masculinity but as signals of his career-based and performative mobility, his skill at entering multiple national, regional, and industrial contexts.

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Indeed, Delon’s international stardom depends on his ability to be seen outside exclusively French contexts. He earns his global reputation in the 1960s and 1970s by decoupling from the French film industry, French heritage, and France itself. Discursive emphasis on him as a particularly Gallic star hints paradoxically at the hybridized persona that his mobility creates. His first major starring role, as Tom Ripley in Plein soleil, shows him as a chameleon, rehearsing and then assuming the identity of the wealthy friend, Philippe Greenleaf, he envies and murders. Only the production team, principal cast, and language define the film as French. Though Delon speaks only two words of English in the film, his character is ostensibly American, as in the film’s source novel. Set and filmed in Naples and Rome, Plein soleil also defines Delon as a European rather than exclusively French figure. Though a tourist rather than a native, his character very much inhabits his Italian milieu, and France is never mentioned. The same year’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli similarly puts Delon entirely in Italian locations, this time as a native and speaking (dubbed) Italian. Delon’s Frenchness is a fact of his biography and a powerful reception formation but not a core textual attribute of his star-making roles. Still, his persona never reaches the status of wholly interchangeable foreign other— in the manner of, for example, his near-contemporary Omar Sharif, whose roles outside his native Egypt include not only scores of Arabs and Middle Easterners but also Yugoslavians (in The Yellow Rolls Royce),11 Russians (in 1965’s Doctor Zhivago (David Lean)), Mongolians (in 1965’s Genghis Khan (Henry Levin)), Argentineans (1969’s Che! (Richard Fleischer)), and Germans (1971’s The Last Valley (James Clavell)); not to mention film roles as Mexicans, Spaniards, and ancient Romans; and even Jules Verne’s stateless (but ostensibly Indian) Captain Nemo in the television movie The Mysterious Island (Juan Antonio Bardem and Henri Colni, 1973). A model of fixity by comparison, Delon acquires a hybrid identity combining a recognized French point of origin (and eventual return) with the associations created by particular settings and storylines. Delon’s star persona and larger industrial identity retain ties to France partly because of his work most prolifically with French filmmakers. He stars in four films for director René Clément, first with Plein soleil; three for Melville, beginning with Le Samouraï; and a remarkable nine for Jacques Deray, including the domestic box-office hit Borsalino. Creative ties to French directors thus account for Delon’s most iconic films and his greatest commercial successes. In parallel with this work, Delon hones his craft and reputation alongside many acclaimed

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filmmakers working in Europe from the early 1960s onward. In a long series of coproductions, he works with Italy’s Visconti and Antonioni, with France’s Louis Malle, twice with American expatriate Joseph Losey, and with Germany’s Volker Schlöndorff. While never working with major Hollywood directors, Delon develops a substantial artistic profile across Europe. Reinvesting this symbolic capital in French cinema, by the 1990s he even belatedly takes up with pioneers of the New Wave, appearing in Godard’s audaciously titled Nouvelle vague (1990) and in Varda’s homage to film stardom, Les Cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma/One Hundred and One Nights (1995). Somewhat ironically, both are coproductions, the former joining French producers with a Swiss company and the latter with a British one. Still, these late roles show Delon’s efforts, calculated or not, to burnish his credentials as a creative agent in French cinema and as part of France’s contribution to global film art. From early in his career, Delon contributes also to Europe’s reputation as a producer of both engrossing realist dramas and art cinema through his roles in Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli and Il gattopardo and Antonioni’s L’eclisse. In the wake of these early-1960s roles, his move to broader, comic performances as the hammy Lothario in The Yellow Rolls-Royce and the swashbuckling hero of La Tulipe noire/The Black Tulip (Christian-Jaque, 1964) shows his versatility as an actor. This breadth of activities, though, may detract from his reputation in the higher reaches of film culture. Critical attention to Delon routinely hails his work in auteurist films or prestige genre productions, not in populist texts such as the French/Italian/Spanish coproduction La Tulipe noire or the French/ Italian Zorro, which can be seen to represent European industries’ basest efforts to produce broadly popular works competitive with Hollywood imports. And while Delon’s work as producer and stage performer fits conventional understanding of what major stars do to manage their careers and fulfill their artistic desires, his other creative activity outside acting has not attracted critical attention. However, we may view his occasional singing efforts (for example, on the soundtrack of 1967’s Les Aventuriers (aka The Last Adventure, Robert Enrico) and 1985’s Parole de flic/Cop’s Honour (José Pinheiro) as well as on television and in record releases), his credited work as scenarist or cowriter on ten films beginning in the mid-1970s, and particularly his direction of multiple 1980s French productions in which he also stars as substantial elements of a comprehensive artistic profile rather than the casual side work of a strongly typecast popular actor.

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Conclusion: Travels and travails of a global star Delon’s international roles from the mid-1960s through the 1970s appear out of step with the era’s critical and future commercial trends. His role in the de facto Rat Pack Western Texas Across the River in 1966 comes at the end of the Rat Pack film cycle and near the end of a related brand of campy Hollywood absurdity. Similarly, the same year’s war drama Lost Command represents precisely the kind of globalized Hollywood spectacle against which the industry would soon revolt, preferring instead downbeat films with chiefly domestic settings.12 And while Scorpio appears in the wake of successful international thrillers such as The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971), it also closes down Delon’s Hollywood career until his appearance seven years later in The Concorde: Airport ’79, itself a very late arrival in the Airport franchise and the Hollywood disaster-film cycle. Delon actively participates in the 1960s and 1970s traffic in European stars, his career aligning with some of the era’s commercial trends but too early or late for others. We can regard some roles, and the films themselves, as miscalculations, inattuned to numerous film cultures’ shifting viewer preferences. We can also view these roles, like much of Delon’s voluminous résumé, as experimental choices and moves into partly uncharted artistic territory. His work shows the challenges facing actors who seek highvisibility roles outside their home countries. The Concorde: Airport ’79, a critical and box-office failure, concludes Delon’s Hollywood appearances. In the 1980s, his roles in coproductions become increasingly rare as well. By this time, he appears consistently in genre roles in police and crime films, perhaps accepting typecasting to ensure career security but also using generic spaces to exhibit easy comic expressiveness alongside dramatic intensity and sexual charisma. Overall, we can tell many stories through the career of Alain Delon. One describes a resolutely French star, an avatar of a national screen culture. Another illustrates a mobile performer, nomadically pursuing production conditions that will broaden his available roles, join him with top filmmakers and acting peers, and ensure him a full working life. We can also look at the consistencies and transformations of Delon’s work across national contexts as a means to draw wider conclusions about creative labor in transnational screen industries. Aside from his occasional forays into comedy, Delon’s acting style evolves but does not radically change across his 1960s and early-1970s roles, independent of a production’s national situation

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or genre attributes. Clearly, though, producers in different locations put him to very different uses, in the process modifying his star persona and encouraging different reading strategies in different reception contexts. Delon’s tour of international production and release climates reminds us that stars are not fixed icons but are manufactured and constantly re-engineered, with mobile performers as the part-agents of these transformations. Rather than insisting on essential national-cultural characteristics that a star may embody, we can use the case of Delon to consider ways global screen industry practices—for example, strategic casting to maximize viewer interest worldwide—contribute to textual features such as narrative and characterization. These dynamics can inform our understanding of related categories of screen representation as well as attest to the flexibility of individual performers across remarkable careers.

Notes 1

2 3 4 5

6

7

8

In addition, Le Pen suggested in 2010 that Delon would be a good choice to star in a film of his life. See “Le Pen se verrait bien incarné au cinéma par Alain Delon,” La liberation, June 15, 2010 (http://www.liberation.fr/politiques/01012290318-le-pense-verrait-bien-incarne-au-cinema-par-alain-delon. Accessed June 2, 2012). See, respectively, Bernard Violet (2000, 61), cited in Austin (2003, 50) (Austin’s translation); and Delon (1979), cited in Vincendeau (2000, 187) (my translation). Vincendeau (2000, 158), paraphrasing Farid Chenoune (1993, 241). Guy Austin does mention in passing Delon’s character in the US production Lost Command (2004, 62). Vincendeau cites Delon’s status among France’s top ten male stars over the period 1956–1990 (where he ranks sixth) and 1973–1993 (during which interval he ranks ninth). In a narrower timeframe, he ranks third among stars from 1965 to 1969 (2000, 27, 159 (citing Le Film français, September 4, 1992, 19)). In films with international distribution, he does play French characters in the 1963 French/Italian coproduction Mélodie en sous-sol/Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil), as well as in the 1964 French production Les Félins. Notably, the French/Italian/Spanish coproduction Red Sun uses English-language dialogue, while the Italian/French Adieu, l’ami/Farewell Friend and Zorro appeared in dubbed versions for English-language release, with Delon dubbing his own voice for both. Graeme Hayes observes that “whether as an actor or a character, Delon is frequently described in terms which underline the unmediated and instinctive” (2004, 46).

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9 See Maillot (1996, 170–71); cited in Hayes (2004, 42). 10 Vincendeau also glosses Maillot thusly: “for him, Delon and Belmondo represent a ‘dissolution’ of French national identity, as the heroes they embody lust after American goods in American-inspired thrillers. He wonders, in fact, whether they ‘are still French’” (2000, 160). 11 Both Sharif and Delon appear in this star-laden production, though not in scenes together; in separate stories, each is an olive-skinned European dreamboat who romances an American woman. 12 On narrative and thematic emphases in top-grossing Hollywood films of the 1970s and beyond, see Kramer (2005).

7

The Star’s Script: Delon as Director, Producer, and Screenwriter Isabelle Vanderschelden

Alain Delon’s face and his looks have largely contributed to the construction of his status as a screen icon and to his branding as a cinema commodity. Ginette Vincendeau (2000) and Guy Austin (2003) have founded their critical analyses of his stardom on this premise. Vincendeau defines a star as “a celebrated performer who develop[s] a ‘persona’ or ‘myth’ composed of an amalgam of [his] screen image and private identity, which the audience recognizes and expects from film to film, and which in turn determines the parts [he] play[s]” (2000,  vii). Comparing and contrasting Delon’s “persona” with that of his contemporary rival and occasional co-star, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Vincendeau and Austin have provided illuminating assessments of Delon’s screen image as a determined tough guy and remote outsider. They have also highlighted other features, such as his macho masculinity and/or the inherent duality of his characters. Delon holds a special place shared by a select few in French cinema: the ultimate star, unique and inimitable (Rauger 1996, 33). As a larger than life public figure known in France and internationally, he has demonstrated over the years his business flair for developing commercial projects and brands around his name. In the 1970s, as his box-office pull was questioned, he extended his mastery of his image by producing his films, then by contributing to the screenplays and taking on directing. These shifts in the function of the star were amply discussed by film critics at the time, who speculated about his motivations, and the impact that such moves might have had on his image and brand. As film scholars have shown, in the 1970s, French cinema moved toward a star system in which the “ambition and financial power” of French stars changed (Austin 2003, 6), as some acquired more control over the films they appeared in by financing them (Prédal 1991, 334–7).

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In a short essay published in Positif, Michel Cieutat presents Delon’s complex star persona, identifying three different facets (trois visages) to the star’s image with corresponding motifs: le battant (the fighter, gangster, or cop); le battu (beaten, often with dual personality); and le bateleur (buffoon), integrating elements of comedy and intertextuality through explicit cinephilic borrowings and self-parody (Cieutat 2012, 43–4). Cieutat’s analysis confirms that, in the twenty-first century, despite a less marked on-screen presence, Delon retains a clearly identifiable star persona and an unmatched presence. This chapter investigates an overlooked period in Delon’s career, broadly 1976–1983, coinciding with changes in French politics and society, namely the end of the period of economic prosperity known as les trente glorieuses. It briefly investigates the star’s input into film production, then more specifically into screenwriting and directing.1 The main aim is to assess whether these increased responsibilities led to a change of persona or just served to reinforce and maintain the star image developed from the 1960s. The discussion addresses the consolidation of Delon’s brand, considering look, performance style, parts, and character types. It also questions the possible strategic motivations behind these developments, such as his desire to be recognized as a complete “homme de cinéma” (Delon in Jousse and Toubiana 1996, 30) and to curb the decline of his stardom. Adopting Vincendeau’s distinction between stars appearing in mainstream films versus stars of auteur films (2000, 24), I focus here on Delon’s image through a commercial perspective based on the specific production processes and public reception of his late 1970s films. Delon’s intentional repositioning as increasingly remote and inaccessible (Chiesi 2003, 80) may be explained by his anticipating—or refusing to accept—changes in popular French cinema in the early 1980s, namely the renewal of the policier/polar (crime thriller) genre2 with more ordinary heroes and the disaffection of French audiences for some of its popular stars. The three main films under consideration—Trois hommes à abattre/Three Men to Destroy (Jacques Deray, 1980), Pour la peau d’un flic/For a Cop’s Hide (Delon, 1981), and Le Battant/The Fighter (Delon, 1983)—are polars designed as star vehicles. Delon’s role as screenwriter can be clarified using Jill Nelmes’s distinction which associates craft in screenwriting to a trade and an industry, as opposed to creativity, which is tied to the inspiration of an author (2007, 107). He did not propose original stories, choosing rather to collaborate on adaptations of stories from the established authors of the prestigious Série noire collection, which had already provided him his previous key-roles (see Durant

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2004, 100–2). He started not so much from a story idea as from a possible representation of his screen image that he could appropriate. He financed the three films, thus ensuring maximum control over the production stage and increased his hold on the films even further for Pour la peau d’un flic and Le Battant by taking on the director’s role. Trois hommes à abattre is freely adapted with Deray and Christopher Frank (for the dialogue) from Jean-Patrick Manchette’s Le Petit bleu de la côte ouest. Delon plays Michel Gerfaut, a marginal solitary professional card player who becomes involved by chance in a spiral of violence relating to crime and corruption. The film attracted 2.91 million viewers in France.3 Delon worked with Frank again for Pour la peau d’un flic adapting another Manchette novel, Que d’os. His character, Choucas, a private investigator and former police officer dismissed for violence, is asked to find a young missing woman. This film repeated the commercial success of Trois hommes à abattre with 2.37 million viewers. For his last film as director, Le Battant, Delon co-adapted a noir novel by André Caroff; the film attracted 1.93 million viewers. He plays Jacques Darnay, a convict just out from prison, caught between the police and a criminal gang, who wants the stolen diamonds that he hid before his arrest. These three plot outlines reveal parts made to measure to reinforce Delon’s mainstream screen image. Reference will also be made to some earlier films, which announce Delon’s transition, such as Flic Story (José Giovanni 1976), Le Gang (Jacques Deray, 1976), L’Homme pressé/The Hurried Man (Edouard Molinaro, 1976), and Mort d’un pourri/Death of a Corrupt Man (Georges Lautner 1977). Few critical studies of the star are available in French and even fewer discussions of the films of this corpus. As a result, the French secondary sources consist mainly of press articles and critical biographies by Bernard Violet (2000) and Philippe Durant (2004), as well as the French version of Roberto Chiesi’s Italian portrait (2003).

Delon’s brand evolution in the 1970s By 1970, Delon was at the height of his international celebrity having established his stardom in the 1960s by working with important directors such as JeanPierre Melville, Luchino Visconti, and René Clément. He was noticed alongside stars of the previous generation such as Jean Gabin in Mélodie en sous-sol/Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil, 1963) and Le Clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian

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Clan (Verneuil, 1969). He then paired up with major names of his own generation, such as Lino Ventura, Romy Schneider, and Belmondo (Frodon 1995, 181). Delon’s iconic screen image as a solitary, tough hero was shaped through Melville’s three film noirs, Le Samouraï/The Samurai (1967), Le Cercle rouge/The Red Circle (1970), and Un flic/Dirty Money (1972). The latter allowed him to extend his reach as a star beyond Europe, into China and Japan. From the late 1960s, this made him the “embodiment” of loner heroes of mainstream polars (Austin 2003, 4), his actor performance transforming into “a pure display of physical characteristics and metonymy objects such as the trench-coat and the hat” (Forbes 1992, 55). Delon has been described as a “sacred monster”4 and the “only real star” of French cinema (Cieutat 2012, 42; Devarrieux 1983). As mentioned in the introduction, Vincendeau, Austin, and Durant all compare Delon with Belmondo, their analyses invariably leading to some connections within the policier genre but also to clear differentiation between the two stars’ images. They emphasize how the two stars may have inspired one another but also competed in popularity surveys, leaving little screen space for other actors of their generation operating in the polar genre. In 1964, Delon had created his first production company Delbeau, with his agent Georges Beaume (Durant 2004, 143). In 1968, he founded Adel productions for an ambitious film Jeff (Jean Herman, 1968), which did not meet the usual audiences expected by the star, with a million entries. The company remained functional until 1986,5 financing twenty-five films over this period. The contacts that Delon had established within Italian cinema working with Italian directors such as Visconti or Antonioni, naturally led to financial partnerships with Italian producers, hence the regular casting of Italian partners for Delon in the 1970s. Initially, he produced a series of mainstream films by experienced directors that he chose and which offered him roles of lonely cops and gangsters. Deray, for instance, sees Delon as the “detonator” of his career as director (Deray 2003, 95), starting with Borsalino (Jacques Deray, 1970), which paired Delon and Belmondo, attracting 4.7 million viewers in France alone. This success served as the stepping stone in the 1970s for a series of successful co-productions between Adel productions and Italian partners, Lira Films and Mondial Te-Fi. Delon’s production model was European but could also be compared to Hollywood production, where the producer is the initiator and supervisor of a film, while the director is viewed as an experienced technician. Deray, for instance, confirmed that Delon held overt control at every level, from buying

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the rights of a novel through casting the actors, and to making distribution and marketing decisions (Deray 2003, 111; 192). Other testimonies refer to Delon the producer as extremely professional and efficient, although there may have been occasional friction between the star and the directors with whom he worked.6 If Delon’s screen image in the 1970s was authoritative, some films failed to meet their public, especially when he tried to experiment with character types that moved away from the outsider gangsters and tough police officers constituting his brand, as he did with Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976) and Le Gitan/The Gypsy (José Giovanni, 1975).7 This failure was attributed to changes in audience taste, but also seen as a consequence of recurring rumors about Delon’s entourage and mysterious “faits divers” in which his name appeared, in particular the Markovic affair in 1968.8 His image was also blurred by the many business ventures he launched, including horse racing, boxing matches, art collections, clothes design, and cosmetic ranges which cemented his international branding. As producer, Delon had more power to influence the casting but also the filmmaking process and artistic decisions, including those concerning mise-enscène. Significantly, he stayed away from a new generation of emerging stars and directors, increasingly cutting himself off from the cinema of his time (Violet 2000, 380–1). He even tended to cast himself as a sole star, playing an isolated protagonist, and teaming up with relatively unknown actors in secondary roles. In this respect, his production practices sought to boost his star status. Delon worked with Deray on five films in the 1970s, including Flic Story in 1975, with Giovanni for Deux hommes dans la ville/Two Men in the City (1973) and Le Gitan.9 He also made three films with Lautner: Il était une fois un flic (1971), Les Seins de glace/Someone is Bleeding (1974), and Mort d’un pourri (1977).10 These films all announce his transition to scriptwriting and directing mainstream polars, assigning himself “lone wolf ” performances of cops or marginal characters. In Flic Story, for example, he plays Roger Borniche, the reallife policeman whose story is adapted, rather than the criminal Emile Buisson, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant. The film retraces the relentless chase of the determined cop to arrest the criminal. The film attracted just under 2 million viewers. The box-office results of Le Gang, also adapted from a Borniche novel in 1976, were disappointing—1.19 million viewers. L’Homme pressé only attracted 730,000 viewers in 1976, signaling a decline in the star’s box-office pull (Violet 2000, 380–1 and Chiesi 79–81). Audiences failed to identify with Delon as the bubbly, unpredictable, curly haired gangster of Le Gang and of the hyperactive protagonist of L’Homme

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pressé, constantly rushing somewhere new in search of new business ventures, thus conforming to one facet of Delon’s own star image of a man constantly in need of new challenges and experimentation. For Mort d’un pourri seen by 1.85 million viewers in 1977, Delon took on the part of a politician, Xavier Maréchal. The film addressed the themes of lost values and political corruption, which will later reappear in Pour la peau d’un flic. It is tempting to suggest that Delon’s screen image in the second half of the 1970s fell out of line with audience tastes. Or would it be more accurate to suggest that Delon did not intend to be popular? Patrick Poivre d’Arvor’s portrait of the star in 1979 helps to understand the nature of the discrepancy between the star’s image and his characters: I like Alain Delon because he is not really popular. He is a sort of Lord (a  “seigneur”), the opposite to … Belmondo, with whom it is easy to identify. Delon does not belong to the public consciousness of French people; no one wants to say “tu” to him, or to give him a pat on the back. The man is not simple; he is not close. (in Violet 2000, 379)

This distance may explain Delon’s need to re-focus his screen image counting on the crime thriller genre and its solitary heroes to reinforce his sense of difference and maintain control over his audience. The move from star to producer highlighted his directorial debut in 1981, an extra move that he saw as the “logical outcome of the career in entertainment that [he] wanted to fulfill” (in Baudin 1981). The deaths of two of his artistic masters in the 1970s, Melville and Visconti, may also have affected his new career choices (Chiesi 2003, 80). But it would be difficult not to see in these strategic moves an attempt to prove himself as an accomplished “homme de cinéma” and to curb the decline of the star’s box-office appeal by increasing his control over his later films.

Revamping Delon’s image For all the control that he established over the three films he wrote and/or directed, Delon certainly did not work alone. He chose arguably the best collaborators in his professional context. For their plots and character types, he drew inspiration from established Série noire authors but without preserving their style or social and political contexts. He engaged actors whom he knew well, such as Michel Auclair, Jean-Pierre Darras, Daniel Ceccaldi, Pierre Mondy, and François Périer, the policeman of Le Samouraï, who returns in Le Battant as

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Gino. This helped to form viable working teams based on reliable networks (see Noli 1981; Violet 2000, 388–89; 397–99), and it contributed to preserving the sense of continuity in his filmography by comforting a canonical, international screen image while retaining the dimensions of isolation and authority identified by Austin (2003,  50). However, to ensure the development of a more mature authority figure, ever-younger female partners were introduced to replace the likes of Mireille Darc, Natalie Delon, and Romy Schneider.11 Particularly remarked was the appearance of Anne Parillaud as Choucas’s secretary and lover Charlotte in Pour la peau d’un flic and as Nathalie, the girl sent over to watch Darnay and who falls in love with him in Le Battant. These two characters helped Delon to transform his screen image toward a tough but protective maturity. Delon’s increased input as writer and director thus coincided with the fine-tuning of his mainstream persona, trying to combine the reliable expected screen image and more mature character types. In terms of the screenplay and direction style, the three films share common features, which contribute to their unity and the consolidation of Delon’s screen image of tough guy and “brooding lone wolf ” (Chiesi 2003, 76). He recycled the familiar stylized figures that he had played in Melville’s films and proposed scripts for more aggressive American-style action outsiders operating in underground Parisian or urban French settings.12 Delon’s three protagonists display imposing physical presence, both visually and spatially, reinforcing his powerful visual image as an actor who fills the space in which he operates. Also reminiscent of Melville is Delon’s inscrutable facial expression and fetishization of smart stylized costume, which were the tropes of his star image in the late 1960s.13 Increasingly, the trench coat and trilby are replaced by a trendy leather jacket, but Delon’s natural elegance is often emphasized by impeccable suits and shirts regardless of the situation he is placed in. There is even a change of shirt ritual integrated into the screenplay of Pour la peau d’un flic. Together with the use of cars and guns, this costume fetishism also helps to enhance his sexualized playboy image. The three plots revolve around familiar narratives of score settling, revenge, and persecution. The protagonists are mostly defined by their social and physical isolation, resorting to violence to solve their problems. Their nearly obsessive determination to conquer or win at all costs and their fighting spirit are other recurrent motifs, which are central to Delon’s persona. These motifs echo his personal story—he often says that he had to fight to get to the top (Jousse and Toubiana 1996, 29), although he is also known to have argued that his

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stardom was predestined (Violet 2000). They mimetically recall his place in French cinema, isolated and unique, independent and untamed, and point to (conscious) commentaries in his films on important changes taking place in French cinema that he tries to eschew. For example, in Pour la peau d’un flic, the dialogue refers to the relations between the police and criminals, Delon/Choucas evoking “changing times, and time passing by” to his ex-colleague. A similar remark is made in Le Battant: “times have changed. What we have lost in folklore, we have gained in efficiency,” which could be interpreted as Delon’s positioning on the changes taking place in French cinema with noticeable influences from American fast paced plots, more violent and stunt-filled action films, as well as the increasing impact on film style of emerging high-profile TV series. Among the motifs retained from the star’s earlier films, we can identify several features. The narrative of each of the three films is psychologically superficial and limited to the familiar archetypes of the hero fighting with determination to help a friend, for honor or revenge, which seems to suggest that the screenwriting supports Delon’s image. Self-awareness in terms of screen image, body and face remain priorities. As Vincendeau has argued, Delon’s early image was predicated upon the “narcissistic display of his face and body,” and that later, it evolved from “gigolo” to “melancholy” masculinity (2000, 174–77—see Waldron in this volume). This interpretation is also valid in the three films under discussion. Recalling the days of Plein soleil, Delon includes into each screenplay a few timely opportunities for displaying his torso. Yet, his wrinkles transform the angelic facial features into a mature, more cynical hero, but one who, nevertheless, also assumes his virility. The secondary roles attributed to female characters in these masculine films remain rather limited to sexualized objects. Women serve above all to highlight Delon’s masculinity and illustrate his intended derision of the post-1968 sexual liberation in explicit nude scenes and references to sexuality. Occasionally, the young female characters add a more protective, paternal dimension to the star’s maturing screen image that Parillaud’s girly roles emphasize. The development of the dual personality motif is another facet reinforced in Delon’s image in the early 1980s. It helps to enhance the battant/battu duality of his screen image, but the “battu” dimension seems to take over in the narratives. For example, Trois Hommes à abattre sees Delon/Gerfaut killed at the end of the film in a scene that lacks drama. In Pour la peau d’un flic, the isolated, battered hero, Delon/Choucas, is repeatedly physically attacked and disfigured by his enemies, which is significant when it is clear that Delon’s star image has

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been constructed around his angelic face. He may be trying to override his early star image and signal a transition to different roles (more ironic and less stylized for instance). The final scene at the hospital shows him wearing a face bandage, unable to speak and passively listening to his girlfriend’s love declaration and this shows him to the audience as more human and approachable. The poster used for the promotion of Le Battant brings together two mirror images of the star’s face, suggesting the duplicity of the character, although this is not the major theme of the film. Delon/Darnay is secretive rather than deceptive, the duplicitous character of the film being his alleged friend, Gino. When scripting and staging his own roles, Delon plays on the ambivalence of his star persona, balancing between auteur cinema and popular film. In other words, his screenplays are based upon decisions that affect the Delon screen image more than the narrative development of the polar genre. In the three popular films discussed here, he offers the audience mirror images of how he sees himself as a star, a determined battant who is not prepared to give up but also a “beaten” figure, remote from the present and isolated, who belongs to the past. He seeks to modernize his screen image to make it more ordinary, to move away from the myth of the unattainable hero. His star presence remains imposing, as though he were unable to move beyond his earlier star image, suggesting nostalgia for his former smooth, impenetrable face. The three films that Delon wrote tend to have more cynical protagonists, with moralizing plots and explanatory dialogues, which underline their mainstream status. Repeated attempts to infuse some humor into the dialogue are equally surprising, for example when Parillaud/Charlotte makes knowing references to film classics. They suggest how Delon–the-screenwriter harked back to his earlier stardom rather than developing a contemporary image. Delon’s distinctive mobilization of space is retained. His walking style and movements onscreen become more coded to include intertextual references to previous films. He also gives himself ample opportunities to display action performances in these films through a series of carefully staged car chases and shooting episodes. More generally, the control of screen space within the frame and diegetic setting is clear, as through the careful mise-en-scène, Delon occupies the space and closes it off. He is omnipresent except in the initial scene of Le Battant. The film’s dialogues retain Delon’s familiar diction, yet are wordier than in the films that he had made with Melville. For example, action scenes and plot elements are often commented on by the protagonist who feels the need to justify his actions. As critics have noted, irony and humor creep into the scripts,

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for instance with an overt reference by Parillaud/Charlotte to Belmondo’s tough guy image in Pour la peau d’un flic, and Mondy/Rouxel’s pastiche of inspector Columbo in Le Battant which suggest hints of self-irony but also more popular mainstream references. And yet they still point to the star’s narcissism even when it comes to constructing his characters or writing dialogue. From the perspective of genre, it is clear that Delon aimed to develop his own brand of European crime thriller around his screen image and American-style action thrillers. Many reviewers agree that Pour la peau d’un flic and Le Battant were inspired by, and reminiscent of, American action movies, in their narratives, mise-en-scène and marketing strategies.14 Moving away from stylized noir and placing less emphasis on gangster codes, Delon also abandoned the iconic French gangsters in Borsalino and Le Gang, focusing more instead on Delonmodeled outsiders placed by circumstance in exceptional situations. If the three films of the early 1980s recycled the conventions of film noir through their visual style, the action-packed narratives staging effective car chases, spectacular stunts and violent gun fights, imitated Americanized mainstream action entertainment movies.15 Delon himself admitted in an interview that for him, “cinema [would] always be a form of dream and escapism” and that Trois hommes à abattre “was not meant to lead to a reflection on our society” (in Samson 1981). As we have seen, there are nevertheless occasional commentaries on society, underneath the veneer of Americanized action thriller narrative. Delon steered clear of newcomers like Alain Corneau and Claude Miller during the late 1970s, who were bringing more introspection and realism into the policier genre, in such films as Série noire (Corneau 1979) or Mortelle randonnée/Deadly Circuit (Miller 1983) (in Samson 1981). He chose to look back to his past star image for his own projects in the early 1980s, in terms of tone and narrative, he relied on performances tested with Deray and Giovanni, while drawing inspiration from Lautner’s know-how for the effective staging of fast-paced action scenes with spectacular car chases and stunts. He also tried to replicate the narrative rhythm of Clément’s films and the hushed/muffled atmosphere of those of Melville, the masters to whom his two films as director are dedicated. If the films displayed a degree of technical mastery, they brought in few stylistic innovations. They accumulated intertextual references to Delon’s filmography, instilling a dose of humor and self-derision, which pointed here to Delon’s narcissism rather than his artistic talent. The critics were quick to acknowledge the tested models that Delon as writer director tried to emulate and the limits of the exercise. Cieutat saw a competent

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effort to direct (2012, 44), Rochereau qualified Dans la peau d’un flic’s direction as “not so bad” (1981). Others rated the type of films that he produced as outdated (Chazal 1981), indicated his lack of writing experience (Chiesi 2003, 85). The media reduced the change in Delon’s career to a desire to take control of his image and to make more lucrative films by taking fewer creative risks.16

Conclusion Delon’s gradual extension of roles from actor to producer, and from producer to director and screenwriter may have been driven by a desire to gain full mastery over his screen image in successful commercial projects and prove his autonomy vis-à-vis the French film industry. It is also possible that reaching maturity, Delon was, as Cieutat suggests, “a fallen angel who was still trying to seduce” (2012, 42). Discovering the limits of his stardom in the late 1970s, he had to address the evolution of the public and the changing trends of popular cinema if he wanted to remain independent from any system. Like other stars of his generation, he had increasingly become more dependent on the public’s desire for him to fulfill certain roles, not always to his advantage. The tension between Delon’s ambition to be considered as an “homme de cinéma,” not just an actor, and his desire to make his star image more popular may have blurred his normally sound judgment to choose his roles. Placed in the center of the film production, he seems to have denied himself the necessary distance to assess the suitability of his own scripts, which were reduced to “the first cog of a large wheel” to borrow Jill Nelmes’s phrase (2007, 107). His polar films made between 1976 and 1988 contain recurring motifs which point to his professional experience and network, more than they suggest the individual talent of an author or a director. By the late 1970s, Delon’s brand alone was no longer enough to attract audiences. Neither were his efforts to recycle codes and conventions of the polar genre that had become his trademark, and modernize them by integrating action thriller set pieces into the plots. The scope of reviving the mythical Delon brand and persona through his looks and performance style was limited. The maturing, self-deriding facets of his dark, solitary character types simply positioned him more clearly within mainstream genre cinema and narratives, including spectacular stunts, which saw him competing on Belmondo’s ground. Far from signaling a shift toward authorship or a renewal of his iconic capital, the three films that he wrote and produced froze his screen

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image and star persona with repeated intertextual nods to his prestigious past filmography. They highlighted how isolated and helpless the French star had become when faced with the important changes taking place in genre cinema at the end of the 1970s. The form and narrative of each polar starring Delon in that period appear resolutely rigid, calibrated and predictable, not to say consensual. For all their authority, his protagonists display conservatism and disenchantment, and this continues in two later productions, Parole de flic/Cop’s Honour (José Pinheiro, 1985) and On ne reveille pas un flic qui dort/Let Sleeping Cops Lie (Pinheiro, 1988). They are yet other versions of a similar prototype, and therefore difficult to differentiate from one another (Chiesi 2003, 85). In the late 1970s-early 1980s, Delon failed to set himself free from his screen image and the objectified heroes that constitute his brand, and who continue to lack agency, even in an autonomous financial and creative production model. His films and their reception echo the end of the “trente glorieuses” and of the classical era for French popular stars (Vincendeau 2000, 13), which manifested itself by French audiences supporting new cinema heroes and stars as role models such as Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, and Gérard Lanvin. The fighters’ era (le temps des battants) seems to have come to an end in 1983 with Delon’s last battant character emigrating to a sunny resort with the stolen diamonds, but not trusting anyone enough to reveal where exactly. His few original performances in that decade, Notre histoire (Bertrand Blier, 1984), a surreal drama in which he plays Roger Avranches, an alcoholic mechanic, and the pacifist fantastic fable Le Passage/The Passage (René Manzor, 1985) are exceptions. It is significant and ironic that the former offered him the only César Award for Best Actor of his career, while his incursion into writing and producing did little to transform his star image or reveal new facets to his talent. This does not affect his huge notoriety or his unique place in the history of French cinema, but exemplifies the limitations of agency when stars become prisoners of their image.

Notes 1 2 3

Delon was credited as director for two films and as co-writer for seven films in total between 1976 and 1988. See Guérif (1981) for different forms of the French polar, and (1989) for definitions of “policier film.” All box-office statistics are from Durant (2004, 297).

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5 6 7 8

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11 12 13 14

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This phrase is used in French to refer to “flamboyant, hyperbolic figures,” (Vincendeau 2000, 3). It also implies an unquestionable status as star. It is applied to Delon on the back cover presentation of Durant (2004). It was replaced by Leda productions in 1987 to finance Ne réveillez pas un flic qui dort (1988). See technical crew’s assessment in Noli (1981). See Durant (2004: 144–45, 201). Mr. Klein attracted 711,000 viewers, Le Gitan 1.78 m. Stefan Markovic, Delon’s bodyguard and friend, was murdered in 1968. It was never resolved, but the investigation involved Delon and his Corsican mafia friend Marcantoni. The investigation uncovered a political scandal involving Georges Pompidou’s entourage. Vincendeau notes that Delon’s “high visibility as a gangster or flic coincided with the Markovic affair” (2000, 178). Giovanni is a Série noire author with links with the criminal world who spent time in jail before becoming a recognized polar screenwriter and director with a personal touch. The most successful was the last one with 1.87 million viewers. Lautner made cult comedies in the 1960s, often written by Michel Audiard and produced by Alain Poiré of Gaumont (as Italian co-productions). He later worked with Belmondo on popular hits in the early 1980s. Ornella Muti in Mort d’un pourri, Nicole Calfan in Le Gang and Andrea Ferreol in Trois Hommes à abattre. Delon’s name is set against the Eiffel tower in the credits of Pour la peau d’un flic. For an example of Delon’s use of costume, see Stella Bruzzi’s analysis of Le Samourai in her chapter on the instabilities of the Franco-American gangster (1997, 79–81). From Borsalino onward, Delon producer explored the American promotion campaigns for the release of his films (Violet 2000, 292) effectively using trailers, teasers and the media. On American style see contemporary reviews: “a thriller made the American way” (Anon. 1981; Rochereau 1981); “a real thriller, in the purest tradition” (Samson 1981; Douin 1983). For examples of comments on Delon’s motivation at the time, see Minute’s review (Anon 1981). See also Durant for a retrospective assessment of Delon’s motivations (2004, 142).

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The Singing Actor: Delon on Record Barbara Lebrun

“C’est étrange, je ne sais pas ce qui m’arrive ce soir. Je te regarde comme pour la première fois” (this is strange, I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. I look at you and it feels like the first time), says Alain Delon, slowly. “Encore des mots, toujours des mots, les mêmes mots” (words, yet more words, the same old words), replies Dalida singing as if to herself. This half-spoken, half-sung dialogue opens “Paroles … Paroles …” (1973), one of France’s most famous duets and probably Delon’s only well-known song. Yet, the actor in fact recorded nine tracks between 1967 and 2008, featuring a variety of solo and duet pieces that were mostly released as stand-alone songs rather than soundtracks. In all of them, Delon sings in an individual and recognizable style mixing talk-over with melodic singing, employing a deep voice and slow delivery. This chapter, the first academic discussion of his recordings and singing performance, focuses on the ways in which his on-screen seduction has transposed to the sound-based medium of the record, notably through the use of his voice. While many actors have branched out into song recording, Delon has done so in a highly singular fashion that poses particular critical challenges. Indeed, Delon has refused live and televised performance and reduced his visibility, as a singer, to motionless pictures on record sleeves. This is not only unexpected for a beautiful actor used to the camera but also unusual in the popular music industry whose conventions emphasize stage and mediatized singing. For this reason, I shall situate the work and meanings of Delon-the-singer within the theoretical framework of intermediality, at a complex juncture between cinema and popular music, where the different techniques and symbolic conventions of these two media meet, without precisely mapping onto one another. Adapting Michel Chion’s notion of the acousmêtre, or off-screen voice (1999), I shall argue here that, on record, Delon sings from a liminal space and projects a ghostly vocal presence, defined by lack.

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Delon, music, and intermediality Growing up in post-war France, Delon has had varied musical interests all his life. He took piano lessons throughout his childhood and was said to have “a beautiful voice” when singing in his school choir (Violet 2000, 19; 22). He played the trumpet as a young adult and, like many men of his generation, developed a passion for jazz (Violet 2000, 28). He attended the Paris concerts of French singer-songwriter Léo Ferré in 1967 (Violet 2000, 214) and French-American singer Josephine Baker in April 1975 (Stovall 1996, 285). A close friend of France’s best-selling pop singer Patricia Kaas (Violet 2000, 458), he made a prerecorded screen appearance at her Edith Piaf tribute at London’s Royal Albert Hall, on November 5, 2012.1 As an actor, Delon has regularly played parts foregrounding a musical sensibility. In Plein soleil/Purple Noon (René Clément, 1960), his character Tom Ripley briefly picks up an acoustic guitar in front of Marge and starts strumming. In Jean-Pierre Melville’s films, Delon’s tough gangsters are surrounded by slowpaced jazz, whether falling in love with a pianist in Le Samouraï/The Samurai (1967), exchanging information in a jazz club in Le Cercle rouge/The Red Circle (1970) or, in Un flic/Dirty Money (1972), collecting jazz records and sharing the surname Coleman with one of America’s greatest sax players. In Borsalino (Jacques Deray, 1974), the opening scene is the rehearsal of a singer’s concert, which Delon (playing a theater manager) observes calmly. In the underrated Attention les enfants regardent/Attention, the Kids are Watching (Serge Leroy, 1978), Delon’s dodgy babysitter figure moves his body rhythmically to the disco tune of “Love me baby” by Sheila B. Devotion, playing diegetically as a TV broadcast. But Delon is also a recording artist. His first song was the ballad “Laetitia,” featuring on the soundtrack of Les Aventuriers/The Last Adventure (Robert Enrico, 1967) in which he also starred. His only other soundtrack song is the duet “I don’t know,” recorded with the Afro-American singer Phyllis Nelson for Parole de flic/Cop’s Honour (José Pinheiro, 1985). Delon’s other recordings are not related to films, although they consciously echo his film persona. Three are duets with internationally famous female singers: “Paroles … Paroles …” with Dalida (1973); “Thought I’d ring you” with Shirley Bassey (1983); and “Modern Style” with Françoise Hardy (2006). Delon’s remaining tracks are solo pieces, three nodding to his private life (“Comme au cinéma,” 1987; “Je t’aime, tu sais,”

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1990; “Dans mon coeur de gitan,” 2008) and one a recitation to jazzy music of the poem by Charles Baudelaire, “Un voyage à Cythère” (1982).2 Although diverse in format and spread thinly over the years, this output is stylistically coherent. The music is always slow, with a “soft jazz” orchestration that privileges solo parts for keyboards, a saxophone or guitar, while Delon’s deep, slow voice is recorded close to the microphone, singing romantic lyrics. Recording songs is hardly surprising for film actors given the long-established complementarity of popular music and cinema. Both industries grew out of the theater and music hall, where bodily performance is central, and the recording techniques for sound and the moving image developed in quick succession in 1895 (Chion 1999, 10). Their close relationship was exploited from the start, with stage actors recording classic texts (Sarah Bernhardt’s 1903 rendition of Phèdre on phonograph cylinder is a famous example), and stage singers appearing in silent and, later, talking films. This overlap led to the hybrid genre of the film musical and to the fundamentally dual careers of actor-singers.3 In the United States, these have included the Hollywood artists Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Barbra Streisand. In France, the hybrid role of actor-singer has suited women particularly well. Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin, Isabelle Huppert, Jeanne Balibar, Emmanuelle Seigner, Sandrine Kiberlain, Agnès Jaoui, Lou Doillon, and others, all had strong acting careers before releasing their first albums. French male actor-singers, for their part, have tended to fit into one of three genres: romantic (Tino Rossi, Marc Lavoine, Patrick Bruel), comic (Fernandel, Bourvil, Jean Yanne), or poetic and anti-conformist (Serge Reggiani, Yves Montand, Jacques Dutronc, Philippe Léotard). Delon, however, is not recognized as an actor-singer by the music profession. The French male artists mentioned above are credited as “interprètes,” a prestigious term for “singer,” in encyclopedias of French popular music (including Saka and Plougastel 1999; Dicale 2006; Fontana 2007), but Delon is absent from these reference texts. He is also absent from Travelling, the CD compilation of French singing actors released in 2007 by UniFrance, a statefunded body promoting French film abroad and showcasing “the singing capabilities of a number of cinematic leading lights” (liner notes, Various Artists, 2007). The singles he recorded on vinyl have not been reissued on CD, a sign of their poor appeal, and even the assistant of Leda Productions, Delon’s Parisbased production company, exclaimed defensively “Mr. Delon is not a singer!”.4 In fact, the only place where his songs feature prominently today is on a French

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website entitled “Bide et Musique” (Music that Flopped), aiming to ridicule “weird and improbable tunes.”5 To understand his lack of success, not to mention the derision that has characterized the reception of his songs, it is worth drawing on the interpretative framework of intermediality, the study of the “communicative and aesthetic mechanisms” of distinct media and of their interaction (Elleström 2010, 12). Indeed, Delon’s songs and recording performances cannot be judged simply from the perspective of Popular Music Studies, for, as mentioned, he has only released a handful of separate tracks, never sung his songs live, and never tried to “make it” as a singer. To this extent, his assistant’s claim that he is “no singer” is correct. Nonetheless, his recordings cannot be solely analyzed with the tools of Film Studies, for they are the voice of Delon accompanied by pop music on a three-minute audio track, an entirely different materiality from film. Furthermore, the perspective of Film Music Studies is itself inadequate for the two songs he recorded for soundtracks, because these play no part in the films’ narratives. Delon’s recordings are best understood, then, as a constant, complex, and somewhat ill-fitting “intermedial” interaction, navigating between the two distinct media of film and song. As “intermedial” crossovers, his songs play with the semiotic resources common to both film and popular music, namely image, gesture, sound, language, and narrative, and with the technical constraint of a “fixed sequentiality” conventionally set at around three minutes (Elleström 2010, 19). But the main difference between the two media is that cinema is primarily visual, while popular music is primarily sound-based. For Delon, arguably the most visually pleasurable male actor of his generation, the medium of song poses an immediate challenge for the star’s identity given this lack of visual grounding. Below, we examine the ways in which Delon uses his voice to compensate for this lack.

Aural seduction and virility The voice in recorded popular music generates meaning from at least four entangled perspectives: as music, physical body, star image, and song character (Frith 2002 [1996], 187). By 1967, the date of his first recording, Delon already had a strong film career that had shaped the association of his body and star image with an ideal sense of French masculinity, as a man who appears “cool,

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sexy, physically coordinated, in control” (Vincendeau 2000, 160). In the medium of song, Delon used his voice to maintain this seductive masculinity. Musically, Delon’s voice is deep, sometimes sung from the chest and moving between the baritone and bass registers. It is also remarkably still, with a slow, laconic delivery that is facilitated by the preferred genre of the pop ballad, without speed, acceleration, or syncopation. In popular music conventions, these features signify maturity in contrast to the vocal histrionics of male rock singers whose frequent use of high pitch connotes youth (Frith 2002 [1996], 195). They also construct a conservatively gendered identity that is vocally—and unequivocally—virile (see Jarman-Ivens 2011, 18). Indeed, once described as “ballsy,”6 Delon’s voice corresponds to what the general public understands as a “deep male voice” connoting sexual arousal (Taylor 2012, 611). Its restricted range similarly connotes a powerful man in control of his vocal organs (Middleton 2007, 109). Delon’s clear articulation of lyrics, often interrupting melodic singing with passages of pure recitation, also builds on the male-dominated activity of recitation which, having evolved from the desire for clarity in the rhetorical tradition, is central to Western theatricality (Chaouche 2013, 84–9). Considered as pure sound, then, Delon’s voice invokes the already existing film-based association of his body with virility and self-control; to this extent, Delon’s virile voice “contains the image” (Chion 1999, 23). However, like all prominent stars, Delon’s appeal lies in the contradictions of his “star text” (Dyer 1998 [1979], 63), in his case the juxtaposition of a supposedly masculine strength with a supposedly feminine vulnerability. On the one hand, Delon’s “tough guy” screen characters demonstrate control and self-sufficiency, verging on misogyny; on the other, Delon’s own beauty, enhanced through slow movement and framing devices, makes him a pure object of contemplation, a role traditionally devolved to women (Vincendeau 2000, 185; 174). The Delon paradox on screen, then, resides in his “cruel beauty,” a beautiful man’s face that is simultaneously pleasurable and deadly, to himself and those around him (Vincendeau 2000, 176; 180). In his recordings, this paradox has been transposed to the extent that his “manly” voice is deployed as pure singing: Delon sings without participating in any other creative activity, whether composing, lyrics-writing, instrumentplaying, sound arranging, or producing, and “just” singing has long been encoded as feminine in the gendered conventions of popular music (Frith and McRobbie 1990, 377; Middleton 2007, 104). Although largely discursive, this

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gendering has led to very real anxieties about the “effeminate” qualities of male singers (McCracken 1999, 366), the marginalization of women in the music industry, and to the association of singing with emotional instability, lack of compositional, or instrument-playing skills, and submission to male creativity (Whiteley 1997, xix). As a result, and even as he showcases his “deep male” voice, Delon projects through the very act of singing a symbolic femininity, a certain professional weakness, that contrasts with his otherwise sonic virility.7 This surface paradox works well when male inadequacy is built in the song narrative, but when this is not the case, Delon’s role as “merely” a singer suggests incompetence and can become subject to ridicule.

“Paroles … Paroles …” In his well-known duet with Dalida, Delon’s combination of virility with fragility is put to good use as the track’s lyrics and format underscore a narrative of male duplicity and female emancipation. Delon recorded “Paroles … Paroles …” in early 1973 with the Egyptian-born, Paris-based Dalida, a singer who had, in the late 1950s, been France’s best-selling female artist and was, by 1973, an established European music star. In 1973, mixed-gender duets were highly fashionable in France, with the recent releases of Stone and Charden’s “L’Avventura” (1971), Sheila and Ringo’s “Les Gondoles à Venise” (1973), and Johnny Hallyday and Sylvie Vartan’s “J’ai un problème” (1973) (Dicale 2006, 439). While these were performed by real-life couples or couples purporting to be so, “Paroles … Paroles …” was an original departure from this model, presenting its male and female characters at cross purposes. It also, importantly, parodied Delon’s playboy image. Thanks to its famous interpreters, catchy music, and irreverent send-up of Delon’s dominantly virile persona, this French cover version of an Italian bossa nova became a huge hit. Lyrically, the duet weaves together two separate monologues rather than working as a dialogue. The male character repeats amorous platitudes (“you’re so beautiful”), while the female character denounces his mendacity (“your words ring hollow”). The song’s title, referring to “empty words” and repeated in the chorus by Dalida, expresses her contempt for her partner’s declaration of love. As her voice rises to a higher pitch with each repetition of “paroles,” her character sounds incrementally more confident. Instead of celebrating love or couples, this duet reflects a woman’s capacity to discern male fickleness.

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This narrative of female triumph is ideally complemented by the casting of Delon as the male voice. Whereas Dalida, the “real” singer, follows the rising melody and leads the chorus, apparently taking pleasure in singing itself, the well-known actor Delon mostly speaks and pleads (“Listen up!”). Vocally, not only is the male unable to reach the female but the two characters also communicate through different means, one singing and the other speaking. While the male character appears seductive and dishonest, his moral weakness is echoed in his (apparent) lack of singing expertise. The narrative of female leadership is also coherently conveyed in material terms, as Delon plays a supporting role visually on the sleeves of the single. On the front side, Dalida’s name appears first above a photograph that also foregrounds her (the B-side, in any case, features a Dalida solo). The back picture reinforces the theme of male/ female non-communication: the singers’ gaze is not reciprocated, and the photo does not capitalize on Delon’s good looks by being shot from a high angle. Furthermore, the fact that Delon is not shown singing accentuates his association with weakness. Reportedly due to other commitments (Rihoit  1995,  278),

Figure 8.1 Front cover of “Paroles … Paroles …” (1973)

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Figure 8.2 Back cover of “Paroles … Paroles …” (1973)

Delon  was  never filmed singing “Paroles … Paroles …,” leaving Dalida to promote it on her own and resorting to different devices to compensate for his absence. On TV on 24 February 1973 (“Devine qui est derrière la porte,” ORTF), the comedian Roger Pierre lip-synched to Delon’s voice in a sketch deliberately contrasting his physique with Delon’s, humorously sat in bed alongside Dalida (Pierre also unfolded a poster of Delon to underscore the comic contrast). On 19 April 1973 (“Cadet-Rousselle,” ORTF Deuxième chaîne), Dalida was filmed on the set of a public phone booth, shot in close-up each time she sang. An unknown male actor stood in a different booth, his back to the camera, wearing a pale trench-coat and dark trilby that copied the gangster clothes of Delon’s film characters (Dalida, 2007). On stage at the Olympia concert hall in 1974, Dalida stood alone in front of a film projecting still images of various French male celebrities. Delon’s photo started the film, but as his pre-recorded voice ran on, other faces started to appear, including those of the singers Claude François and Mike Brant, which did not match the recorded artist visually (Rihoit 1995, 279).

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In his most famous duet, in the song that most conveys to the French public the capabilities of Delon-as-singer, he is conspicuous by his absence. He is at once removed visually from the source of his sound and distanced from the promotional performance that singing, in the combined age of the concert hall and the television, typically requires. Delon is similarly invisible in the majority of his songs.8 In theory, such distance from the singing role could bolster the argument that the (male) star does not require visual incarnation to exist, that his “absent presence” is enough to embody him as a whole (see Railton and Watson (2011, 130) for an adaptation of Simone de Beauvoir’s ontological argument to gender representation in music videos). However, by contextualizing Delon’s songs at the junction of popular music and cinema, where what is seen and heard signifies in different ways, Delon’s “absent presence” rather undermines his overall symbolic power, fulfilling instead the narrative of male ineptitude at the heart of “Paroles … Paroles … .”

Ghostly singing: the acousmêtre, morbidity, and vulnerability In the context of film, Michel Chion (1999, 18–21) forged the neologism of acousmêtre to identify voices heard on the soundtrack whose origin cannot be ascertained visually—voices on the telephone, hidden behind a curtain, coming from outside the frame. For Chion (1999, 19), these voices bring a level of “disequilibrium and tension” to the narrative and are often the voices of powerful or dangerous characters. Disambiguation only occurs if, within the space of the film, the mouth of the actor is shown, revealed as the source of sound (1999, 127). There is also, he argues, something morbid in not seeing the voice, not knowing its source for sure (1999, 146). In popular music, the debate over the visual grounding of the voice is framed differently, since audio-recording devices (the radio, the telephone, the record, and latterly the digital music file) have for some time made the invisibility of singers unremarkable, even expected. Many songs are also enjoyed through pure listening (Taylor 2012). Nonetheless, the history of the popular song also reveals the centrality of the stage as a place of visual encounter between singers and audiences, singing having long been premised on acting and bodily visibility (Rutherford 2006, 236). Since the 1950s, television and more recently digital media have systematized the visual expectations of audiences in relation to popular music, grounding the perception of an artist’s “liveness” in their

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visibility, whether live or screened (Auslander 1999, 2). For these reasons, and the fact that Delon comes to popular music as a screen actor, it makes sense to adapt Chion’s notion of the acousmêtre to his recorded voice. Chion (1999, 4) writes that voices that appear simultaneously on-screen and off-screen “wander across the surface of the screen” like a ghostly presence. Within the medium of popular music, where Delon is heard but rarely seen singing, his voice similarly wanders in and out. His entire body may be implicitly mobilized by his virile voice, and song lyrics can refer to his film persona, but the proposition that the voice we hear is Delon’s is not systematically verified visually. Delon on record is an acousmêtre. This ghostly quality works well in “Paroles … Paroles …,” as Delon takes on the role of a weak, redundant lover. Likewise, it is successful on “Modern Style” (2006), his duet with Françoise Hardy, which develops, lyrically and formally, the same notions of disjunction, loss, and death. Hardy (2008, 410) has singled out this song as particularly successful due to Delon’s ability to voice his tortured soul in the service of “really dark” lyrics. Juxtaposed with a rhythmic base of clapping hands and meaningless female vocals (“tum tum ta ta”), the repetitive lyrics highlight a bitter lack of communication between lovers, a constant theme in Hardy’s output. The sentence “Life’s pieces never fit” is looped throughout and, as in “Paroles … Paroles …,” alternately sung by Hardy but spoken by Delon. Her character also insults his twice (“little shitbag”), while he evokes death (“lovers snuff it”), again giving the impression that the male and female characters are ruminating to themselves. The theme of dislocation is further enhanced by Delon’s deep yet fragile voice, in which the effects of age and smoking, as well as phlegm, are discernable. This duet uses Delon’s voice and persona in clever ways, simultaneously foregrounding his low voice opposite a female character while undermining its seductive potential through the sound of physical decay and the theme of dislocation. There is no video for this track, Delon’s photo is absent from the record cover, and Hardy herself has long given up singing in public. “Modern Style” is therefore about frustration, non-reciprocity, and morbidity—themes that echo the more ambiguous, self-destructive nature of Delon’s film persona (Rauger 1996, 32). In turn, it confirms the ghostly quality of Delon as a recording artist, the sense that his body is detached, both physically and emotionally, from the task at hand. Fascination with death and loss are also central to Delon’s first-ever recording, the solo track “Laetitia.” In 1967, Delon acted in Les Aventuriers,

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a film whose soundtrack was composed by the prolific François de Roubaix. It is unclear why the film director and de Roubaix decided that Delon should also sing, but the actor relished this opportunity and took singing lessons for this purpose (Violet 2000, 281). He was also encouraged by his co-star Serge Reggiani, who had himself recently made a successful transition to singing (Violet 2000, 207). The commercial context was equally promising: in 1966, Pierre Barouh, who acted in Claude Lelouch’s Cannes-winning Un homme et une femme/A Man and A Woman had sung the film’s eponymous title song to immense international acclaim. ‘Laetitia,” however, did not enjoy the same level of success, which can perhaps be explained by its morbid undertone and Delon’s own ambiguous function on this soundtrack. “Laetitia” is a melancholy guitar ballad starting with a male whistling voice that reprises the film’s theme tune, followed by Delon’s slow, soft, and melodic singing. His voice is recorded close to the microphone to convey intimacy. The lyrics, told from the perspective of the film’s male lead, Manu (played by Delon), are introspective and morbid: the narrator repeats his powerlessness (“I had no idea”) upon realizing that a girl, now dead, had been the love of his life. Musically, “Laetitia” is a well-crafted, well-sung and seductive piece. It is also a largely forgotten oddity, which has no function in the film it relates to. Unlike the song “Un homme et une femme,” which plays in full throughout the final scene of Un homme et une femme, “Laetitia” is never heard on the actual soundtrack of Les Aventuriers. It was released on the soundtrack album and as a single in connection with the film, but it does not feature in it. Its main melodic phrase appears, whistled (although not by Delon), in the film’s opening credits and at key narrative moments, but it is also always fractured, brutally interrupted by a faster combination of piano and double bass. The theme of destruction is certainly original in itself, explicit from the opening scene shot in a scrapyard and confirmed later on when Delon’s character dies. But as a song, “Laetitia” is divorced from the film’s plot, its main raison d’être. It is not a stand-alone song either since Delon never took it beyond the recording studio. Unlike Barouh who sang “Un homme …” on stage and on TV and who was credited as co-composer, Delon never gave “Laetitia” any “liveness.” “Laetitia” exists, then, as a star vehicle for Delon to demonstrate his ability to sing, but the absence of visual grounding for his voice, in the film or beyond, confuses its identity as a record. Delon’s recorded voice, meant to be Manu’s but never visibly Manu’s nor Delon’s, wanders ghost-like as it indecisively straddles the media of cinema and popular music. If “Laetitia” perceptively associates

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Delon with vulnerability and morbidity, it also lacks the formal coherence that usually governs mainstream success. “Paroles … Paroles …,” “Modern Style,” and Delon’s duet with Shirley Bassey, “Thought I’d ring you” (1983), are also notable for downplaying Delon’s onscreen machismo through the very means of the duet. Traditionally, heterosexual pop duets dramatize seduction and romance (Frith 2002 [1996], 202), while older male roles frequently project paternalist protection over younger women. These Delon duets, however, develop narratives that mock or condemn romance, and Delon sings opposite mature women of the same generation as him. At the time of recording, Dalida was 40, Bassey 46 and Hardy 62, to his respective 38, 48, and 71. By having the male part sung by a non-professional, and moreover by an actor emphatically projecting the role of amateur through his preferred talk-over (as opposed to melodic singing), these duets clearly gave women, who already were successful in their profession, a leading part. Delon, by contrast, plays song characters whose inescapably virile voice simultaneously lacks authority, connoting inadequacy overall. Coherent within narratives of masculine vulnerability (“Paroles … Paroles”; “Modern Style”), this inadequacy sounds ridiculous when such signs of vulnerability are absent.

Prestige and ridicule This is particularly the case in “I don’t know” (1985), the duet recorded for the action movie Parole de Flic which casts Delon as a tough, lone cop. Released the same year as the James Bond film A View to A Kill (John Glen, 1985), it is perhaps not incidental that Delon duetted in English with the Afro-American Phyllis Nelson just as Roger Moore played Bond opposite Grace Jones. Unlike the profoundly parodic quality of Bond’s masculinity, however, Delon’s role in Parole de Flic is traditionally macho, without any concession to ambiguity. As a heterosexual duet, “I don’t know” certainly plays with the sexual allure of a Bond character, the lyrics suggesting that sex is better than love, with Delon’s slow delivery implying seduction. But the music pulls all the strings of romantic pop, with “smooth” synthesizers, sax solos, female backing vocals, and overdubbing, in ways that epitomize what rock critics pejoratively label “cheesy music” (Bray 2014). At the end of each musical phrase, the synths even “twinkle” like the aural signifier for magic dust in children’s movies, a musical feature typical of the soft-rock genre of the early 1980s. Instead of adding an intriguing layer of

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ambivalence to Delon’s macho image, the sentimentalism of “I don’t know” simply contradicts the film’s revenge plot and the protagonist’s tough persona. The track is awkward in other ways. Like “Laetitia,” it is not fully part of the film’s soundtrack, only playing during the rolling credits at a time when the audience usually leaves the cinema. It plays no function whatsoever in the film narrative, and the record cover further undermines the song’s relationship to the film by confusing Delon’s film character with his role as a singer. The record sleeve photograph shows Delon wearing the same denim shirt and Egyptian cross necklace as in the film, thus implying that the singing voice is that of his film character Daniel Pratt. Nelson, meanwhile, rests her head against Delon’s shoulder, smiling contentedly with her eyes closed. While this pose coherently reflects the song’s sentimental lyrics, it is illogical with respect to the film plot. Nelson does not play in the film, and the fictitious Pratt has no business recording pop songs or developing an interracial romance with an unknown female. This photo therefore confuses the track’s meaning, juxtaposing the “real” female singer Nelson with an image of Delon that is meant to refer simultaneously to his roles as film character, screen actor, pop singer, and all-round star. The song fails, too, as a material object. It was released as a 12-inch single, a format developed to facilitate mixing for the dance-floor, normally associated with disco (Osborne 2012, 137). For a romantic pop track lasting exactly 4’38,” this device was unwarranted. If “I don’t know” is an extreme case of misfired popular music, Delon’s overall recording output suffers symbolically from being associated with sentimental pop. In the Western rock canon that dominates the critical discourse on popular music, pop sounds and romantic lyrics have been associated with commercialism and the promotion of entertainment at the expense of reflection (see Wilson 2013). This was particularly the case in postwar France where an anti-Establishment stance became a national marker of excellence due to the convergence of masculinity, intellectualism and leftism (Gaffney and Holmes 2007, 2). Lyrically, all Delon’s songs are romantic in the broader sense. Some may challenge conventional romance narratives, but their subject matter remains amorous relationships, not socio-political conflict for instance. By contrast, the two screen actors who most successfully transitioned to popular music in the 1960s were Yves Montand (1921–1991) and Serge Reggiani (1922–2004), whose lyrics espoused libertarian and anti-fascist values (Saka and Plougastel 1999, 378; 334) and fitted the anti-pop bias that governed French music criticism (Looseley 2003, 65). Musically, and despite a degree of formal variety (solo pieces, duets,

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soundtracks and not), all of Delon’s tracks follow the trappings of “pop,” with a slow pace, orchestral arrangements, backing vocals, and Delon’s voice recorded close to the microphone (Walser 2001, 165; 173). His duet with Shirley Bassey (1983) is a case in point, with its slow piano ballad, emphatic singing (for Bassey), reverberation, whining saxophones, and rousing violin sections, features that rehearse a “Shirley Bassey sound” that was, by then, already “clichéd” (Clarke and Dibben 2000, 236). Conversely, the loud, fast, and thrusting guitar sounds of rock music have made it the most widespread music genre for white straight men of Delon’s generation, whose typically male displays of instrumental dexterity signify “dominance and power, confidence and control” (Frith and McRobbie 1990, 376). Delon may have a virile voice, then, but it does not confer quality or “authenticity” to his music persona due to the overall lack of prestige of his songs as sound packages. The fact that he only recorded singles, not albums, further signals his low prestige, singles having steadily declined symbolically since the 1960s due to their association with mainstream chart music (Osborne 2012, 134). Delon, then, is “not a singer” from the perspective of cinema, a nonidentity that his rarely melodic style of singing and his supporting role in duets emphasize. At the same time, he is “just a singer,” and a romantic singer at that, from the perspective of popular music, two characteristics that confer docility, inadequacy, and ridicule to his songs.

Conclusion On the capturing device of the record, Delon has demonstrated his capacity to hold a tune and to develop a convincing, if traditional, sense of vocal manhood. He is able to transpose pre-existing cinematic qualities to the sound-rich environment of popular music, including seduction, virility, and, paradoxically, vulnerability and morbidity. These contradictions both perpetuate and complicate his screenbased star persona. Unfortunately, for a small number of tracks that appropriately toy with his projected contradictions, more seem to fail due to their incongruity with regard to the dominant conventions of popular music. This explains the lack of impact of Delon’s songs, and their neglect by biographers, critics, and analysts of his persona. The problem remains, however, of assessing Delon’s personal agency in the selection and performing style of his music output. Delon has, of course, been a willing participant in each recording and was each time probably well

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aware of the different connotations that his songs could generate. Foregrounding the impression of ghost-like detachment in his singing may, in this sense, be strategic to escape the value system of popular music as a field. Without knowing the intimate thoughts of the man himself on this issue, one may conclude that his complicity in the performance of insecure, weak singing roles points to a great sense of self-confidence, and to a fascinating, self-critical ability to undo one’s macho image. For this alone, Delon’s songs are highly valuable.

Alain Delon discography 1967 “Laetitia”/“Enterrement sous-marin,” single E23-525 (Electrola/EMI). 1973 “Paroles … paroles …”/“Pour ne pas vivre seul,” single IS45-711 (Sonopresse/Orlando and Barclay). 1982 “Un voyage à Cythère,” single VA 1014 (Dan) [Japanese release only] 1983 “Thought I’d ring you’”Instrumental, single 00X-597 (Editions RTM, Prod. Eddy Luyckx). 1985 “I don’t know’/Instrumental, maxi-single CA616 8.546 (Adel Productions/ Carrère). 1987 “Comme au cinéma’/Instrumental, single CA171 14.242 (Adel Productions/ Julisa/Carrère) 1990 “Je t’aime tu sais” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyUPyPSs6-c last accessed January 12 2015). 2006 “Modern Style,” on Françoise Hardy’s album Parenthèses, CD 0946 3 504022 7 (Virgin/EMI). 2008 “Dans mon cœur de gitan,” podcast on Patrick Sébastien’s personal website, http://www.patricksebastien.fr/2008/12/22/texte-alain-delondans-mon-coeur-de-gitan/ (last accessed June 12 2014).

Audio-visual references Pierre Barouh and Nicole Croisille. 1966. “Un homme et une femme”/”A l’ombre de nous.” Single EP1035 (Disc’Az). Dalida. 2007. Une Vie, 8 DVD box-set 9841437 (Universal/Orlando), vol. 4. Various Artists. 2007. Travelling: French Actors Crossing Borders, CD 6132482 (Discograph)

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Notes 1 2

3 4 5 6

7

8

Thanks to David and Avril Looseley for this information. Delon has sung a duet on Russian television, “Coeurs brisés,” with Patricia Kaas, not released as single. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W970k6ecmUg (last accessed June 12, 2014). For the reverse phenomenon of singers acting in films, see Ribac (2011). Personal phone interview, May 23, 2013. See http://www.bide-et-musique.com/recherche.html?kw=delon&x=0&y=0&st=1# resultat (accessed December 12, 2014). ‘une voix couillue’, post by “Laathothal” on Bide et Musique, February 22, 2001, at 18:58:54 http://www.bide-et-musique.com/song/12.html#resultat (last accessed June 12, 2014). By contrast, there is no such paradox in the female voice of the French actress Catherine Deneuve who not only relished the opportunity to perform submissiveness but also made, with her breathy, semi-spoken delivery, fragility her trademark on record (Verlant, 1992, 310–13). Delon is seen singing four tracks only: a music video for his duet with Bassey (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff2FuJMFfvQ (last accessed June 12, 2014)); the video of “Comme au cinéma”; the televised duet mentioned in footnote 2; reciting face to camera “Mon coeur de gitan.” The former two would warrant a detailed analysis of his visual appearance. The ghostly connotations of the acousmêtre are striking on the Bassey video where Delon watches himself in a mirror (narcissistically) and speaks over the phone to the female singer.

9

Dressed to Kill: Delon, The Style Icon Nick Rees-Roberts

This chapter examines Alain Delon’s role as an enduring icon for men’s style and fashion advertising. “An avatar of Gallic cool” is how the online retailer Mr. Porter describes him in a profile of the star as a key mid-century style setter, “a role model for all the young men who wanted to be subversive in their dress— but not too much” (McDowell 2014). For its Spring/Summer 2014 menswear collection, UK high-street label Reiss sought to update the resort style associated with the halcyon days of continental café culture by taking its cues from the various looks adopted by Delon in his role as the manipulative killer, Tom Ripley, in Plein soleil/Purple Noon (René Clément, 1960) (Figure 9.1). This chapter extends the fashionable exploitation of Delon’s image by unpacking a Christian Dior advertising campaign (2009/2010) that used archive footage—a promotional photograph taken by Jean-Marie Périer in 1966 and Delon’s appearance in the stylish crime drama La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (Jacques Deray, 1969)—to rejuvenate its classic fragrance, Eau sauvage. The choice of film star as brand ambassador is symptomatic of the broader context of early twenty-first-century fashion, in which the iconic French luxury brands, many of which belong to the global conglomerate LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton), increasingly look backward to frame their individual histories through strategies of brand heritage. Much like cinema’s own problematic attitude toward history through heritage (Dyer 2002, 206), Dior’s use of the film La Piscine to promote its product Eau sauvage harks back to an earlier period of growth through reference to the glamorous screen icon, set against the backdrop of a sun-drenched Côte d’Azur in the 1960s. The rise of massmarket cosmetics and ready-to-wear fashions forms part of the history of consumer-driven growth associated with the years of postwar economic expansion, which coincided with Delon’s period of high-stardom from the early

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Figure 9.1 Delon as the beautiful killer (Plein soleil/Purple Noon, 1960)

1960s to the mid-1970s. This was also the period in which haute couture was democratized by the rise of the more accessible ready-to-wear lines. The iconic reproduction of Delon in his prime is commercially strategic because the 1960s occupy a central symbolic position in the layering of past styles, in what Simon Reynolds has termed contemporary pop culture’s “retromania” (Reynolds 2011). It was precisely that decade that gave birth to the idea of fashion as not only the material object but also a whole “regime of visibility” (Remaury 2007, 159), articulated through the conjunction of design, image, and label. The nostalgic idealization of the 1960s associated with contemporary visual culture retrospectively views Delon as hip even when playing unglamorous roles: the retro-futurist appeal for a contemporary audience of Girl on a Motorcycle (Jack Cardiff, 1968), for example, in which Delon played a hedonistic academic, who seduces the eponymous biker-girl (Marianne Faithfull in head-to-toe leather), is derived as much from the vintage psychedelic cinematography and kitsch erotic mise-en-scène as it is from the pairing of sexy English pop singer with fashionable French film star. This chapter will proceed with a discussion of Delon’s status as style icon for menswear—from the celebrated roles that made him famous as a young man in the 1960s and 1970s to the recuperation of his fashion image by contemporary consumer culture, most prominently Christian Dior’s twenty-first-century manipulation of images of the actor from the midto-late 60s to re-brand a classic scent, thereby promoting Delon as a timeless emblem of French elegance.

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Channeling Delon In recent times, Delon has been the subject of consumer buzz through the launch of an online photographic homage to his eponymous fashion label, consisting of a range of fashion, accessories, and cosmetics. Working through viral marketing, Baptiste Vignol’s “In the Eyes of Alain Delon” (www.danslesyeuxdalaindelon. com) is an ironic recuperation of the Delon sunglasses widely adopted in Hong Kong after they first appeared through product placement in John Woo’s gangster crime thriller Ying huang boon sik/A Better Tomorrow in 1986. Delon’s enduring appeal, particularly in Europe and Asia, has made him an ideal ambassador for French industry abroad. In May 2010, he accompanied President Nicolas Sarkozy as national representative to the World Expo in Shanghai, a strategy designed to build on the star’s popularity in China. Some ninety percent of the turnover of Delon’s eponymous label, which remains virtually unknown in France, comes from the fashion-savvy East Asian markets (from franchised distribution in Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) where fans are said to idolize the star and emulate his various looks from the 1960s and 1970s—essentially becoming Delon by consuming his branded merchandise (Jousse and Toubiana 1996, 31). Perceiving the star as a male ideal, Asian consumers have tended to focus on one particular look, that of the “beautiful killer,” as pop star Madonna calls him in her tribute to his charms on her 2012 album MDNA. This stylish archetype is key to Delon’s “spectacular masculinity” (Hayes 2004, 46–53) and is associated with the cool anti-heroes of three of Jean-Pierre Melville’s most celebrated noir thrillers—Le Samouraï/The Samurai (1967), Le Cercle rouge/The Red Circle (1970), and Un flic/Dirty Money (1972). Melville shaped two core aspects of the Delon myth: the obsession with clothing and professionalism (Magny 1996, 25). Delon’s enigmatic presence as Jef Costello in Le Samouraï has been well documented by historians of fashion and film, who have praised Melville for carefully embedding costume within the overall tonal design of the film noir. Jef ’s narcissism is constructed through an explicit focus on his look (the emblematic trench coat and felt hat), as part of a larger cinematic history of the “clothes-fetishist gangster” (Bruzzi 1997, 72). Describing Le Samouraï as a “film constructed around gestures rather than words,” Bruzzi highlights Melville’s use of Delon as a model parading elegantly through his carefully choreographed mise-en-scène (Figure 9.2).

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Figure 9.2 Delon as the fetishist gangster Jef in Le Samouraï (1967)

The use of Delon’s physique to advertise Plein soleil at the start of his career was spectacular. The publicity still of the bare-chested actor at the helm symbolized the dynamic force of the rogue character of Tom Ripley within the film’s narrative and projected to the audience an actively modern image of masculinity. Delon has been described as “one of the first male heroes to be stripped and fetishized on screen,” at the tail end of the 1950s (Bruzzi and Church Gibson 2008, 164). Beyond Plein soleil, there are later examples of films displaying Delon’s body for erotic spectacle, such as the poolside sequences in La Piscine and Mélodie en soussol/Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil, 1963). The later flashes of nudity in popular thrillers such as Traitement de choc/Shock Treatment (Alain Jessua, 1973) and Le Choc/The Shock (Robin Davis, 1982), or more incongruously in Joseph Losey’s meditation on identity and betrayal, Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976), can be taken to support criticisms of the traditionally unspectacular nature of male erotic display on screen (Bruzzi 1997, 69–70; Vincendeau 2000, 173–74). Traitement de choc was primarily conceived as a vehicle for Delon’s costar Annie Girardot, with whom he had acted in Luchino Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (1960). Delon played the eponymous hero, whose journey from innocent sleeping beauty to reluctant boxing champion foreshadowed the actor’s own ambiguous positioning between the wounded virility of the later crime films and the pretty-boy roles of his early career, which

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all incorporate clothing and style as indicators of the performer’s constructed glamor and sex appeal. Beyond his superficial charms, the young Delon was also attractive because of a much-publicized glamorous lifestyle and the visual embellishment of his physique by film directors—most famously Visconti whose films have been said to “simply narrativize Delon’s beauty” (Vincendeau 2000, 174). Rocco’s beauty was not simply the product of the actor’s photogenic allure but also of Giuseppe Rotunno’s “glassy” cinematography, including one prolonged extreme close-up of Delon in which he offers himself up for visual consumption (Miller 2008, 12–18). Delon’s star persona was a carefully contrived product of advertising in the context of postwar French economic modernization. Following Kristin Ross’s critical lead (1996), Guy Austin views his “singular machismo” as a reaction to the loss of virility in France’s “new technocratic and corporate vision” (2003, 58). Ross’s thesis held in tension the parallel histories of postwar economic modernization and decolonization (Ross 1995, 7). The opening sequence from Mélodie en sous-sol, set in the glamorous resort of Cannes, which presented Delon’s body as a desirable, publicity-driven commodity, has been taken as illustrative of the link between Delon’s stardom and consumer discourse of the early 1960s: “the young Delon’s face and body are strongly linked to the glamorous new world of 1960s consumerism. His characters desire commodities (money, cars, parties, women), while he himself metonymically signifies them” (Vincendeau 2000, 175). Delon’s breakout role was as the disturbed psychopath Tom Ripley in Clément’s Plein soleil, who kills, then convincingly assumes the identity of a playboy principally by dressing for the part (Bruzzi and Church Gibson 2008; Street 2001, 35–54). Ripley attaches such an importance to apparel, to the trappings of wealth, that he morphs into an idealized version of Philippe Greenleaf rather than into a plausible copy of the character, who is shown to be unattractive and careless about his appearance, rejecting his upperclass status and heritage. The scene in which Philippe disturbs Tom dressing up and embracing his image in front of the mirror throws light not only on the character’s psychotic narcissism and repressed queerness but also on his class fantasy, the ideal of the golden boy channeled through physical perfection and role-play (Figure 9.3). Delon’s subsequent performances in Franco-Italian coproductions for Visconti and Antonioni in the early 1960s confirmed his status as not only a desirable commodity but also an emerging style icon of the era, becoming almost as emblematic of the early 1960s “continental look” as Italian leading

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Figure 9.3 Ripley dressing up as Greenleaf in Plein soleil/Purple Noon (1960)

man Marcello Mastroianni (Chenoune 1993, 241–46). Following Rocco in 1960, Delon acted in L’eclisse/The Eclipse (Antonioni, 1962) and Il gattopardo/The Leopard (Visconti, 1963). The costume design is a common thread to all three films: Bice Brichetto worked as designer, assisting Piero Tosi on Rocco and Il gattopardo and collaborating with Gitt Magrini for L’eclisse. Tosi, who was hired primarily to design for the female characters, scoured Italy for lived-in jackets, sweaters, and undershirts to convey the director’s stylized vision of a southern migrant masculinity (Schifano 1990, 319). From the docile son Rocco, who wears his mother’s jumpers and works surrounded by women at a dry cleaner’s, Delon went on to play the suited stockbroker, Piero, in L’eclisse, darting across the floor of the Rome stock exchange against a backdrop of an impressive array of early 1960s Italian tailoring. Both on and off-screen, Delon had displayed to great advantage the Italian menswear which had revolutionized the high streets of Europe and America in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The film’s financial sequences enacting Antonioni’s existentialist portrait of capitalist greed display a range of early 1960s formal menswear—two-buttoned fitted suits with slim patterned ties, the multiple uniform shades of gray, part of the film’s tonal design moving from the stark contrast of the black-and-white of the eclipse to the neutral gray of the middle section that depicts Piero’s affair with the tentative Vittoria (Monica Vitti). Delon’s frenetic movements throughout the film position Piero as a man of action, decisive and dynamic, unlike Vittoria, who spends the eclipse on vacation from her life. Beyond his physique, Visconti admired Delon’s subtlety and versatility as a performer. In 1963, he cast him as Tancredi, the Prince’s nephew, in his spectacular

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adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s 1958 novel, Il gattopardo/ The Leopard (1963), charting the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy with the unification of Italy in the mid-nineteenth century. The dashing Tancredi is both idealistic and pragmatic: he assumes that the revolutionary Garibaldi will enable the ruling class to retain some power within the reconfigured unified nation. By the film’s melancholic end, Tancredi is shown to be wily and opportunistic, a careerist on the make. A change in military apparel is earlier woven into the narrative to signal the character’s change of allegiance from the red of the Garibaldini revolutionaries to the dark blue of the Italian army, a spectacular change in uniform used to signal the character’s political normalization.1 The film has had an enduring afterlife, both as costume drama and as inspiration to fashion designers, who have consistently cited it in their work. The 1998 edition of the Florence Biennale, sponsored by the Versace family, was devoted to the complex relationship between film and fashion. Leading designers curated installations around classic Italian films, and Valentino choose Visconti’s lavish drama as a key visual stimulus with its lengthy ball sequence showing off the women’s ornate crinolines. The film was a critical success winning the Palme d’or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1963. Delon, strikingly handsome in his military costumes and elegantly restrained in the functional men’s formal suits of the period, clearly contributed to its lasting appeal and aesthetic influence. These classic roles of the early 1960s established Delon as a fashion icon for European menswear. By the time he launched his own clothing label a decade later, he had become internationally recognized for his stylish appearance as Jef, the impassive hit man in Le Samouraï, a fetishistic film that sealed his image as a fashion-conscious performer, even when acting in seemingly unfashionable films. For Joseph Losey’s poorly received The Assassination of Trotsky (1972), for example, Delon prepared for his role as the assassin by meticulously studying archive footage and by creating the character inward from his trademark felt hat and gray trench coat (Dureau 2012, 74–75). Even the most unspectacular roles have been re-routed as fashion classics: when he returned to Italian cinema in 1972, cast against type as the disheveled teacher in Valerio Zurlini’s nihilistic La prima notte di quiete/Indian Summer (1972), wearing the same over-size coat and roll-neck sweater throughout, Delon subsequently featured in Vogue as the prototype for the romantic bohemian. Despite the film’s critical appraisal, it was a commercial failure, however, proving that Delon’s star image and brand recognition were dependent on the constant reiteration of his more glamorous, youthful self (Ribes 1988, 27).

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Vintage masculinity Let us now turn to the contemporary commercial manipulation of Delon’s established image by the French fashion house, Christian Dior, who channeled the film star as a symbol of a timeless Parisian elegance in tune with its own projection of French cultural prestige. Monsieur Dior’s original objectives for the tailleur bar in the 1940s —the “New Look” for women in postwar France— were both nationalistic and artistic, designed to recapture the lost link between Paris and high society elegance and to reassert France as the international capital of luxury (Chenoune 2007, 34–40). The contemporary economic restructuring of luxury fashion through corporate financial consolidation, which has seen Paris restored to its place as the international center for the display of luxury fashion through the pre-eminence of brands like Dior over the last fifteen years, harks back to Monsieur Dior’s earlier attempt to reassert French cultural influence abroad through the updated performance of the belle époque Parisian leisure class. Hedi Slimane, who rejuvenated Dior’s menswear following the launch in 2000 of the Dior Homme ready-to-wear line, has largely been responsible for shaping the brand’s projection of masculinity in the early twenty-first century. During his tenure at the house (2000–2007), Slimane formalized the iconography of men’s fashion through his transposition of the skinny “man-boy” silhouette from postpunk and indie-rock music. Slimane’s influential aesthetic in part revived the late 1950s/early 1960s English mod style, a popular adaptation of the Italian formal wear adopted by Delon at the time (Chenoune 1993, 263–72; Lister 2006, 22–38). Slimane reduced the morphology of menswear by superseding the unstructured suits dominating formal wear since their introduction by Giorgio Armani in the early 1980s. The edgy Dior Homme replaced the fusty Christian Dior Monsieur, hitherto known for its inconspicuous tailoring and sporty elitism. Slimane’s aesthetic, while ostensibly streetwise, updated the conservatism so central to the visual history of Dior through its reproduction of the timeless glamor of Parisian salons. Monsieur Dior had introduced neckties and silk dressing gowns in the 1950s, but the house only created a discrete men’s line in 1970, inspired by the legendary designer’s own personal style, a rather staid notion of French class and civilization. Perfumes were always the most profitable part of the Dior luxury retail empire and they have consistently been marketed as quintessentially French (Palmer

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2009, 90). Part of the economic regrouping of luxury since the 1990s meant recalling the licensing to direct design, manufacturing, advertising, and the consumption of products and imagery from the center. Perfume publicity was, however, constantly controlled directly from Paris, in order to sell “Frenchness” with a retro-classic iconography linking Dior to the fin de siècle. The most recent example of Dior’s search for a clear visual heritage is its turn to Delon to rebrand the classic scent Eau Sauvage, created by parfumier Edmond Roudnitska in 1966.2 The product’s originality was to feminize a traditional citrus-based fragrance by introducing a hint of jasmine. Its discreet floral freshness was initially intended to convey youth; hence the relevance of Delon’s timeless good looks. Commercial artist René Gruau conceived the iconography for the launch of Eau sauvage in 1966 with sketches focusing on the nominal wildness of the fragrance. His designs showed muscular, hairy legs in a Dior dressing gown. The product rejuvenation in 2009 incorporated a photograph of Delon, shot in Saint-Tropez in 1966 by Jean-Marie Périer, the celebrated fashion and celebrity photographer. The original photo was airbrushed to remove the cigarette between the actor’s fingers (the 1991 Évin law forbids tobacco advertising) and digitally animated to provide a moving-image version to accompany the stills campaign. Its success saw the timeless classic become a bestseller through the careful choice of a brand ambassador perceived as timeless, rather than relying on a contemporary Hollywood celebrity like actor Jude Law, the face of Dior Homme’s eponymous fragrance, who played the playboy Philip Greenleaf in a later English-language adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley (Minghella, 1999). The thinking behind the Dior campaign’s use of Delon was that consumers would more readily identify with a cinematic icon from the past, a lifestyle cliché to tap into the nostalgic glamor of the 1960s. The choice of a photograph dating from 1966, the year of the perfume’s creation, attempted to catch two different age brackets—those consumers who remember the star at that time and a younger clientele attracted by his “rebellious and irreverent side” to quote the press release (Reybaud 2009). The selection of a close-up of the star is also important in showcasing his personal appeal, as is the calculated focus on introspection—Delon shot as a thinker in a nod to a specifically French artistic and philosophical tradition. Previous attempts to update Eau sauvage had tried to break with Gruau’s original template of manly sophistication by overstating the product’s masculine connotations: the TV commercial from 1984 represented the model as affluent, middle-aged and virile, admired by women because culturally refined. From

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the late 1990s onwards, the brand went for mass appeal by adopting a series of celebrities to endorse the product, including rocker Johnny Halliday and footballer Zinedine Zidane, both shot as photographic realizations of Gruau’s initial designs, coyly disguised behind roll-neck jumpers to chime with the fragrance’s original projection of an unobtrusive masculinity. The use of a classic film star does not break new ground in perfume advertising, but the fact that the 75-year-old actor still retained a strong public profile within France helped to set his former beauty in stone. The extent to which male consumers connect with stars remains a moot point in the marketing of fashion and cosmetics, despite the drive to incorporate celebrity endorsement more widely in the growing sector of men’s perfumes, resulting at times in a scrambled mismatch of brand and ambassador—contemporaneous examples include pop star Justin Timberlake and Hollywood actor Josh Hartnett for iconic European brands Givenchy (gentlemanly refinement) and Armani (stellar muscularity). The calculated decision to freeze-frame Delon in order revive a classic product by acknowledging its vintage appeal points to the broader context of age and aging within contemporary fashion culture. In its Autumn/Winter 2010– 2011 edition, Vogue Hommes International proudly showcased a deep-tanned, wrinkled Matt Norklun, star model of the 1980s, on the cover of a special issue devoted entirely to aging, following the continuing growth in men’s cosmetics targeting middle-aged and older consumers. In the case of Delon as an aging screen star, Jill Forbes noted that the predominance of popular crime thrillers in his career from the mid-to-late 1960s onward “offered the opportunity to build a career through the popular cinema in which the film could serve as a vehicle for the actor to display himself and, indeed, for him to age” (Forbes 1992, 54). By selecting a close-up of facial perfection (Delon photographed in 1966 aged 31), followed by moving imagery of the actor’s body in its prime (Delon filmed in 1968 aged 33), Dior chose to break with the imagery of slender teenage boys dominating men’s fashion in the wake of Slimane. The choice of Delon, a security in a period of global economic turbulence, also gestures to the resurgence of the unobtrusive virility that Eau sauvage was said to evoke all along—a more mature version of which has been personified on television by the actor Jon Hamm as the enigmatic lead character Don Draper in Matthew Weiner’s critical revision of 1960s American advertising, Mad Men (2007–2015). The 2009 Eau sauvage commercial flirted openly with Mad Men in an attempt to occupy the same heritage positioning, to cash in on the series’ cultural significance to international consumers. It did this by appropriating the

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same instrumental theme tune (“A Beautiful Mine” by RJD2) that underscores the animated credits to the series, themselves a pastiche of Saul Bass’s celebrated mid-century graphic designs. Mad Men loomed large over a range of 1960s vintage nostalgia in early twenty-first-century visual culture, including designer Tom Ford’s glossy film adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s novel A Single Man in 2009. Mad Men’s layers of sartorial detail positioned it as a prime indicator of a concurrent shift in men’s fashion imagery after Slimane, the transition “from boys to men” (Trebay 2010), singling out the early-middle-aged Jon Hamm as the body type of the day and resurrecting a reassuring American ideal of a rugged but well-groomed masculinity, displaying and critiquing a traditional image of buttoned-up AngloSaxon attitudes. In fact, while Hamm’s hirsute chest and broad shoulders—more often than not concealed beneath the character’s professional carapace—would seem to contrast with Delon’s visibly slim, smooth-cheeked body, they both display a seemingly natural, uncultivated ideal of masculinity.

Cruise collection The second phase of the communications strategy for Eau sauvage was unveiled in June 2010 when Dior released a 25-second advertising film revising a celebrated sequence from Deray’s designer thriller La Piscine. Set on the Côte d’Azur in the late 1960s, the film was sourced for its period lifestyle aesthetic of wealth and elegance, featuring the coastal resort of Saint-Tropez, the villa, the pool, and the Mediterranean Sea. Rather than invest in a tailor-made ad campaign by an A-list film director, the fashion house recycled vintage imagery of Delon to consolidate its lucrative stills campaign of 2009. The original publicity for La Piscine had embedded the film in discourses of consumption; the 1969 trailer used shots of the male characters in a flashy red Maserati sports car before developing interest in the crime plot. Out of social and sexual envy, Jean-Paul (Delon), a frustrated adman, murders his friend by drowning him in the pool, before passing the incident off as a drunken mishap. The casting of Maurice Ronet in the role of the victim (Harry) made an intertextual nod to the pair’s earlier partnership in Plein soleil, where Delon, as Ripley, had also murdered his wealthier, more successful companion. In its commercial restaging of La Piscine, Dior chose to use a montage of shots of Delon as Jean-Paul, semi-naked by the pool, taken from the film’s

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seductive opening sequence. In the original script, however, the focus was to have been on the female lead, played by Delon’s former fiancée, Austrian-born Romy Schneider, cast against type as the sophisticated and wily Marianne, a role intended at the time to erase her star turn as the romantic heroine, Elizabeth of Bavaria, in the popular Sissi trilogy of the mid-1950s.3 The planned title sequence was designed to picture Schneider leaving a food store at Saint-Tropez, before strolling in front of its chic cafés and driving back to the Villa Loumède, set back behind the town.4 Following the more conventional title sequence of the final cut, the camera locates Delon’s languid body beside the pool, gliding into frame before settling on a medium close-up of his head and torso as he reacts to Schneider’s presence. The focus on Delon’s couched body with its protruding rib cage complements the contemporary preference for an effortlessly slim physique. The character’s nonchalance is conveyed by Delon’s slight turn of the head; the rest of his body remains motionless as he drains a glass of orange juice. His repose is broken by a loud splash as Marianne dives into the pool, her tanned skin accentuated by the translucent water. The near-perfect color coordination (the graphic contrast between the bright blue sky, translucent water, and bronzed bodies) situates the tonal coding of the film in the territory of fashion advertising. Indeed, the pool was to become a standard trope of fashion iconography—the ideal setting for a public display not only of flesh but also of swimwear and casual summer designs. Beyond its apparent tonal qualities, the narrative function of the opening sequence is to present the two characters as lovers. The casting of Delon and Schneider, “Europe’s two fiancés” as they had been known, saw the couple reunited on screen ten years after they had met on the set of Christine (Pierre GaspardHuit, 1958) and five years after their relationship had ended; an off-screen detail exploited in the production’s communications strategy, as Delon was filmed by French television in August 1968, awaiting the arrival of the Austrian star at Nice airport for the start of filming.5 The opening to La Piscine delivered on that earlier promise of romantic reunion, including shots of the lovers’ tanned bodies suggestively entwined, Delon playfully scratching Schneider’s back, situating the film with its relaxed vision of sexuality as a sensual crime drama, a generic feature later heightened by a scene in which the lovers stage a soft-core S&M scenario by moonlight in the garden. This titillating sequence foreshadows the massive industrial development of pornographic production through the following decade in France and gestures openly to the film de charme, a softcore erotic film designed to arouse. La Piscine therefore acknowledges the wider

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backdrop of sexual libertarianism in the wake of May 1968 and its effect on visual production (the film was shot in the early autumn of that year). Dior’s appropriation of the film’s opening works not only as a homage to the original’s status as a fashion classic but also as a celebratory montage of shots of Delon’s exposed body offset by Michel Legrand’s sexy jazz saxophone score. The sensorial focus on Delon’s physique suits the advertising brief for fragrance with its need to convey the sensual pleasure of the product through the body and the skin, through feeling and touch, as much as through the luxury packaging of the product. The sequence is spliced together outside the constraints of narrative continuity and is positioned as a supplement to the previous year’s teaser that had worked simply by animating the 1966 still. The first glimpse of Delon’s inert body in La Piscine had worked as more than a routine establishing shot of the star and setting but rather as an emblematic shot condensing the subsequent diegetic involvement in sensuality, envy, and death. By purposefully contriving a sequential mix of shots of Delon in repose by the side of the pool, then emerging from the water, building up to the final surprising splash, the ad constructs a hall of mirrors, a series of clones assembled to appear to be cruising one another. The visual effect evokes a combination of extreme narcissism through the mirror imagery and homoeroticism through the series of shared glances. Given the advanced homonarcissism of contemporary fashion imagery, this riff on the representation of Delon through graphic reproduction works because Schneider is edited out of the picture altogether. In the postmetrosexual environment in which such imagery is commercially conceived, the “necessity” to show proof of the model’s heterosexuality to provide some point of identification for the straight-identified consumer drops out of the frame (Karaminas 2009, 124–27); a self-evident point perhaps, given the pointed male homosocial iconography of brands such as Dolce & Gabbana, for example, but one worth reiterating nonetheless given the historical precedent of the Eau sauvage advertising of the 1980s in which the narrative clichés of heterosexual coupledom were defensively reasserted.

Sixties heritage and global stardom Despite its gesture to an emerging libertarianism, La Piscine nevertheless still focuses on the reunited star couple and a conventional narrative preoccupation with jealousy and infidelity, summarized by the final shot of Delon and

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Schneider bound together in a guilty embrace. The film’s appeal for an early twenty-first-century audience lies less in its problematic sexual politics and more in its vintage design aesthetic. La Piscine alternates images of cuttingedge clothing including designs by one of the emblematic designers of the 1960s, André Courrèges, with a fetishistic display of the lovers’ tanned bodies. The arrival at the villa of Marianne’s former lover Harry accompanied by his gauche teenage daughter Pénélope (the 22-year-old gamine Jane Birkin in her first French-language role) contrasts Delon’s persistent state of undress with the pair’s matching outfits. Their chic attire is used to make an obvious sartorial statement about their wealth and standing and a more suggestive allusion to a possibly incestuous desire by presenting them as a couple. Birkin was asked by the producer’s wife Christine Beytout, who coordinated the costumes, to wear some of her own casual clothes (Deray 2003, 92). She is used to make a nod to the youthful style of the May ’68 generation through her hip miniskirts belted at the waist and her ultra-modern oversized shades. Courrèges allegedly invented the mini-skirt in 1961 or at the very least, introduced French consumers to the item (Park 2010, 181). His designs were notable for their inclusion of angular mini-dresses made from heavyweight fabrics like gabardine and “his futuristic fashion style of geometric-cut silver suits and bright white trousers worn with white boots that looked like they were clothes to launch a terribly chic space rocket” (Drake 2006, 40–41). From his first collection in 1963, Courrèges’s futurism and his pointed refusal of history marked him out as one of the pioneering visual creators of his day. Ironically, he is now trapped in his era, frozen in time surrounded by the memorabilia of late sixties futurism. Despite his own rejection of nostalgia, the designer is perceived as somewhat of a period piece in the history of fashion, part of the 1960s couture heritage. The use of Courrèges is most spectacular in the striking outfits worn by the protagonists to Harry’s funeral (Figure 9.4). The procession is preceded by a carefully posed mid-distance frontal shot of Delon frozen in guilty contemplation—an almost expected reproduction of the fatal beauty imagery. The key to the narrative resolution lies in the strategic role of clothing, for, in his haste to pass the murder off as a drunken accident, Jean-Paul hides the evidence, replacing Harry’s soiled clothes with clean ones. The funeral procession is formally staged, beginning with medium close-ups of the shoes on display, before cutting away to focus on the stars’ coordinated outfits—Delon is positioned centrally wearing a gray/beige suit with a slim black tie, his eyes hidden behind

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Figure 9.4 Funeral Fashion: Delon with Jane Birkin and Romy Schneider in La Piscine (1969)

enigmatic, mirrored shades; he is symmetrically framed by the two women, both wearing discreet, black headscarves, Birkin in an informal, black minidress and Schneider in tortoiseshell shades and a short, angular, white dress with contrasting black features (the predominance of white was Courrèges’s trademark) (Guillaume 1998, 12–14). Deray follows this sartorial presentation with a sequence of blatant product placement in which all three discuss Harry’s death in a posed line-up by the side of the pool, the frontal framing of which artificially displays them as stylish models to be admired rather than characters realistically engaging in conversation. In light of Dior’s rejuvenation of Delon, the contemporary fashion press rummaged through La Piscine’s wardrobe of iconic styles from the late 1960s to illustrate its shopping pages. Les Echos ran a double-page spread on the film’s visual impact in its July–August 2009 special issue, including hints on imitating the various looks adopted by the film’s stars—for men, how to adopt the “codes of French leonine elegance” (Denis and Merle 2009, 40) by obtaining classic items that have recently returned to casual menswear: soft, short-sleeved shirts with a discreet check, as worn by Delon undone to the navel; oversize cotton pullovers; chinos; suede loafers or moccasins; and finally espadrilles, a recession-conscious item included in shows by ultra-traditional Hermès in its Spring–Summer 2009 menswear collection. For women, Birkin’s gingham mini-dress and ballerina shoes are singled out, as are Schneider’s various formal outfits—most notably perhaps the eye-catching, psychedelic green silk Pucci evening gown, a style influenced by mid-to-late 1960s Op art.

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Conclusion In his conclusion to a retrospective of the fashion and design of the 1960s, Christopher Breward argues for “a reconsideration of the work of 1960s fashion designers, retail entrepreneurs and consumers themselves” to move beyond the “sterile debates about the myth or reality of the period. Thinking through the particular contexts in which new styles were produced and consumed, paying close attention to their material and visual qualities,” Breward continues, “pulls into focus the objects, images and ideas that contributed to the formation of such potent myths in the first place. This allows the historian to make a more informed assessment of the reasons why different versions of the 1960s gained authority at particular times” (2006, 121). Dior’s projection of Delon not only freezes the actor in time; it is also more broadly symptomatic of contemporary fashion’s persistent repackaging of 1960s visual culture, reiterating the clichéd perception of that decade’s emerging preoccupation with surface, design, and consumption. Following its appropriation of the global success of the vintage Mad Men, Dior went on to source La Piscine, a film with advertising woven into its narrative frame—when adman Jean-Paul test-drives Harry’s sports car, that conspicuous symbol of virility and status, the two men discuss Jean-Paul’s job as a creative in an ad agency and his frustration at having sold out, having been unable to eke out a decent living as a writer. Less pointedly than the revisionist Mad Men, La Piscine also incorporated a critique of the milieu of superficial packaging that it so elaborately showcased. The communications strategy for Eau sauvage tried retroactively to reinscribe the Dior brand’s DNA within the historical development of consumer-driven economics, making it part of a commercial bid to make the brand’s encoding of masculinity in the time of a global recession redolent of a now bygone era of economic glory—the trente glorieuses, the thirty years of postwar consumer growth that established the financial basis for the boom in luxury fashion labels. The choice of Delon worked in recognition of his resonance for a crossgenerational domestic and international consumer public. Delon, the stylish icon of European art-house and popular cinema, works equally well in different global contexts. Although he is less recognizable to an American consumer public who may indeed read the advertising naïvely (a typical US consumer might very well find the image aesthetically pleasing without enjoying the cultural or historical resonance that Delon brings to a French audience), he does signify to other

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important emerging consumer publics across the globe. His contract for the promotion of Eau sauvage included a press junket to Russia where his celebrity for an older audience of cinéphiles (postwar French films were widely screened in the former USSR) targeted a more mature age-band. In Asia, where Delon’s fandom still thrives, the display of his delicate features, smooth-cheeked body, slim build, and medium height can be adapted to the mass-market exigencies of global cosmetics advertising operating according to a standard morphological model of the average Asian consumer. The choice of Delon as French national ambassador for the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010 was of course strategic because “Delon” has been used in China in the past as shorthand for an ideal of male beauty, and his appearances in earlier popular films such as Zorro (Tessari, 1975) earned him a far greater following in China than the art-house classics for which he is now generally celebrated in Europe. Like the Pierre Cardin label, Delon’s retail business continues to thrive due to the global licensing system that allows the different Asian consumer markets (particularly China, Japan, and Singapore) to maintain the brand’s commercial viability despite its virtual disappearance from European distribution. The emerging focus on the Chinese consumer market by luxury French fashion leaders such as Chanel, Dior, Hermès, or Vuitton situates the vintage appeal of Delon for global, mass-market cosmetics in the context of a commercially sustained investment, not only in Chinese distribution (through the rapid growth of luxury outlets there since 2000) but also in imagery tailored to the local consumer market. The global French fashion houses, consolidated in powerful holdings such as LVMH, now use the same marketing and branding strategies, the same models of advertising, a rotation of designers, models, photographers, and stylists, making today’s luxury brands virtually synonymous. This is where heritage becomes instrumental in constructing a brand’s visual identity through historical resonance, to secure consumers’ emotional engagement with the history of a design house. In the example of Dior’s turn to Delon—one of the most emblematic, certainly one of the most photogenic male stars of 1960s European cinema—the fashion house sought to consolidate its global visibility and market share in a time of economic uncertainty by fleshing out its own singular role in the postwar consumer boom that led to the emergence of luxury ready-to-wear fashion. The images of the iconic film star in an alluring snapshot of the Côte d’Azur in its glamorous heyday ultimately provided Dior with a perfect tonal fit, enabling the brand to embed its visual projection of masculinity within a seductive, retro cliché of 1960s sophistication.

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Notes 1

2

3

4

5

A former soldier himself in Indochina in 1954, Delon played a number of military roles—buttoned up in late nineteenth century uniform in Pierre-Gaspard Huit’s costume drama Christine (1958), a remake of Max Ophüls’ Liebelei (1933). He also played a humanitarian military historian in Mark Robson’s US war drama Lost Command (1966) looking back to Indochina, to the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954; and a deserted legionnaire in Algeria in Alain Cavalier’s political noir thriller L’Insoumis/The Unvanquished (1964) (Gorce 1992, 110–13). Dior Parfums that implemented the 2009 product rejuvenation is a separate commercial entity from the fashion house, whose marketing strategies complement the brand’s overall identity and coherence. The German-language “Sissi’ trilogy was composed of Sissi (1955), Sissi—The Young Empress (1956), and Sissi—Fateful Years of an Empress (1957), all directed by Ernst Marishka. As indicated in the unpublished script by Jean-Emmanuel Conil, with additional dialog by Jean-Claude Carrière and Jacques Deray, available for reference in the holdings at the Cinémathèque française, Paris. The reunion of Alain Delon and Romy Schneider at Nice airport was covered by the Journal de 13h, 13 August 1968, INA (Institut national de l’audiovisuel) archives.

10

Toujours Delon: The Script of Aging* Sue Harris

On January 31, 2009, Alain Delon appeared as a guest on Canal Plus’s L’Hebdo Cinéma to announce his imminent return to French cinema after a fallow decade marked only by lead roles in two television mini-series. Looking relaxed and elegant, Delon was loquacious about his comeback plans and enthused about his plans to work with young stars and directors like Olivier Marchal, Tony Baillargeat, Thomas Langmann, and his own daughter Anoushka Delon. But his composure was suddenly shaken when interviewer Daphné Roulier asked him to comment on the recent performance of his old friend Jean-Paul Belmondo in Francis Huster’s Un homme et son chien/A Man and His Dog (2008). The film, a distant remake of Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D (1952), had been the first screen role for the legendary Bébel since he suffered a stroke in 2001. As a clip from the film played on a large screen behind Delon, Belmondo’s craggy face appeared in an unforgiving extreme close shot. Delon closed his eyes and struggled to articulate his emotions: “Jean-Paul” he said, almost in disbelief. “It’s Jean-Paul. There are certain things we don’t have the right to do, the right to show.” Delon’s reaction to the spectacle of Belmondo’s deterioration was telling in its intensity. Clearly, he was upset to see his friend so visibly diminished, his face jowly and ravaged by lines, his eyes rheumy. Although sufficiently returned to health to undertake the film shoot, traces of the stroke remained visible in the asymmetry of the seventy-six year old’s features and in the frailty of his voice. It was evidently painful for Delon to be called upon to witness the dramatic

*Toujours is the theme song to Frank Riva, sung by Axelle Red. The lyrics speak of continuity between the past and the present and implicitly between youth and the experience of maturity: “There will always be something of you in me/ You will always be in my dreams, my wrinkles, my tastes, my choices.”

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distance between the bright young hoodlum of A bout de souffle/Breathless and the elderly, feeble figure on the screen before him. And the dialogue in the clip seemed particularly cruel, raising the morbid specter of Belmondo’s mortality: in response to the character’s stoic explanation that he looks like this because “I’m old,” a fascinated young child innocently asks: “are you going to die?” “Yes I am,” replies Belmondo/Charles. With this statement, the camera cuts to Delon, who opens his eyes but is noticeably upset and distracted. He begins to speak, but he too now seems diminished: he is flushed, the veins visible on his forehead, the energy of the earlier discussion has dissipated. He seems to struggle to focus and find his words; inarticulate and tongue-tied, he can only rail at the cruelty that has been visited on this once great man. His only defense is defiance: “That will never happen to me,” he declares to Roulier. Delon’s refusal to look, and thereby be complicit in the spectacle of another actor’s decline, was in many ways a last-resort gesture of respect in the face of what he—and others in the French media—perceived as the exploitation of a beloved, vulnerable public figure by an opportunistic filmmaker.1 But the cruel juxtaposition of the two faces, faces associated over many decades as artistic collaborators and separated in age by only two years, seemed to expose Delon as much as Belmondo. In an interview with Cahiers du cinéma in 1996, Delon had displayed an unedifying touch of career one-upmanship with regard to Belmondo, stressing his credentials as the first of the two to have attained stardom: “Breathless came later,” he clarified when it was suggested they emerged as stars simultaneously; “Jean-Paul’s career started a year after mine” (Jousse and Toubiana 1996, 20). But having so categorically asserted his seniority in the past, Delon could not avoid the truth that he was now also old by default.

Aging as narcissistic trauma The spectacle of an old and infirm Belmondo could only ever destabilize Delon whose stardom has been so wholly predicated on his feminized objectification as “beautiful.” As Ginette Vincendeau has noted, “all ageing stars carry the memory of their younger glory, but with very beautiful stars the process is particularly poignant” (Vincendeau 2000, 181). Delon’s aversion to the image of Belmondo’s decline can be understood as the instinctive reaction of a man for whom the loss of external coherence renders the star as irrevocably “former.” If the payback for career longevity is to always be measured against the historical

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image in which the star persona was first established, then stars who “age well” are those who have succeeded in minimizing the perceived effects of physical change and whose performative iteration in the present calls attention to itself in terms of studied coherence rather than measurable alteration. While a quality of age-related alteration has indeed been detected by critics in some of Delon’s later roles (Vincendeau suggests that “Swann in Love, Notre histoire and Nouvelle vague are revealing in the demise of Delon’s beauty” 2000, 181), it is clear that iconic self-reference has remained a powerful motor in his late career dramatic projects. His endurance as a star has relied not on his ability to reinvent himself, and take artistic risks, but on his seemingly instinctive commitment to reiterate the character types and behaviors associated with his youthful star image. In this chapter I argue that as an aging star, Delon adheres to a script he has established with regard to his own stardom, actively and persistently harnessing the power of his youthful screen persona to ensure that the lines of continuity remain visible and intact into his older age. Both his choice of starring roles and his performance of aging characters propose a star persona that is unusually consistent with its origins. Delon’s stardom has become less about what he is now—his physicality and appearance admit of the impact of aging—than about the relationship that the star has to his own historical image. While Delon has tended to maintain some artistic control of this image (largely through production credits), what is compelling is that the “narcissistic display” of his youth (Vincendeau 2000, 174) is preserved in his senior years as “narcissistic trauma”: that is, the image of “what Delon was then” is ever present in the image of “what Delon is now.” Again and again, Delon complicates his anchoring in the diegetic present, stepping out of the frame to appeal to us to recognize him, not as a fictional character in the service of a generic story but as a veteran actor engaged in a self-conscious meditation of what it means to be and to perform “Delon” in old age.

Aging and stardom Clearly linking an assessment of a star’s mature career to a specific age is an arbitrary endeavor. As Elaine Showalter notes in her introduction to Lynne Segal’s Out of Time: The Pleasures and Perils of Ageing, “ageing is a process, a matter of degree rather than a fixed identity” … . “To come out” as old “is to admit something

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everyone can see” (Segal 2013, xi). Writing in 1957, Bazin drew attention to the power of Humphrey Bogart’s “decaying face” as he became prematurely old and died at the age of only 56: “the visible stigmata marking the character more and more over the last ten years or so only helped accentuate a congenital weakness. In more and more resembling his own death, it was his own portrait Bogart was completing” (1957, 99). Edgar Morin proposed stardom as a rare condition—a precious state of being that takes form in the mind of the spectator rather than in the reality of public exhibition. The aging process, he suggests, is particularly cruel because it contaminates both youth and beauty and ruptures the relationship between the mind and the eye. Morin proposed that the star persona could only remain intact if there was withdrawal from further circulation of the image, an active retreat from the fray: Yet a day will come when the wrinkles and the puffiness, corrected by ceaseless combat, will be ineffaceable. The star will join her last battle, after which she must resign herself to giving up being in love. That is, being young and beautiful; that is, being a star. Garbo hides her features and, behind the dark glasses, under the turned up collar, gleams the eternal countenance of la divine (2005, 36–37).

Some contemporary actors do seem to defy the expectations of their age: Judi Dench appearing as M in the twenty-first-century Bond films when she was already well into her seventies or Helen Mirren becoming the “face of L’Oréal” at the age of sixty-nine are examples of stars whose age is a curiosity in the public sphere because they seem to defy the script set out for them. Gérard Depardieu, on the other hand, is famously perceived as old before his years: obese, physically limited, open about his prostate problems, and now reliant on a wheelchair when he arrives at international airports. In Delon’s case, a continued association with designer clothes and accessories through high profile advertising campaigns has served his star image well: at the age of eighty, he endures in the public eye as smart, articulate, and well groomed, showing all the “right” signs of physical preservation. But, curiously, his film career since the 1990s has slowed dramatically, compounding the sense of him as an actor of an earlier generation rather than a contemporary star like Dench, or Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, or even Depardieu. My temporal marker for considering Delon as an aging star is his sixtieth year, when he was the subject of both a major career retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française and a headline dossier in Cahiers du cinéma. The dossier, “Mystère Delon,” comprising an extended interview with Thierry Jousse

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and Serge Toubiana, and an article entitled “Alain Delon, l’unique et son double” by Jean-François Rauger, acknowledged that this was the first time in the star’s forty-year career that the esteemed Cahiers had featured him as a subject of critical enquiry. The interview in particular was framed as a platform for looking back at the film work and at Delon’s frequently difficult relationship with the press and critics and in the course of ten pages asked only one very perfunctory question about the future: “What are your next projects?” Delon’s plans were immediate and fairly modest: a Hemingway-styled film directed by BernardHenri Levy (Le Jour et la Nuit/Day and Night, 1996) and the reprise of a Jean Cau play, Les Yeux crevés (aka The Gouged Eyes), which Delon had been rehearsing when it was interrupted and closed down following the civil unrest in France in May 1968. There was no great vision of a future, simply of a past, confirming Rauger’s eloquent formulation that Delon was somehow always a star out of step with his own generation—the modern heir to a certain kind of classic stardom whose value is primarily historical and whose relevance to the contemporary industry is limited to a single set of meanings: within the modern industry, Delon is definitively the one viable mythic star in popular French cinema, someone from the age when the great figures of the past got old like Gabin, or just disappeared (Rauger 1996, 32).

The preface to the dossier reinforced this reading of the star: “Today, Delon appears like a character from another era, an outsider ill at ease in an age of media cynicism” (Jousse and Toubiana 1996, 19). It was precisely this quality that Bertand Blier deployed in Les Acteurs/The Actors (2000), acknowledging but also celebrating the actor “Delon” as a relic of the past in an era of new talent and cinematic priorities. The film, an ensemble piece featuring a cast of veteran actors of Delon’s generation, who identify as their “real selves” in a series of structured vignettes, reflects on the craft of acting and the instability of star meanings. Les Acteurs queries the borders between self and star image in broad terms, but also draws specifically on Delon’s “marginal” persona, and his self-identification as silent and brooding, a “silent type” as he himself states, who appears as a solitary figure within an ensemble cast and remains at a distance from the farcical interaction and ludic behavior of his celebrity peers. The brief scene in which Delon features begins with a film crew impatiently waiting for two stars—named on director chairs as Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura—to emerge from their trailers and begin shooting a night time scene.

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Delon walks into shot and declares to the assembled crew that he will shoot the scene, subsequently identified on the clapperboard by the title “Sicilienne.” Delon is explicitly figured as a specter of a past era of filmmaking, the only remaining member of the Gabin–Ventura–Delon trio from Le Clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (1969), and thus the living repository of the memories of both the film project and the historical era: “I knew them. I was in films with them,” he states as he looks back to the empty chairs that bear the names of his deceased friends. His distance from filmmaking in the present is stressed in his polite inquiry: “So how’s your cinema going these days? And the American competition?” and his recognition that he is somehow an unexpected guest at the party; he quietly wonders if they have set a chair for him too. They have not, and he admonishes them for their failure to remember the actors of “his” cinema, quietly enumerating the names Bourvil, Signoret, Montand, and De Funès. Although Delon actually looks—and indeed is—much younger than some of the other actors who appear in the film (e.g., Michel Galabru, Michel Serrault, and Michel Piccoli), he is the figure singled out as the bridge to the past, the star most associated with a generation of actors from an earlier era, stars who have already died and been fixed by history. The Cahiers dossier, like the Cinémathèque season and the later cameo in Blier’s film, testified to a stardom perceived at the end of the century as complete, and endorsed as such by Delon himself, who claimed his career to be “quite exceptional,” on par with that of his heroes Brando, Gabin, Ventura, and Burt Lancaster ( Jousse and Toubiana 1996, 20). When asked by Jousse and Toubiana if he was worried that this public homage might be seen as a kind of “embalming” process, Delon was categorical: no, “when something seems right, I go along with it” (1996, 20). But the overriding sentiment of the piece is precisely that: that Delon is a star who has found himself, “for a few years now, out of synch, without allies. He hasn’t changed; it is French cinema itself that has become smaller, that has learned to do without stars” (1996, 19). Delon expressed resentment that his register of stardom seemed no longer to be understood by the French media and critics, citing both the lack of recompense for his role in Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976) and the fact that a lifetime achievement Golden Bear was awarded by Berlin but not the French industry. Particular vitriol was reserved for the journalists who had read his particular brand of method acting in recent roles as evidence of his aging and allowed themselves to comment directly on the alteration in his physical

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appearance. Taking the example of “that fool Michèle Stouvenot” reviewing Le Retour de Casanova/The Return of Casanova (1992), Delon accused the French press of ignorance and parochialism in failing to understand the craft of the actor: ‘Delon is pathetic. He’s got fat and ugly.’ Without seeing that the character is meant to be fat and ugly. I put on eight kilos in order to become that character. When it happens in America, everyone is awestruck: De Niro can put on twenty kilos to play La Motta and it’s great … . But for Casanova, I was just bloated … (1996, 25).

When his interviewer asked “Is it because the young woman who wakes up in your bed is supposed to find you repulsive?,” Delon replied “Precisely! But we have professional critics who can’t grasp that …” (1996, 25). The portrait of aging offered in the film is, however, compelling in its parallels with the cinematic star trajectory, offering a high degree of diegetic reflection on the impact of age on the established star image (Figure 10.1). Delon’s Casanova is played as a character whose youthful reputation precedes both his screen presence and his diegetic relationships. In this version of the legendary lothario’s story, Casanova is in exile from his home in Venice. He is attended by his longterm valet Camille (Fabrice Luchini) and lives on the charity of others. The story begins with him forced out of “retirement,” to use his skills as a lover in exchange for the rent owed on his lodgings, for in the absence of monetary resources, Casanova’s only currency is his reputation as an object of desire. The character’s erotic power is no longer apparent in his physical appearance—he is overweight, his hair is long, graying and unkempt, his stomach is delicate and his breath

Figure 10.1 Delon in Le Retour de Casanova/The Return of Casanova (1992)

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stinks so badly he has to chew on cloves to mask it. But it remains something embedded deep within the world of the film, something felt by the characters he encounters which is measured in their reactions to the spectacle he offers to this world. His powers of seduction, in particular, endure across the years: Amélie (Delia Boccardo), a noblewoman with whom he had a brief but long forgotten love affair, remains so devoted to him that she goes through a torturous daily penance of praying for his return to her while kneeling on broken glass. When she finally sees him, she is overcome and can only confirm that he is now as he has always been to her: “You haven’t aged by a single day.” But Marcolina (Elsa Lunghini), Amélie’s beautiful young daughter and the real object of Casanova’s desire, is disgusted by this aging pest whom she aligns with the grotesque painted men and bitter women of the older generation; gross, decaying figures, so hideous they are only ever seen in public costumed, masked, disguised in some way. Physically, the changes are marked and the diegetic star persona can no longer command the attention and adulation of all spectators equally. The narrative derives its force from the shared knowledge that the character was once “other” and the alignment of Delon’s aging with Casanova’s changed status as a celebrity figure in his own world. There is thus a logical absence of youthful resilience to the slights and discomforts of daily living, and the character’s realization that his “light” or star aura has been irrevocably eclipsed by the natural beauty and energy of youth seals his condition as a relic of a vanished world. In his interactions with Lorenzi, the arrogant young pretender for Marcolina’s affections, he is slow and outwitted: “I have the impression I’m listening to my grandmother,” declares Lorenzi, with calculated cruelty. The performative premise of the film—that Delon must convince as a once irresistible, now aged and repulsive seducer—is achieved through a dramatic redeployment of “narcissistic display” as “narcissistic trauma,” allowing the historic star image to be visually contaminated in the service of a narrative about aging in the public eye.

Ludic iconicity The years following the “state of the career” dossier in Cahiers have followed three pathways for Delon: a retreat from cinema into theater, a retreat from the big screen to the small screen of public television, and an embracing of popular

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film projects that consciously play with his star image in comic mode. The latter is a minor strand that can be traced through his performance in two films: Patrice Leconte’s Une chance sur deux/Half a Chance (1998) which saw Delon reunited with Belmondo and French pop star and actress Vanessa Paradis in an adventure movie about paternity and masculinity; and as Julius Caesar in the third of the blockbuster Asterix sequels, Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques/Asterix at the Olympic Games (Frédéric Forestier and Thomas Langmann, 2008). In these films, what is notable is Delon’s movement into comedy—a genre that in the Cahiers dossier he claims to have deliberately avoided because “it doesn’t suit me. I just don’t get it” (28)—and comedy that draws very specifically on his altered star image in his 60s and 70s. In her book on the work of director Patrice Leconte, Lisa Downing draws attention to the casting of Delon and Belmondo, the iconic duo of Borsalino (Jacque Deray, 1969) in Une chance sur deux as “somewhat bumbling, if well-preserved, retired conmen” turned “oedipal fathers” (Downing 2004, 71). As Downing points out, the film is a profoundly nostalgic exercise in star homage, using the evident aging of both stars as a vehicle for a critique of millennial masculinity in crisis. She suggests that “by focusing so baldly on the ageing process of France’s most glamorous young men, Leconte invites reflection more broadly upon a waning model of French masculinity” (2004, 71). Delon’s aging in this film is a necessity of his character’s construction as a long-lost father and is also pleasurably bolstered by his complicity with his “buddy” Belmondo. Within the comic parameters of the narrative action, Delon is framed not in terms of his limitations as an object of female erotic desire (as in Casanova) but as an enduring object of female paternal desire (to a young woman—Paradis—who was then France’s most recognizable and glamorous former child star). The performance of the two older men as a duo with a shared history is a mutually reinforcing one that multiplies the authority of their star power, thereby effacing their aging itself as a point of focus. Delon’s single big screen intervention in the twenty-first century in Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques was both comic and defiant in its confident assertion of a carefully preserved star image and celebrated career longevity (Figure 10.2). From the title sequence, in which his name is set apart from the main cast’s by virtue of a gilt-edged frame, Delon is signaled (in a film packed with contemporary stars and cameos from global superstars such as Zinedine Zidane, Michael Schumaker, Tony Parker, and Jean-Claude Van Damme) as the film’s major star draw. While principles of broad farce determine the pace and action

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Figure 10.2 Delon as Julius Caesar in Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques (2008)

of the movie, Delon’s comic integration is more tempered and is carefully tailored to reinforce his status as “living legend.” Our first sight of him as Jules César is preceded by a shot of a pet leopard, anchoring Delon immediately in the mythic past of Visconti’s film (Il gattopardo/The Leopard, 1963) and reinforcing his construction here as “Delon” rather than the franchise’s third incarnation of “César.” Before we see him, he is fetishized as the object of the gaze, as the camera does all the work around his still frame, circling him with comic eroticism and lingering on elements of his costume: his boots, his golden bracelet, his Roman tunic, and the repeated “JC” monogram. The sequence is deliberately playful in its presentation of Delon, pleasurably echoing the use of the mirror as a motif in both Il gattopardo and Plein soleil/Purple Moon (Clément, 1960). The camera finally alights on a close up of his eyes, which stare back at us, inviting mutual recognition. Before he speaks, he is held in full body pose and turns to admire himself in a full length mirror: he is distinguished, elegant, pleased with himself, and scrutinizes his own image from all angles before purring with satisfaction and narcissistic pleasure at what he sees. He speaks as César, but as the cutaway to the leopard stresses, and as the third person dialogue reveals,2 both we—and he—know he is Alain Delon: Caesar doesn’t get old; he matures. His hair doesn’t go white; it becomes luminous. Caesar is immortal, forever. Caesar has succeeded in everything, has conquered everything; he is a leopard, a samurai. He owes nothing to anyone: not to Rocco, or his brothers. Not to the Sicilian Clan … . And anyway, the César for the best Emperor was awarded to—Caesar. All hail to me!

The conceit, which extends to the accidental poisoning of the leopard (“there was one leopard too many in this room”), places Delon in a strong position with

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regard to his unfamiliar appearance in a popular commercial comedy. As César, he channels the aloofness and detachment of the mythic Delon persona and remains at a distance, both literal and figurative, from the slapstick elements of the film’s plot; as Delon, he brings the gravitas of classic star quality to the project while reinforcing the “exceptional” nature of his participation in a live action cartoon film. His “imperial” credentials within the firmament of the French star caste are playfully asserted via the elaboration of his iconic film roles and his status as an elder statesman of the industry in the César references.

The big star on the small screen The bulk of Delon’s dramatic screen work in the first decade of the twenty-first century took place on television, in two police thriller series. The first, and by far the most successful, was Fabio Montale, a three-part adaptation of Jean-Claude Izzo’s celebrated Marseilles Trilogy (1995), which screened on TF1 in January 2002 (Figure 10.3). The series was the biggest event of the year on French television, with audience numbers averaging 11.3 million per episode. With Delon’s small screen appearance much trailed in the press in the months running up to the first broadcast, the opening episode (Total Khéops) on January 3, 2002, took an astonishing 48.8 percent of the audience share.3 Audiences were clearly receptive to Delon’s return to a genre and setting—Marseilles—with which they could readily associate him. The role of Commissioner Fabio Montale, hoodlum

Figure 10.3 Delon in Fabio Montale (2002)

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turned cop, negotiating his way between a corrupt police force and the Marseilles criminal underworld, seemed tailor made for Delon, and to find him back in his trademark sunglasses and dressed by luxury men’s fashion house Ermenegildo Zegna, was an added reassurance that this was “old style” Delon back in action. The second series Frank Riva was conceived in the wake of Montale and intended to capitalize on the huge success of the first with audiences. Delon was a driving force in developing the project, investing as an executive producer and publicly stating that he wanted to gain the highest ever viewing figures for the channel FR2. The series was screened over two three-episode seasons in November 2003 (season 1) and November-December 2004 (season 2), and although it was a hit by the standards of the channel, it was markedly less successful than Montale with audiences: the first season boasted averages of 7 million per episode, with the second falling closer to 4 million. This was a personal disappointment to Delon, who had conceived of the role as an opportunity to carve out a late career niche for himself as a small screen star. Both series are remarkably similar in the ways in which they blur the boundaries between Delon as character and Delon as star figure, relocating him within the familiar world of the crime thriller and positioning mature Delon as an object of historical inquiry for the characters within the diegesis. Both are retrospective narratives in which a character with an ambiguous past is called out of retirement to deal with unfinished business in the present. Storyline and characterization in both series favor Delon as an agent of time and memory, a preformed character whose presence within the narrative is shored up by intertextual cues. The unrevealed history of his characters resonates precisely because of the vast back catalog of Delon’s career, and meaning and resolution in both cases derive from a cinephilic understanding of the star persona as much as an ability to grasp plot complexity. The opening moments of Episode 1 of Fabio Montale serve as a star platform as much as a scene-setter for the narrative of police corruption in which Delon features as the eponymous commissioner. It opens in the narrow streets of the Le Panier district in Marseilles, where a violent armed robbery is underway in a pharmacy. The scene outside is chaotic: the streets are filled with armed police with their guns trained on the pharmacy doorway, and no one seems to be in control. The sense is of a tragedy about to unfold. We cut away to a high walled alley-stairway where a solitary man walks into shot from the right. He is wearing sunglasses and a black overcoat and stops and looks directly at the camera. He is brought into focus in a zoom shot: it is Delon who looks at us, as pristine, cool,

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and upright as in any crime thriller from his past. He walks silently on and exits to the left, entering an underground passage before emerging in the pharmacy behind the counter and walking calmly up to the armed men. “Where did he come from?” asks one of them frantically, as the tension escalates. But Delon remains trademark unflappable and reasons logically with the men to obtain the release of the hostages. With the drama now over, Delon asks only for a coffee, as the young police officers demand to know how he found his way in to the pharmacy. With a twinkle in his eye, he tells them he knows the district well: as a kid, he himself had robbed the same shop. The solitude and ambiguity of the Delon persona are thus key to the establishment of his character: before he was a cop, he was a robber, “a long time ago, in another life”. With these words, Delon stakes a claim to his cinematic past as a figure who straddles crime and law enforcement, then disappears alone again back into the alley where he first appeared. The three episodes of the series use this trope of the character’s “former life” to keep Delon “now” in tension with Delon “then,” affirming his youth rather than his aging as key to his construction. One of the main dramatic motors is the flashback, which repeatedly positions him as a nostalgic figure and one that can only be understood in relation to the past. Thus the narrative explicitly invites us to read the graying melancholic Montale in the present as an extension of the beautiful dark haired boy Fabio in the sepia toned fragments that signal action in the past. These flashbacks do little to advance the plot but instead serve as moments of counter-reflection on the image in the present: they take place around the sunny Mediterranean coastline and deflect any latent anxiety about Delon’s altered physicality onto the naked torso of the perfect youthful body of the boy. Delon in the present inevitably displays something of the “softness” of age, with the sharp lines and angularity of his youth giving way to a slight tummy, a receding hairline, and thinning gray hair. When he is ambushed in a car park in Episode 2, for example, he is unable to act like a young man, finding himself dazed and having to take painkillers in the aftermath. As the violent actions take their toll over the three episodes, we see he is not invincible but fallible and vulnerable to injury. However, even though the series uses Montale’s imminent retirement from the force as a plot point, his relative youth in relation to other characters is repeatedly suggested: the Mafia godfathers Zucca and Batisti (seen in the flashbacks) are portrayed as decrepit and infirm, while Montale’s friends and allies Norine and Fonfon (Andrée Damant and George Neri) are cast as his elders, whereas the actors are actually very close in age to Delon.

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Frank Riva offers the same template of a character with his roots in the past, one who is underestimated by those who witness his re-emergence in the present. Episode 1 is entitled “The Man from Nowhere” and opens with a long traveling shot over the sea and coastline, before halting on Delon, standing alone on a beach, leaning up against an upturned boat. It transpires that Riva has been in exile abroad for years following his exposure as a police informant and is being recalled from his enforced retirement in an exotic foreign coastal resort to take part in a historic investigation into a Mafia ring in Paris. Each episode of the first season begins in this way, placing Delon in a coastal space identified with boats and open water, thereby associating him visually with the topos of Plein soleil/Purple Moon and La Piscine/The Swimming Pool as well as the Marseilles-set thrillers. Where Montale favored flashbacks, Riva uses photographs of the young Delon to make a connection between the man then and now. His initial appearance as unshaven with long gray hair is quickly contrasted by the black and white photograph that Commissioner Lydie Herzog holds at the airport where she goes to meet him. A youthful photograph also appears on his old police badge, and a third photo is seen at the end of the episode; these and other such photographs punctuate subsequent episodes. The black and white snaps are visibly pictures of Delon in the early years of his stardom, and the first two act as triggers for the reassertion of his familiar screen persona in the narrative. After the first two images have been seen on screen, Delon re-emerges as a familiar version of himself: clean-shaven, shorthaired, and professionally dressed in a suit and tie. The puzzle of his unrevealed identity, and the distance between Riva then and now informs the entire first series: “Who are you exactly Mr. Riva?” asks Herzog when she first meets him “That’s a question I often ask of myself,” he replies. In Episode 6, he is described as a phantom and tells his boss: “I try to be different from how I used to be. It’s a constant struggle.” As in Casanova, however, a female lover from the past—played with added frisson by Delon’s former partner Mireille Darc—acts as the spectator’s proxy, confirming the integrity and familiarity of the star persona in spite of the lapse in time: “he’s hardly changed at all”, she notes wistfully. One of the main narrative threads shared by both series is the issue of the mortality of the protagonist’s generation, and each series is punctuated by funeral sequences in cemeteries. The premise of Montale is that the boyhood friends of the flashback segments (Manu, Ugo) have experienced violent deaths, and other friends are killed or put in danger because of their association with

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Montale. “Fabio’s friends are becoming an endangered species,” declares one colleague in Episode 2. Indeed, Montale’s final scene in Episode 3 takes place at a funeral, where Montale assumes responsibility for the young orphaned son of his colleague Hélène who has died trying to save his life. The boy Thomas has the same floppy dark hair and serious eyes as the young Delon and is revealed by the credits to be the actor’s real life son, Alain Delon Junior. This revelation reinforces the sense of mature Delon’s function—via the dramatic conduits of Montale and Riva—as paternalistic mentor to a new generation of Delon-like young men. In this way, his career comes full circle as he actively assumes his legacy as the Gabin-type role model for a modern age,4 in particular in relation to his closest ally, played in both series by Cédric Chevalme: Thierry Peyrol in Montale (where he wears a young Delon-style black leather jacket and attention is drawn to his piercing blue eyes) and Hervé Sebastien in Riva.

Conclusion In the Cahiers du cinéma interview in 1996, the 60-year-old Delon seemed oblivious to any sense that he might have to confront his own aging as a career reality. For him, aging on screen was an issue of concern only for female actors: It’s not a job for a woman. It’s too hard on the great actresses, the sex symbols, women adored the world over who suddenly find themselves facing a daily problem … . One day, people no longer look at them the same way, and it’s hideous. The list of stars who finished up badly is long: Marilyn, Rita Hayworth, Martine Carol, Susan Hayward … . Women suffer a great injustice in this profession (Jousse and Toubiana 1996, 24).

His gendered deflection of the potential trauma of aging betrays an unreflecting arrogance that seems to have returned to haunt him in the Belmondo episode with which I opened this chapter. But it also speaks of an actor seemingly unable to conceive of the dramatic opportunities and new creative directions—such as those embraced by Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant in Michael Haneke’s Amour (2011)—available to aging stars. His satisfaction but also complacency with regard to his present condition was apparent in an interview with Figaro Magazine in July 2013. To Laurence Haloche’s question: “for fifty years now, you have been the model of eternal masculinity in the cinema. How do you manage that?,” Delon replied:

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I hope I am worthy of that title … I am very touched, it means a lot to me. I am just as I have always been, the same man. But it’s the term “eternal” that I find overwhelming. Even when people see old photographs of me, they say I haven’t changed, and that nothing has changed now, I am even more handsome now (laughter). It’s incredible. When will it ever end? (Haloche 2013)

The question of Delon’s stardom in his senior years remains indelibly attached to his historic star image and his explicit referencing of that in his acting and choice of projects. As the examples above demonstrate, his late career screen outings as “Delon” have shown little dramatic variation or innovation over the years. However, the past gives ballast to the patterns of display that prevail across the range of film and television projects outlined here, and this nostalgic impulse serves to reiterate the star persona across a series of roles, reinforcing and consolidating rather than dismantling and provoking the star image. Delon is ultimately and always affirmed in these examples as a mature version of himself, rather than exposed as a star in any kind of physical or performative decline. The Krys publicity campaign may well have found commercial mileage in declaring “in the past he was Delon”; but as the film and television work of his senior years reveals, the script of Delon’s late career has been determined by the project of being always and forever—“toujours”—Alain Delon.

Notes 1

2 3 4

Press coverage was attentive to this: “they will tell you that Francis Huster’s A Man and His Dog is a fiction. That Belmondo’s fine. All the same. The film feels like a documentary about a man who suffered a brain injury in summer 2001. And who now has problems speaking and walking. The boxer that he was knows there is always one last, dangerous fight ahead. But neither the broken voice, nor the broken body are Belmondo’s. So what’s left? Just the face: lined, distorted. He was once the epitome of cinematic grace. Now everything seems hard for him.” Delon has long been parodied for a tendency to refer to himself in the third person. The figures can be found at telesatellite.com. This is the role Gabin assumed with regard to Delon in Mélodie en sous sol (1963), Le Clan des Sciciliens (1969), and Deux hommes dans la ville (1973).

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Index Note: page references followed by ‘f ’ and ‘n’ indicate figures and note numbers. A bout de souffle/Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960) 81, 160 accent 61, 65, 69, 71 n.5, 100–3 accessories, fashion 143, 162 acousmêtre, ghostly connotations of 125, 133–6, 140 n.8 “acoustic signature” 65, 69, 72 n.19 Les Acteurs/The Actors (Bertand Blier, 2000) 163–4 action films 32, 118–20, 136 actor-singers 127, 135, 137 “A.D.” (Alain Delon perfume) 33 Adel Productions 4, 97, 114. See also Delbeau Productions Adieu, l’ami/Farewell, Friend/Honor Among Thieves (Jean Herman, 1968) 102, 108 n.7 advertising campaign, Delon 9, 162 Dior 11–12, 33, 39, 141–2, 148–57 Krys 27, 33–5, 174 Reiss 141 A-films 151 aging and stardom 161–6 gendered deflection of trauma 173 Aimée, Anouk 48 Aksyonenko, Artyom 10 “Alain Delon, l’unique et son double” (article; Jean-François Rauger) 163 Alain Delon est une star au Japon/Alain Delon is a Star in Japan (novel; Benjamin Berton, 2009) 10 Algeria 38, 100, 158 n.1 Allégret, Marc 49 Allégret, Yves 2, 34, 45–6 Alov, Aleksandr 97 American cinema. See Hollywood cinema Amour (Michael Haneke, 2011) 173 anarchism 8 Andreasyan, Sarik 10

Anglo-American Cultural Studies 4 Ann-Margret 99 anti-conformist music genre 127 anti-fascism 137 anti-hero 1, 83, 85, 92, 103, 143 anti-pop bias 137 anti-realism 96 Antonioni, Michelangelo 25, 59–60, 75, 93, 106, 114, 145–6 arch performance 96 Armani, Giorgio 148 Armani (fashion house) 150 art cinema 63, 72 n.15, 96, 106 Ascheid, Antje 64 Asia, Delon’s fandom in 1, 143, 157 Asquith, Anthony 60, 98 Assassination of Trotsky, The (Joseph Losey, 1972) 95, 147 Astérix aux jeux olympiques/Asterix at the Olympic Games (Frédéric Forestier and Thomas Langmann, 2008) 10, 33–4, 167–9, 168f costume 168, 168f Attention les enfants regardent/Attention, the Kids are Watching (Serge Leroy, 1978) 126 Auber, Brigitte 2, 49 Delon’s relationship with 16, 44–5 Aubriant, Michel 50, 55 Auclair, Michel 116 Audiard, Michel 78–9, 123 n.10 audiences/viewers/spectators 3–4, 6, 8, 10, 13–14, 17, 19–21, 23–6, 28, 31–5, 37–42, 44, 47, 49, 52, 55, 62–5, 67, 69, 71, 72 n.17, 78–80, 82, 91, 94–5, 101, 107–8, 111–16, 119, 121–2, 123 n.7, 123 n.10, 133, 137, 142, 144, 154, 156–7, 162, 166, 169–70, 172

186

Index

audio-recording devices 133 audio-visuals 139 L’Aurore (French newspaper) 50 Auslander, Philip 134 Austin, Guy 2–5, 25–6, 29 n.6, 60, 108 n.2, 108 n.4, 111, 114, 117, 145 auteur films 9, 11, 77, 96, 106, 112, 119 auteurs 60, 75 avant-garde 56 AVCO Embassy 97 Les Aventuriers/The Last Adventure (Robert Enrico, 1967) 106 soundtrack of 126, 134–5 “L’Avventura” (song, Stone and Charden, 1971) 130 Axelle Red 159 Back to God’s Country (Joseph Pevney, 1953) 81 Bacon, Lloyd 81 Baillargeat, Tony 159 Baker, Josephine 126 Balibar, Jeanne 127 ballad 126, 129, 135, 138 ballerina shoes 155 Bardem, Juan Antonio 105 Bardot, Brigitte 4, 6, 8, 49–50, 52–3, 57 n.1, 127 baritone voice 129 Barouh, Pierre 135 Bass, Saul 151 Bassey, Shirley 126, 136, 138, 140 n.8 bass voice 129 Le Battant (Delon and Davis, 1983) 40–1, 42 n.2, 112–13, 117–20 reception 113 source novel for 113 Baudelaire, Charles 127 Baudin, Bernard 116 Baye, Nathalie 9 Bazin, André 162 Beaume, Georges 45–7, 49, 53–4 and Delbeau Productions 97, 113 “Beautiful Mine, A ” (instrumental theme tune; RJD2) 151 Beauvoir, Simone de 13, 16–17, 21–2, 133 Béhat, Gilles 41 Le Bel Indifférent (play; Jean Cocteau, 1939) 26

Le Bel Indifférent (TV series; Marion Saraut, 1978) 26 belle époque 148 La Belle Équipe/They Were Five (Julien Duvivier, 1936) 79 Belmondo, Jean-Paul (Bébel) 1, 3–4, 10, 48, 56, 59, 75, 77, 95, 104, 109 n.10, 111, 114, 116, 120–1, 123 n.10 late career, senior years 159–61, 167, 173, 174 n.1 Bennett, Joseph 72 n.13 Berger, Helmut 62 Berlin International Film Festival 164 Bernhardt, Sarah 127 Berton, Benjamin 10 Bessy, Maurice 43 Betz, Mark 63, 65 Beytout, Christine 154 BFI DVD 12 n.1 “Bide et Musique” website 128 big-budget films 78–9 Big Grab, The (novel; John Trinian) 79 Biraud, Maurice 79 Birkin, Jane 19, 127, 154–5, 155f Bishop, Joey 101 Blanc, Michel 33 Blier, Bertrand 6, 9, 40, 48, 122, 163–4 B-movies 81 Bob le flambeur (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1956) 79, 81 Boccardo, Delia 166 body language 104, 127, 133 Bogart, Humphrey 162 Boisrond, Michel 2, 49 Bond, James 136 Bond films 162 boom, postwar economic 4, 61, 156–7 Bordwell, David 72 n.19 Bormatov, Anton 10 Borniche, Roger 115 Borsalino (Jacques Deray, 1970) 1, 37, 75, 84, 95–6, 105, 114, 120, 123 n.14, 126, 167 Boulé, Jean-Pierre 17 Boulogne, Édith (mother) 15 Bourdieu, Pierre 32 Bourvil 37, 53, 127, 164 box office 6, 46, 48, 77, 84, 93, 95, 105, 107, 111, 115–16, 122 n.3

Index brand ambassador 141, 149 brand heritage 141 Brando, Marlon 8, 54, 164 Brant, Mike 132 Brassart, Alain 55, 76–7, 83, 89 Bravo magazine (German) 52 Bray, Elisa 136 Breward, Christopher 156 Brialy, Jean-Claude 2, 16, 28 n.2, 45, 48–9, 51, 55–6 Brichetto, Bice 146 British Lion 97 Bronson, Charles 100, 102 Brooks, Peter 67 Bruel, Patrick 127 Bruzzi, Stella 18–19, 92, 123 n.13, 143–5 Buckley, Réka 71 n.1 “Cadet-Rousselle,” ORTF Deuxième chaîne 132 La caduta degli dei/The Damned (Luchino Visconti, 1969) 62 Cahiers du cinéma 8 interview with Delon 160–4, 166–7, 173 Calfan, Nicole 123 n.11 California 100 cameos 10, 164, 167 camera 8, 13, 19, 28 n.4, 34–5, 46, 48–9, 60–2, 65–8, 70, 72 n.13, 125, 132, 140 n.8, 152, 160, 168, 170–1 Camus, Albert 39 Canal+ 33, 159 Le Canard enchaîné (French newspaper) 50 Cannes Film Festival 2, 44–5, 50, 79–80, 135, 145, 147 capitalism 22, 83, 89–90, 146 Cardiff, Jack 97, 142 Cardinale, Claudia 4–6, 100 career, Delon advertising campaigns 9, 11–12, 27, 33–5, 39, 141–58, 162 business ventures 33, 40, 115 as cowriter 106, 122 n.1 critical reception of 7–8 as director 11, 40, 42 n.2, 106, 111–23 early success 1–158 emploi, creating, managing and adjusting of 31–41 European films 1, 6, 91–109, 157

187

as fashion and style icon 11, 33–5, 92–3, 141–58 formative collaborations 7, 44–9, 60 French cinema 1–174 French/Italian coproductions 10, 59–73, 95, 99–100, 102, 106, 108 n.6, 123 n.10, 145–6 Hollywood contract, renunciation of 2, 45–6 Hollywood films 3, 78, 90–3, 95, 98–104, 106–7, 109 n.12, 114 international stardom 3, 8–9, 12, 18, 21, 35, 37, 41, 50, 52, 60, 75–6, 78, 91–109, 111, 113, 115, 117, 135, 141–58, 162 Italian cinema 25, 59–73, 95, 103, 106, 114, 147 Italian/French coproduction 102, 108 n.7 late career, senior years 159–74 non-French characters/roles 91–109 pan-European stardom 60, 71 n.3, 98, 102 polyglot filmography 63, 95–6 as producer/production companies 7, 11, 97, 111–23, 127 promotion campaigns 123 n.14, 157 roles per year 97–8 as screenwriter 11, 106, 111–23 as singer/recording performances 11, 95, 106, 125–40; ridicule of 133–8 television performances/small-screen roles 97, 166–7, 169–73 television talk shows, appearances on 95–6 theatrical performance 10, 51, 97, 163 transnational cinemas 3, 60–1, 91–8, 107 variety of roles 91–109 zenith of 97–8 Carné, Marcel 90 Carney, Art 99 Caroff, André 113 Carol, Martine 173 Carrière, Jean-Claude 18, 158 n.4 Cartier, Max 63 cast/casting 2, 5–6, 14, 18, 22, 32–5, 40, 49, 53–4, 56, 60, 72 nn.13–14, 84, 91–3, 95, 98–105, 108, 114–15, 131, 136, 146–7, 151–2, 163, 167, 171 test 32, 45

188

Index

Le Casting (Patrice Leconte, Krys ad campaign, 2011) 33–5 Cau, Jean 163 Cavalier, Alain 4, 38, 92, 158 n.1 CD 127 Ceccaldi, Daniel 116 celebrity culture 27 Les Cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma/One Hundred and One Nights (Agnès Varda, 1995) 106 Le Cercle rouge/The Red Circle (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970) 1, 26, 37, 40, 84, 114, 126, 143 César Award 9, 122 Chanel (fashion house) 157 channeling Delon 143–7 Chaouche, Sabine 129 Chapier, Henri 80 characterization 69, 97, 102, 108, 170 Charensol, Georges 54 Charrier, Jacques 51, 53–4 Chazal, Robert 54, 121 “cheesy music” 136 Le Chemin des écoliers/Way of Youth (Michel Boisrond, 1959) 2, 49, 53 Chenoune, Farid 108 n.3, 146, 148 Chéri (Colette, 1920) 49 Che! (Richard Fleischer, 1969) 105 Chevalme, Cédric 173 Chiesi, Roberto 82, 112–13, 115–17, 121–2 child stars 167 China, Delon’s fandom in 79, 114, 143, 157 Chion, Michel 125, 127, 129, 133–4 Le Choc/The Shock (Robin Davis, 1982) 8–9, 144 Chow Yun-Fat 92 Christian-Jaque 32, 106 Christine (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1958) 48–50, 152, 158 n.1 Church Gibson, Pamela 18–19, 144–5 CICC (Compagnie Industrielle et Commerciale Cinématographique) 97 Cieutat, Michel 7, 112, 114, 120–1 cigarette 149 cinema and popular music, relationship between 125, 135–6 Cinémathèque Française 8, 158 n.4, 162, 164

cinematography 1, 6, 35, 38, 41, 70, 97, 142, 145 Cinémonde (French magazine), Delon in 43 articles 46–8, 51–3 biased stance 54 contest to win a day with Delon 50 contributors to 54–5 cover boy 50, 51f Delon-Charrier star match 54 Delon-Schneider affair 52–3 interviews 46 “Let’s gossip” (“Potinons”) column 43–4 letters from readers 50 photographs/portraits 46–7, 47f, 50–2, 51f pin-up status 50 presentation and promotion 46–7 readers 50, 55 star page 51 cinephile forums 8, 92, 157 Cineriz 97 Cinévie-Cinévogue (French magazine) 43 Cinotto, Simone 71 n.4 CIPRA (Compagnie Internationale de Productions Cinématographiques) 97, 99 Cité Films 97 Le Clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (Henri Verneuil, 1969) 1, 75 box-office success 84 climax 88–9 critical analysis of 84–90 Delon-Gabin duo 84–9, 113–14 Gabin paradigm 76, 87, 89 Gabin–Ventura–Delon trio 164 source novel for 84 themes 86–9 Clarke, Erik F. 138 classical cinema 13, 48–9, 52 classicism 47, 52 Clément, René 1, 4, 7–8, 9f, 13, 45, 49, 53–4, 60, 75, 93, 98, 105, 113, 120, 126, 141, 145, 168 Clift, Montgomery 47 close-ups 4, 8, 23, 25, 46, 62–3, 65–9, 66f, 68f, 71 n.10, 101–2, 132, 145, 149–50, 152, 154, 168 Cocteau, Jean 26

Index “Coeurs brisés” (song; Delon-Kaas) 140 n.2 Cohen, Robin 94 collaboration 7, 39, 44–9, 60, 78, 112, 116, 146, 160 Colni, Henri 105 Columbia Pictures 97, 100 comedies 8–9, 60, 75, 77, 95, 99, 101, 107, 112, 123 n.10, 132, 167–9 comedy-drama 9 comedy music 127 “Comme au cinéma” (song; Delon, 1987) 126, 139, 140 n.8 Concorde: Airport ’79, The (David Lowell Rich, 1979) 98, 103, 103f, 107 Connell, Raewyn W 29 n.5 consumer brands 12 consumerism 3, 12, 21–2, 32, 44, 53, 83, 90, 104, 141–3, 145, 149–50, 153–4, 156–7 Coppola, Francis Ford 88 Cordoue, Michèle 2, 45, 49 Cordy, Annie 26 Corneau, Alain 120 corporeal techniques 20, 32, 41 cosmetics 115, 141, 143, 150, 157 cosmopolitanism 11, 60, 71 n.3, 92–8, 104 costumes 41, 86, 92, 117, 123 n.13, 143, 146–7, 154, 158 n.1, 166, 168 Côte d’Azur 141, 151, 157 Courrèges, André 154 futurism 154–5 couture heritage, 1960s 142, 154 Crauchet, Paul 19 credits 28 n.4, 77, 80–1, 89, 106, 122 n.1, 123 n.12, 127, 135, 137, 151, 161, 173 crime drama 98, 141, 152 crime films 1, 6, 9, 36, 75–6, 78–80, 98, 101, 107, 144–5 Crisa, Erno 18 Crosby, Bing 127 cruise collection 151–3 cult comedies 123 n.10 cultural memory 80 cultural transfer 40 cultural transpositions 44 Dalida 11, 125–6, 130–3, 131f, 132f, 136 Damant, Andrée 171

189

Dancing Machine (Gilles Béhat, 1990) 41 Daney, Serge 8–9 “Dans mon coeur de gitan” (song; Delon, 2008) 127, 139, 140 n.8 Darc, Mireille 117, 172 Darke, Chris 6 Darmon, Gérard 9 Daroussin, Jean-Pierre 9 Darras, Jean-Pierre 116 Darrieux, Danielle 48 Darvi, Bella 50 d’Arvor, Patrick Poivre 116 Davis, Robin 8–9, 40, 144 Dean, James 8, 45–7, 54 de Baroncelli, Jean 54 de Caunes, Georges 45 De Funès, Louis 164 de Gaulle, Charles 43, 91 Delbeau Productions 4, 97, 114. See also Adel Productions Delli Ponti, Sandro 71 n.7 Delon, Alain accusation of French media and critics’ 164–5 acquisition of artifacts from De Gaulle era 91 acting talent of 7, 9, 11, 25, 39, 48, 55, 92, 120, 122, 163 appearance in eighty-four films to date 97 art collections, interest in 25, 115 award nominations for 35 awards won by 9, 122 beauty of 1–10, 13, 36, 43–57, 44f, 59–73, 92, 129, 141–58 birth of 15 boxing matches, interest in 25, 115 box-office takings 50 castigation of same-sex marriage laws 2, 28 childhood of 15–16, 45–6, 126 as clothes designer 115, 147 cosmetics 115, 141–3, 150, 157 criticism of 26, 39, 50 and Dalida duets 11, 125–6 dubbing of 59–73, 108 n.7 and English language 2, 45, 105 financial worth 4, 57

190

Index

as French national ambassador 143, 157 Frenchness and French masculinity 13–29, 60, 79, 91–2, 94–6, 100–1, 105, 149 and French politics 2, 91, 112 horse racing, interest in 25, 115 industrial agents of 97–8 influences on 120 interviews with 25, 45–6, 120, 159–64, 173 and Jean-Paul Belmondo, comparison with 95, 104, 109 n.10, 111, 114, 116, 159–60 locally known as “French James Dean” 8, 45, 47 and Markovic affair 84, 115, 123 n.8 media profile of 43–57 in military service 2, 46 motivations 123 n.16 musical interests 126 and New Wave films 47–9, 56, 93, 106 and Omar Sharif, comparison with 105, 109 n.11 parents’ divorce and 2 parody of 25–7, 112, 174 n.2 patriarchal values of 28 private life of 52–3 refusal of films 49, 57, 125 religious convictions of 46 return to France 2, 75, 77, 97, 105, 159 romantic relationships of 16, 28 n.3, 44–5, 50, 52–3, 55, 152 schooling of 2, 15, 46 screen test in Rome 2, 45 sexuality of 28, 78, 118 singing lessons by 135 socio-political activities and statements 91, 95–6 star rankings 95, 108 n.5 ventures outside of acting 11, 25, 115–16 youth of 15–16, 43–57 Delon, Anoushka (daughter) 10, 159 Delon branded merchandise 143, 147, 157 Delon-Gabon duo 75–90 Delon sunglasses 40, 143, 170 Demick, Irina 86 Dench, Judi 162

Deneuve, Catherine 4, 140 n.7 De Niro, Robert 162, 165 Denis, Gilles 155 Depardieu, Gérard 90, 122, 162 Deray, Jacques 1, 13, 28–9 n.4, 32, 37–8, 75, 95, 104–5, 112–15, 120, 126, 141, 151, 154–5, 158 n.4, 167 de Roubaix, François 135 Des gens sans importance/People of No Importance (Henri Verneuil, 1956) 78–9 deus ex machina 99 Deux hommes dans la ville/Two Men in Town (José Giovanni, 1973) 76, 115 Delon-Gabin duo 89–90 Le Deuxième Sexe/The Second Sex (Simone de Beauvoir, 1949) 13, 21–2 Devarrieux, Claire 114 “Devine qui est derrière la porte,” ORTF 132 Devotion, Sheila B. 126 Dewaere, Patrick 122 Le Diable au corps/Devil in the Flesh (Claude Autant-Lara, 1947) 52 dialogue writing. See screenwriting Dibben, Nicola 138 Dicale, Bertrand 127, 130 Dien Bien Phu, battle of (1954) 158 n.1 digital media 133, 149 digital music file 133 Dior (fashion house) 11–12, 33, 39, 157 celebrity endorsement 150 Delon as brand ambassador 149–50 Dior Homme ready-to-wear line 148–9 Eau Sauvage 149–51 Eau sauvage advertising film 151–3, 156–7 Hedi Slimane 148, 150–1 Monsieur Dior 148 “New Look” for women 148 original objectives 148 perfumes 141, 148–50, 158 n.2 projection of Delon 151–5 sixties heritage 153–5 vintage Mad Men 150–1, 156 direction 38–9, 66, 91, 106, 111–23, 173 discography, Delon 125–40 distribution 9, 17, 43, 79, 93, 99, 108 n.6, 115, 143, 157

Index Doane, Mary Ann 63–4, 66, 69, 71 Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965) 105 documentaries 49, 80, 174 n.1 Doillon, Lou 127 Douin, Jean-Luc 123 n.15 Downing, Lisa 167 Drake, Alicia 154 drama 95–6, 118, 147, 171 comedy 9 costume 147, 158 n.1 crime 98, 141, 152 realist 106 sexual 87 surreal 122 war 107, 158 n.1 dubbing accent and intonation 69 artists 65 authenticity of expression 70 “cultural leveling” or blandness of voices 65, 73 n.19 cultural modes of emotional expression 70 Delon’s voice 59–73 in Italian cinema 63–5 lack of discussion in star studies 61 and post-production process 64 and post-synchronization 61, 64 professionalization of 65 as “site of incoherence” 63 in Spanish cinema 64 and subtitling 63, 65, 72 n.17 synchronization, voice-body 63–5 synchronized sound 64 television programs 72 n.17 as violation 64, 72 n.16 voice acting and 61 Dubet, Frantois 81 duets 125–38, 140 n.2, 140 n.8 Duncan, Derek 6, 62 Durant, Philippe 112–14, 122 n.3, 123 n.4, 123 n.7, 123 n.16 Dureau, Christine 2, 4–5, 7, 147 Du Rififi chez les hommes/Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955) 84 Dutronc, Jacques 127 DVD 12 n.1, 18, 70, 73 n.21 Dyer, Richard 3, 17, 28 n.2, 31, 129, 141

191

Eau sauvage perfume (Dior) 33, 141, 149–53, 156–7 Les Echos 155 L’eclisse/The Eclipse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) 25, 59, 75, 93, 96, 104, 106 costume/costume design 146 Edith Piaf tribute 126 ego 33 ego libido 15 Egypt 105 Eiffel tower 123 n.12 elite 56 Elleström, Lars 128 emotion 24, 26, 36, 67–70, 101–2, 130, 134, 157, 159 emploi 10, 31–42 contexts of 42 n.1 creating 35–7 definition 32–3 French expression 42 n.1 gradual adjustments of 40–1 managing 37–9 performance, audiences and spectators 31–41, 42 n.1 persona and 33–5 typecasting 42 n.1 En cas de malheur/Love is my Profession (Claude-Autant Lara, 1958) 48 Enforcer, The (Raoul Walsh, 1951) 81 English mod style 148 Enrico, Robert 106, 126 ensembles 103, 163 Ermenegildo Zegna (fashion house) 170 L’Esprit du temps (Edgar Morin, 1962) 3–4 Il était une fois un flic (Georges Lautner, 1971) 115 L’Éternel retour/Love Eternal (Jean Delannoy, 1943) 52 L’Étranger/The Stranger (novel; Albert Camus, 1942) 39 L’Être et le néant (Jean-Paul Sartre, 1943) 16 Eureka! Masters of Cinema DVDs 73 n.21 Europe 143 Delon’s fandom in 106, 114, 143, 146, 157 filmmakers in 106 investment from 97

192

Index

European art cinema 63, 156 European cinema 1, 6, 91–3, 95, 98–9, 101, 106, 157. See also specific films coproduction 59–73, 92–3, 97 European menswear 147 existentialism 10, 16, 22, 25, 28, 39, 78, 87, 99, 146 exoticism 103, 172 Fabio Montale (TV series, 2002) 10, 169–73, 169f source novel for 169 facial expressions 66, 104, 117 Faibles femmes/Three Murderesses (Boisrond, 1959) 2, 49–50 Faithfull, Marianne 142 fascism 6, 39 fashion 8, 11, 33, 44, 48–9, 77, 80, 86, 93, 125, 130, 141–58, 170 father figures 45, 53, 77, 81, 85 Les Félins/Joy House (René Clément, 1964). 98–9, 108 n.6 female narcissism 16–17 Fernandel 77, 127 Ferrari, Chiara 65 Ferré, Léo 126 Ferreol, Andrea 123 n.11 fetishism/fetishization 117, 143–4, 144f, 147, 154 Feuillère, Edwige 34, 45–6, 48–9, 57 n.1 fiction 31, 41, 49, 56, 83, 89, 174 n.1 Figaro Magazine 2, 173–4 film analysis 31–2 film and fashion 143, 147 film culture 90–3, 106–7 film noir 36–7, 78–80, 83–5, 87, 89–90, 120, 143, 158 n.1 filmography, Delon Les Acteurs/The Actors (2000) 163–4 Adieu, l’ami/Farewell, Friend/Honor Among Thieves (1968) 102 Assassination of Trotsky, The (1972) 95, 147 Astérix aux jeux olympiques/Asterix at the Olympic Games (2008) 10, 167–9, 168f Attention les enfants regardent/Attention, the Kids are Watching (1978) 126

Les Aventuriers/The Last Adventure (1967) 106, 126, 134–5 Le Battant (1983) 40, 42 n.2, 112 Borsalino (1970) 1, 37, 75, 84, 95–6, 105, 114, 120, 123 n.14, 126, 167 La caduta degli dei/The Damned (1969) 62 Les Cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma/One Hundred and One Nights (1995) 106 Le Cercle rouge/The Red Circle (1970) 1, 26, 37, 40, 84, 114, 126, 143 Che gioia vivere/The Joy of Living (1961) 60 Le Chemin des écoliers/Way of Youth (1959) 2, 49, 53 Le Choc/The Shock (1982) 8–9, 144 Christine (1958) 48–9 Le Clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (1969) 1, 36 Concorde: Airport ’79, The (1979) 98, 103, 103f, 107 Dancing Machine (1990) 41 Deux hommes dans la ville/Two Men in Town (1973) 76, 89–90, 115 L’eclisse/The Eclipse (1962) 25, 59, 75, 93, 96, 104, 106, 146 Il était une fois un flic (1971) 115 Faibles femmes/Three Murderesses (1959) 2, 49–50 Les Félins/Joy House (1964) 98–9, 108 n.6 Flic Story (1976) 113, 115 Le Gang (1976) 113–16, 120, 123 n.11 Il gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) 1, 6, 7f, 25, 35–6, 59, 65, 71 n.7, 72 n.15, 73 n.20, 93, 106, 146–7, 168 Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) 97, 142 Le Gitan (1975) 115, 123 n.7 Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece (1974) 62 Histoires extraordinaires/Spirits of The Dead (1968) 34 L’Homme pressé/The Hurried Man (1976) 113, 115–16 L’Insoumis/The Unvanquished (1964) 4, 38, 92, 97, 99, 158 n.1 Jeff (1968) 114 Le Jour et la Nuit/Day and Night (1996) 163

Index Lost Command (1966) 98, 100, 103–4, 107, 108 n.4, 158 n.1 Ludwig (1972) 62 Mélodie en sous-sol/Any Number Can Win (1963) 1, 36, 75–85, 88–90, 108 n.6, 113, 144–5, 174 n.4 Mort d’un pourri/Death of a Corrupt Man (1977) 113, 115–16, 123 n.11 Morte a Venezia/Death in Venice (1971) 35 Mr. Klein (1976) 5–7, 9, 25, 38–9, 56, 96, 115, 123 n.7, 144, 164 On ne reveille pas un flic qui dort/Let Sleeping Cops Lie (1988) 122 Ne réveillez pas un flic qui dort (1988) 37, 123 n.5 Notre histoire/Our Story (1984) 6, 9, 40, 122, 161 Nouvelle Vague/New Wave (1990) 5, 9, 93, 106, 161 Once a Thief (1965) 90, 98–9, 103 Parole de Flic/Cop’s Honor (1985) 29 n.7, 37, 106, 122, 126, 136 Le Passage/The Passage (1985) 122 La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (1969) 13, 17–22, 20f, 24, 27, 28 nn.3–4, 32–3, 38–9, 103–4, 141, 144, 151–6, 155f, 172 Plein soleil/Purple Noon (1960) 1–2, 4–5, 5f, 8, 9f, 13, 14f, 17–25, 19f, 27, 38, 53–6, 75, 93–6, 98, 101, 104–5, 118, 126, 141, 142f, 144–6, 146f, 168, 172 Pour la peau d’un flic/For a Cop’s Hide (1981) 112–13, 116–21, 123 n.12 La prima notte di quiete/Indian Summer (1972) 6, 9, 147 Quand la femme s’en mêle/Send a Woman When the Devil Fails (1957) 2, 8, 34, 37, 44f, 45–7, 52, 75, 77 Quelle joie de vivre/The Joy Of Living (1961) 8 Le Retour de Casanova/The Return of Casanova (1992) 9–10, 29 n.8, 34, 41, 165–7, 165f, 172 Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (1960) 1, 4, 6, 25, 35–6, 42 n.4, 53–5, 59–73, 66f, 68f, 75, 93–4, 96, 99, 104–6, 144–6, 168

193

Le Samouraï/The Samurai (1967) 1, 26, 36–8, 40, 42 n.4, 75, 84–5, 92, 98, 105, 114, 116–17, 123 n.13, 126, 143, 144f, 147 Scorpio (1973) 96, 98, 101–4, 102f, 107 Les Seins de glace/Someone is Bleeding (1974) 115 Sois belle et tais-toi/Be Beautiful but Shut Up (1958) 49 Soleil rouge/Red Sun (1971) 93, 96, 100, 104, 108 n.7 Teheran 43: Nid d’espions/Assassination Attempt (1981) 97 Texas Across the River (1966) 95–6, 98, 100–1, 103, 107 Le Toubib/The Medic (1979) 103 Traitement de choc/Shock Treatment (1973) 29 n.7, 102, 144 La Tulipe noire/The Black Tulip (1964) 32, 106 Un amour de Swann/Swann in Love (1984) 40–1, 161 Une chance sur deux (1998) 9–10, 167 Un flic/Dirty Money (1972) 1, 114, 126, 143 Yellow Rolls Royce, The (1964) 60, 98–9, 105–6 Zorro (1975) 93, 95–6, 100, 106, 108 n.7, 157 Films and Filming (British magazine) 54–5 film stars 10, 17, 44, 106, 141–2, 148, 150, 157 definitions of 3–4, 111 Film Studies 128 film style 118 film theory 61 flashback 171–3 Flic Story (José Giovanni, 1976) 113, 115 FLN (National Front of Liberation) 38, 91 Florence Biennale, 1998 147 Focas, Spiros 63 Fonda, Jane 99 Fontana, Céline 127 Foot, John 71 n.4 Forbes, Jill 114, 150 Ford, Tom 151 foreign production 93 foreign stars 64–5 Forestier, Frédéric 10, 33, 167

194

Index

Forgacs, David 12 n.1 Forth, Christopher E 21, 26 Fourth Republic 43 FR2 170 frame 8, 19, 42 n.2, 96, 119, 133, 141, 150, 152–3, 156, 161, 167–8 Frame Analysis (book; Erving Goffman, 1974) 31 France anti-Establishment stance 137 anti-pop bias 137 civil unrest, 1968 163 contribution to global film art 106 Évin law 149 les trente glorieuses, end of 112, 122, 156 Nazi occupation of 43 and New Wave films 47–9 post-war bourgeoisie 48–9, 137 postwar economic modernization 3, 10–11, 43–4, 47–8, 50, 52, 75–90, 119, 121, 145, 148 transition period 43 Franco-American coproduction 103, 123 n.13 François, Claude 132 Frank Riva (TV series, 2003–2004) 10, 170, 172–3 Toujours (theme song) 159 Freeman, Morgan 162 French Cinema 1–174 French Connection, The (William Friedkin, 1971) 107 French culture 91, 95–6 French/Italian co-productions 10, 59–73, 95, 99–100, 102, 106, 108 n.6, 123 n.10, 145–6 French/Italian/Spanish coproduction 106, 108 n.7 French luxury brands 141–58 French music 137 French producers 92–3, 97–8, 103, 106, 108 n.6 French Riviera 80 French war in Algeria 38 Freud, Sigmund 14–15 Friedkin, William 107 Frith, Simon 128–9, 136, 138 Frodon, Jean-Michel 114

gabardine 154 Gabin, Jean 1, 11, 36, 45, 48, 95, 113, 163–4, 173, 174 n.4 and Delon duo 75–90 status as godfather of French cinema 75, 89 Gaffney, John 137 Galabru, Michel 164 Gallagher, Mark 11, 60–1, 71 n.3, 91 Le Gang (Jacques Deray, 1976) 113–16, 120, 123 n.11 source novel for 115 gangster/flic persona 25–7, 36–7, 40, 44, 75–8, 80–2, 90, 103, 112–15, 120, 123 n.8, 126, 132, 144f Garfield, John 8 Gaspard-Huit, Pierre 49, 152 Il gattopardo/The Leopard (film; Luchino Visconti, 1963) 1, 6, 7f, 25, 35–6, 59, 65, 71 n.7, 72 n.15, 73 n.20, 93, 106, 146–7, 168 afterlife 147 costume/costume design 146–7 DVD 12 n.1 mirror motif 168 Palme d’or award at Cannes 147 source novel for 147 Il gattopardo/The Leopard (novel; Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, 1958) 147 gender 11, 17, 59 differences 2, 173 identity 21, 90, 129–30, 133 practice 29 n.5 relations 83 roles 83 stratification 22 values 86 Genghis Khan (Henry Levin, 1965) 105 genre 6–7, 9, 32, 37–8, 75, 77, 79, 83–4, 90, 96–7, 99–100, 102, 106–8, 112, 114, 116, 119–22, 127, 129, 136, 138, 167, 169 Germany 53, 98, 106 gestures 8, 26, 60, 67–8, 72 n.16, 95, 101, 128, 143, 150, 152–3, 160 Le Gigolo (Jacques Deray, 1960) 49 Che gioia vivere/The Joy of Living (Clément, 1961) 60

Index Giovanni, José 76, 89, 113, 115, 120, 123 n.9 Girardot, Annie 4, 36, 63, 69, 144 Girl on a Motorcycle (Jack Cardiff, 1968) 97, 142 Girotti, Massimo 6, 62 Le Gitan/The Gypsy (José Giovanni, 1975) 115, 123 n.7 Givenchy (fashion house) 150 Glen, John 136 global cinema 93 global consumer culture 104 Godard, Jean-Luc 5, 81, 93, 106 Godfather trilogy (Francis Ford Coppola) 88 Goffman, Erving 31, 42 n.1 Golden Bear Award 164 “Les Gondoles à Venise” (song; Sheila and Ringo, 1973) 130 Gorce, Jean-Paul 158 n.1 Gordon, Michael 95 Gorrara, Claire 83 graphic designs 151 Graves, Robert 14 Great Sioux Uprising, The (Lloyd Bacon, 1953) 81 Greece 81 Greek myths 14 stage and screen 63 Grémillion, Jean 90 Grenier, Cynthia 63 Grignaffini, Giovanna 71 n.1 Gruau, René 149–50 Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, 1974) 62 Guérif, François 122 n.2 Gueule d’amour/Lady Killer (Jean Grémillion, 1937) 90 Les Guignols de l’info (TV show) 27, 33 Guillaume, Valerie 155 Gundle, Stephen 59, 71 n.1 H (advertising agency) 34 Hakim brothers 54 Hallyday, Johnny 130, 150 Haloche, Laurence 2, 173–4 Hamilton, Deborah E 83–4 Hamm, Jon 150–1 Haneke, Michael 173

195

Hanin, Roger 35 Hannerz, Ulf 94 новым годом, мамы!/Happy New Year, Moms! (Sarik Andreasyan, Artyom Aksyonenko and Anton Bormatov, 2012) 10 Hardy, Françoise 126, 134, 136 Hartnett, Josh 150 haute couture 142, 154 Hayes, Graeme 3, 32, 55, 60, 62, 71 n.2, 100, 102, 108 n.8, 109 n.9, 143 Hayward, Susan 95, 173 Hayworth, Rita 173 Heflin, Van 99 heist movie 37, 75, 79, 82–6, 88–9 Hemingway-style film 163 Herman, Jean 102, 108 n.7, 114 Hermès (fashion house) 155, 157 hero 6, 8, 19, 34, 37, 40, 44, 48–9, 53, 77–8, 85–7, 89–90, 100, 103, 106, 109 n.10, 112, 114, 116, 118–19, 122, 144, 164 high angle shot 81, 88, 131 Highsmith, Patricia 18, 22, 95 Hipkins, Danielle 62, 67 Histoires extraordinaires/Spirits of The Dead (Louis Malle, 1968) 34 Hitchcock, Alfred 45 Hofler, Robert 45 Hollywood cinema. See also specific films action movies 120 actor-singers 127 celebrities 127, 149–50 Delon in 2–3, 17, 44–5, 78, 90–2, 98–104, 106–7, 114 producers 97 sound practices of 64 top-grossing films 109 n.12 Holmes, Diana 137 homme de cinéma 112, 116, 121 Un homme et son chien/A Man and His Dog (Francis Huster, 2008) 159, 174 n.1 Un homme et une femme/A Man and A Woman (Claude Lelouch, 1966) 135 “Un homme et une femme” (song; Pierre Barouh, 1966) 135 homme fatal 13, 32, 60–1, 77, 84, 87 homme idéal (ideal/perfect man) 13

196

Index

homme-objet (male object) 13, 20–2 L’Homme pressé/The Hurried Man (Edouard Molinaro, 1976) 113, 115–16 Hong Kong, Delon’s fandom in 40, 143 Horstig-Primuz, Olga 46, 49, 54, 57 n.1 Hunnicutt, Gayle 101 Huppert, Isabelle 127 Huret, Marcel 55 Huster, Francis 159, 174 n.1 iconicity. See image and persona, Delon ideal ego 15 “I don’t know” (song; Delon, 1985) 126, 136–7, 139 image and persona, Delon action performances 119 aging, impact of 39–41, 159–74 as an aging star 159–74 brand and persona, evolution of 113–16 caricature of 9, 40 celebrity admiration for 4 charisma 60–1, 96, 107 comic persona 112, 166–9 cosmopolitan persona 11, 60, 71 n.3, 92–8, 104 and costume, use of 117, 123 n.13, 132, 141–58 crime persona 11, 75–90 critical analyses of 111 critical attention to 4–5, 50, 106–7, 147 down-to-earth image 32 dual identity 56, 90, 96, 111–12, 118–19 early stages 1–158 and emploi 31–41 erotic appeal 35–6, 39, 61–2, 92, 100–1, 144–5 fictionalization of, in Alain Delon est une star au Japon/Alain Delon is a Star in Japan 10 gangster/flic persona 25–7, 36–7, 40, 44, 75–8, 80–2, 90, 103, 112–15, 120, 123 n.8, 126, 132, 144f gigolo persona 13, 18–27, 44, 49, 118 hallowed image 32 historical context 43 “homo-narcissism” 5, 71 n.6, 153 literary accounts of 3

male sex object/object of desire 10, 21–2, 32, 49, 60–2, 92, 165 middle and later stages 9, 11, 25–7, 33–5, 39–41, 106, 159–74 mockery/ridicule of 12, 33–4, 42 n.3, 65, 85, 128, 130, 136–8 narcissistic personality 8–9, 11, 13–29, 45–6, 120 national, ethnic and multiple industrial identities 91–109 as natural gifts 5, 8, 36 performance style and persona 31–41 screen image, evolution of 113–16 self-derision facets 25–6, 118, 120, 128 self-referential 5, 9, 27, 33, 87, 161, 168, 174 n.2 and third person mode of selfreferencing/addressing 9, 27, 33, 168, 174 n.2 three facets of 112 tough guy persona 6, 10, 32, 36, 39–40, 75–90, 102–3, 111, 114–15, 117, 120, 129 virility and seductive masculinity 13–29, 41, 48, 52, 77, 82–3, 86, 118, 128–30, 134, 136, 138, 144–5, 149–50, 156 improvisation 49 individualism 21, 39 Indochina War 2 L’Insoumis/The Unvanquished (Alain Cavalier, 1964) 4, 38, 92, 97, 99, 158 n.1 instrument-playing skills 129–30 intellectualism 137 “interprètes,” French music artists 127 “In the Eyes of Alain Delon” website 143 Isherwood, Christopher 151 Italian cinema 25, 59, 63, 71 n.1, 72 n.16, 97, 103, 114, 147. See also specific films Italian menswear 146–8 Italy 6, 18–19, 56, 59, 61, 64–5, 71 n.4, 94, 98, 100, 105–6, 146–7 “J’ai un problème” (song; Johnny Hallyday and Sylvie Vartan, 1973) 130 Jaoui, Agnès 127 Japan, Delon’s fandom in 10, 50, 79, 91, 114, 143

Index Jarman-Ivens, Freya 129 jazz music 81, 126–7, 153 Jeff (Jean Herman, 1968) 114 Jessua, Alain 29 n.7, 102, 144 “Je t’aime, tu sais” (song, Delon, 1990) 126–7, 139 Jeunesse cinéma (French magazine), Delon in cover 50 interview 46 readers' request for photographs 53 Jones, Grace 136 Le Jour et la Nuit/Day and Night (BernardHenri Levy, 1996) 163 Jours de France (French magazine) 45 Le Jour se lève/Daybreak (Marcel Carné, 1939) 90 Jousse, Thierry 2, 8, 13, 112, 117, 143, 160, 162–4, 173 Jullier, Laurent 10, 20–1, 27, 31, 42 n.5 Jürgens, Curd 98 Kaas, Patricia 126, 140 n.2 Kaminsky, Stuart M 79 Karaminas, Vicki 153 Karina, Anna 48 Kearns, Billy 18 Kennedy, George 103, 103f Kiberlain, Sandrine 127 Kramer, Peter 109 n.12 Krutnik, Franck 87, 89 Krys (fashion house) 12, 27 campaign 33–5, 174 “Laetitia” (song; Delon, 1967) 126, 134–7, 139 theme 134–6 Lafarge, Christophe 34 Lafont, Bernadette 48 Laforêt, Marie 18, 38 Lancaster, Burt 65, 71 n.7, 101–3, 164 Langlois, Henry 8, 12 n.2 Langmann, Thomas 10, 33, 159, 167 language 3, 11, 32, 49, 59–73, 95, 98–100, 104–5, 108 n.7, 128, 149, 154, 158 n.3 Lanvin, Gérard 122 Lapeyronnie, Didier 81 Larroque, Philippe 42 n.3

197

Lasch, Christopher 52 Last Valley, The (James Clavell, 1971) 105 Lautner, Georges 113, 115, 120, 123 n.10 Lavoine, Marc 127 Law, Jude 149 Léaud, Jean-Pierre 48–9 Le Breton, Auguste 84, 87 Leconte, Patrice 9–10, 33, 167 Leda Productions 123 n.5, 127 leftism 137 Legrand, Michel 153 Lelouch, Claude 135 Léotard, Philippe 127 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 91, 108 n.1 Leroy, Serge 126 Les Lettres françaises (French newspaper) 46 Leveratto, Jean-Marc 10, 20–1, 27, 31, 33, 42 n.5 Levin, Henry 105 Lévin, Sam 50 Levy, Bernard-Henri 163 Liebelei (Max Ophüls, 1933) remake, Christine, 1958 48–9, 158 n.1 lighting 46, 49 Lindon, Vincent 9 lip-synching 132 Lira Films 114 Lister, Jenny 148 literary fiction 78, 83 location 10, 19, 49, 60, 70, 80, 91, 97–100, 104–5, 108 Lollobrigida, Gina 59, 71 n.1 “lone wolf ” performances 115, 117 longevity, career 12, 160, 167 Looseley, David 137, 140 n.1 Loren, Sophia 59, 71 n.1 Losey, Joseph 5–7, 25, 38–9, 56, 95, 106, 115, 144, 147, 164 Lost Command (Mark Robson, 1966) 98, 100, 103–4, 107, 108 n.4, 158 n.1 “Love me baby” (song; Sheila B. Devotion) 126 Luchini, Fabrice 165 Ludwig (Luchino Visconti, 1972) 62 Lunghini, Elsa 41, 166 Luyken, Georg-Michael 72 n.17 LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) 141, 157

198

Index

lyrics 127, 129–30, 134–7, 159 lyrics-writing 129 Macé, Eric 4 macho image 2, 6, 9, 24, 82, 111, 136–7, 139 MacKinnon, Kenneth 62 MacLaine, Shirley 99 Mad Men (TV series; Matthew Weiner, 2007–2015) 150–1, 156 instrumental theme 151 vintage nostalgia, 1960s 151 Madonna 12, 143 Magnan, Henri 46 Magne, Michel 81 Magny, Joël 23, 29 n.6, 143 Magrini, Gitt 146 Maillot, Pierre 104, 109 nn.9–10 mainstream chart music 138 mainstream cinema 13, 60–1, 75, 77, 79, 112–15, 117, 119–21, 136 Malle, Louis 34, 106 Manchette, Jean-Patrick 113 Manzor, René 122 Marais, Jean 8, 47–8 Marcantoni, François 123 n.8 Marchal, Olivier 159 marginalization 59, 78, 129–30, 173 market/marketing 84, 91, 97, 115, 120, 141, 143, 148–50, 157, 158 n.2 Markovic, Stefan 123 n.8 Markovic affair 84, 115, 123 n.8 Marseille-set thrillers 1, 77, 95, 169–70, 172 Marseille Trilogy (Jean-Claude Izzo) 169 Martin, Dean 101, 103 Marxism 16 masculinity 13–29 “ambiguous” 62 autistic 78 Connell’s definition 29 n.5 cosmopolitan 60, 92, 94 crisis of 79, 86, 88–90 European 6, 60, 96 “feminized” 82 French 59, 76, 82, 90–1, 104, 128–9, 167 hegemonic 26, 29 n.5 ideals of 6, 21, 151 macho 111 melancholic 76, 85, 87, 118

modern 1–2, 4, 6, 144, 167 “new” models of 21, 83 and seduction 129, 157 subject to “failed performance” 26 vintage 148–51 mass culture 4, 43 mass-market cosmetics 141, 157 Mastroianni, Marcello 71 n.3, 98, 146 Mauss, Marcel 41 McCracken, Allison 130 McDowell, Colin 141 McRobbie, Angela 129, 138 MDNA (album; Madonna, 2012) 143 media 10, 33–5, 43–57, 121, 123 n.14, 125, 128, 133, 135, 160, 163–4 Mediterranean Sea 19, 94, 151, 171 medium long shot 19 melancholy 22, 69, 76, 84–5, 87, 118, 135, 147, 171 Mélodie en sous-sol/Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil, 1963) 1, 36, 75–85, 88–90, 144–5 box-office success 76 climax 82 critical analysis of 78–84 Delon-Gabin duo 78–84, 113, 174 n.4 distribution rights 79 modernity and generational conflict in postwar France 78–84 quasi-documentary approach 80 source novel for 79 tone 79 melodrama 60–1, 66–8, 70 Melville, Jean-Pierre 1, 7, 26, 36, 38, 75, 78–9, 84–5, 92–3, 105, 113–14, 116–17, 119–20, 126, 143 memory 56, 80–1, 160, 164, 170 Merle, Sandrine 155 Metamorphoses (Ovid, 8AD) 14, 29 n.4 metaphor 38, 82, 85 method acting 8, 164 MGM 79, 90, 97–9 microphone 127, 135, 138 Middleton, Richard 129 Milan 4, 53, 61, 65, 68–9 Miller, Claude 120 Miller, D. A. 62–3, 66, 71 n.10, 120, 145 Millo, Achille 65

Index mini-dresses 154–5 mini-skirts 86, 154 Mirren, Helen 162 mirrors/doubling 5–6, 18, 23, 25, 35, 38, 76, 102, 119, 140, 145, 146f, 153, 155, 168 mise-en-abyme 40 mise-en-scène 61, 82, 115, 119–20, 142–3 misogyny 94, 102, 129 mixed-gender duets 130 modern culture 52 modernity/modernism/modernization 3, 10–11, 43–4, 47–8, 50, 52, 75–90, 119, 121, 145, 148 “Modern Style” (song, Delon-Hardy, 2006) 126, 134, 136, 139 themes 134 modes of narration 61, 64, 68, 96–7 Molinaro, Edouard 113 Mondial Te-Fi 114 Mondy, Pierre 116, 120 Monroe, Marilyn 173 Montand, Yves 95, 127, 137, 164 Moore, Roger 136 Moreau, Jeanne 49, 127 Morgan, Michèle 48, 57 n.1 Morin, Edgar 3–4, 6, 35, 52, 67, 162 Morrey, Douglas 9 Morricone, Ennio 84 Morrissey 12 Mort d'un pourri/Death of a Corrupt Man (Georges Lautner, 1977) 113, 115–16, 123 n.11 Morte a Venezia/Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971) 35 Mortelle randonnée/Deadly Circuit (Claude Miller, 1983) 120 Most Promising Newcomer (Golden Globe award) 35 motifs 66, 112, 117–18, 121, 168 motion picture 64 Mounette. See Boulogne, Édith moving image 127, 149–50 Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976) 5–7, 9, 25, 38–9, 56, 96, 115, 123 n.7, 144, 164 music “cheesy” 136 and cinema 127, 133

199

digital file 133 fashion and 11 French criticism 137 jazz 81, 126–7, 153 popular 3, 125–40 profession 127 rock 138, 148 themes 40, 151, 159 videos 132–3, 140 n.8 Muti, Ornella 123 n.11 Muzii, Enzo 72 n.13 Mysterious Island, The (Juan Antonio Bardem and Henri Colni, 1973) 105 Naples 8, 9f, 105 narcissism 8–9, 13–29 aging as narcissistic trauma 160–1, 173 and autonomous subjectivity 22–3 Beauvoir’s idea of 13, 16–17, 21–2 constraints of 23 Freud’s account of 14–15 Greek myths about 14 as personality/character disorder 14 phallic narcissist 15–16 Sartrean existentialism 16 narrative 5, 8, 13, 18, 20, 22–4, 38–9, 65–6, 71, 76–7, 79, 81, 83, 85–6, 89–90, 92–3, 101–2, 104, 108, 109 n.12, 117–22, 128, 130–1, 133, 135–7, 144, 147, 152–4, 156, 166–7, 170–2 national cinema 11, 49, 59–73, 90–3, 95–7, 100, 104, 107–8, 109 n.10, 137, 143, 157 Naumov, Vladimir 97 Neale, Steve 68, 71 n.8 Nelmes, Jill 112, 121 Nelson, Phyllis 126, 136–7 Nelson, Ralph 90, 98 neologism 133 Ne réveillez pas un flic qui dort (José Pinheiro, 1988) 37, 123 n.5 Neri, George 171 new cinema 81, 122 newspapers 71 n.7 New Wave 47–9, 56, 78, 93, 106 Nice airport 152, 158 n.5 Niermans, Edouard 9–10, 29 n.8, 34 noir novels 79, 84, 90, 113, 116, 123 n.9

200 Noli, Jean 117, 123 n.6 Norklun, Matt 150 Nornes, Abé Mark 72 n.16 Notre histoire/Our Story (Bertrand Blier, 1984) 6, 9, 40, 122, 161 Nouvelle Vague/New Wave (Jean-Luc Godard, 1990) 9, 93, 106, 161 Delon’s split image in 5 Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey 62–3, 71 n.9, 72 n.19 OAS 38 “oedipal fathers” 85, 167 Olympia concert hall 132 Once a Thief (Ralph Nelson, 1965) 90, 98–9, 103 online photographic homage 143 On ne reveille pas un flic qui dort/Let Sleeping Cops Lie (José Pinheiro, 1988) 122 Op art, 1960s 155 Ophüls, Max 48–9, 158 n.1 O’Rawe, Catherine 10–11, 59, 71 n.1 L’Oréal 162 ORTF 132 Osborne, Richard 137–8 O’Shaughnessy, Martin 21 Ossessione/Obsession (Luchino Visconti, 1943) 6, 62 otherness 77, 79, 87, 166 Ovid 14, 29 n.4 Palance, Jack 99 Palmer, Alexandra 148 pan-European stardom 60, 71 n.3, 98, 102 Paradis, Vanessa 167 Parillaud, Anne 41, 117–20 Paris 2, 8, 10, 44, 46, 69, 77, 79–80, 93, 101, 117, 126–7, 130, 148–9, 158 n.4, 172 Paris Match (French magazine) 53 Paris-Press (French magazine) 55 Park, Jennifer 154 Parker, Tony 167 parody of Delon 25–7, 112 Parole de Flic/Cop’s Honor (José Pinheiro, 1985) 29 n.7, 37, 106, 122, 126, 136

Index “Paroles … Paroles …” (song, DelonDalida, 1973) 125–6, 130–4, 131f, 132f, 134, 136, 139 Le Passage/The Passage (René Manzor, 1985) 122 Passeur, Steve 50 patriarchy 16–17, 21–2, 28, 29 n.5, 76–7, 79–81, 84–5, 87–9 Paule-Édith (step-sister) 15 Paxinou, Katina 63 Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier, 1937) 81, 90 perception 7, 21, 31–2, 52, 133–4, 156 Périer, François 37, 116–17 Périer, Jean-Marie 33, 141, 149 “person-role formula” 31 Petit, Pascale 51 Le Petit bleu de la côte ouest (novel; JeanPatrick Manchette, 1976) 113 Pevney, Joseph 81 phallic narcissist 15–16 Phèdre (Sarah Bernhardt, 1903) 127 Philippe, Gérard 48 phonograph cylinder 127 photographs/photography 33, 46–7, 49–50, 53–4, 72 n.10, 98–9, 131–2, 134, 137, 141, 143, 145, 149–50, 157, 172 174 Piaf, Edith 47, 47f Piccoli, Michel 164 Piccolo (German magazine) 52 Pierre, Roger 132 Pierre Cardin label 157 Pillard, Thomas 78–82 Pinheiro, José 29 n.7, 37, 106, 122, 126 La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (Jacques Deray, 1969) 13, 27, 38–9, 103–4, 141, 144, 172 costume/costume design 151–6, 155f Dior’s commercial restaging of 151–5 Jean-Paul, Delon’s role and gigolo persona 18–25, 20f, 32, 155f plot 18–19 success of 39 Plein soleil/Purple Noon (René Clément, 1960) 4, 8, 9f, 13, 142f cosmopolitanism, Delon’s 94 mirror motif 146f, 168 plot 18 reviews 55

Index source novel for 18, 95, 105 Tom Ripley, Delon’s role and gigolo persona 1–2, 5–6, 5f, 13, 14f, 18–25, 19f, 38–9, 53–4, 56, 96, 105, 126, 141, 144–5, 146f, 149, 151 Plougastel, Yann 127, 137 poetics 36, 127 Poiré, Alain 123 n.10 policier/polar genre (crime thriller) 1, 77, 79, 83–4, 88, 90, 95, 112, 114–15, 119–22, 122 n.2, 123 n.9 political economy 72 n.15 polyglot production 63, 95–6 Pompidou, Georges 123 n.8 pop ballad 129 pop stars/icons 11–12, 143, 150, 167 popular cinema 11, 48, 56, 96, 119, 121, 127, 150, 156, 166–7 popular culture 3–4, 12, 56, 79, 92, 142 popular music 3, 125–40 Popular Music Studies 128 pornography 152 Positif 7–8, 112 postwar period 2–4, 8, 38, 59, 75–84, 89, 137, 141, 145, 148, 156–7 Poujade, Pierre 43 Pour la peau d’un flic/For a Cop’s Hide (Delon, 1981) 112, 116–21, 123 n.12 commercial success of 113 source novel for 113 Pour tous (French magazine) 43 power patriarchal 22, 88 redistribution of 17, 22 star 13–15, 45, 56, 78, 86–8, 111, 115, 133, 138, 161–2, 167 Prédal, René 111 Le Président/The President (Henri Verneuil, 1961) 78–9 Presle, Micheline 49 La prima notte di quiete/Indian Summer (Valerio Zurlini, 1972) 6, 9, 147 primary narcissism 15 production company, Delon. See Adel Productions psychoanalysis 16 psychological dimensions 39, 61, 85, 92, 96, 101–2, 118

201

psychological dramas 78 psychological realism 36 puppetry 33 Quand la femme s’en mêle/Send a Woman When the Devil Fails (Yves Allégret, 1957) 2, 8, 34, 37, 44f, 45–7, 52, 75, 77 Que d’os (novel; Jean-Patrick Manchette) 113 Queen Is Dead, The (The Smiths’, 1986 LP) 92 Quelle joie de vivre/The Joy Of Living (René Clément, 1961) 8 Quinn, Anthony 100, 103 radio 133 raison d’être 135 Rat Pack-style 100–1, 107 Rauger, Jean-François 111, 134, 163 Razzia sur la Chnouf/Razzia (Henri Decoin, 1954) 84 ready-to-wear fashions 141–2, 148, 157 realism 36, 61, 96–7, 99, 106, 120 recorder 133 recordings 63, 95, 125–40 Rees-Roberts, Nick 1, 11, 23, 33, 60, 71 n.3, 71 n.6, 141 Reggiani, Serge 127, 135, 137 regional cinema 93, 96, 98, 104 Reich, Wilhelm 15, 39 Reiss (UK high-street label) 141 Remaury, Bruno 142 resistance 44, 87–8 Le Retour de Casanova/The Return of Casanova (Edouard Niermans, 1992) 9–10, 29 n.8, 34, 41, 165–7, 165f, 172 “retromania” 142 Reybaud, Fabienne 149 Reynolds, Simon 142 Ribac, Frantois 140 n.3 Ribes, Patrice 147 Rich, David Lowell 98 Rideau cramoisi/The Crimson Curtain (Alexandre Astruc, 1953) 52 rights 79, 115 Rihoit, Catherine 131–2

202

Index

Riva, Emmanuelle 173 Robson, Mark 98, 158 n.1 Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960) 1, 4, 6, 25, 35–6, 42 n.4, 53–5, 59–73, 66f, 68f, 75, 93–4, 96, 99, 104–6, 144–6, 168 climax 69–70 cosmopolitanism, Delon’s 94 costume/costume design 146 critical analysis of 59–73 DVD of 73 n.21 English subtitles 63 face and voice, interplay between 65–70 French dialogue track 65, 69–70, 73 n.21 lingering close-ups 65–70, 66f, 68f, 71 n.10 melodrama 66–8, 70 motif 66 Nino Rota score 66, 69 performance as Rocco, Delon’s 63–73, 96, 99 plot 61 post-synchronized Italian dubbing 63–73, 96, 105 reviews 55, 61, 72 n.13, 73 n.20 Rocco’s voice and body 63–5, 145 Titanus and Les Films Marceau coproduction 72 n.14 Visconti’s “erotic investment” 62, 71 n.9 Rochereau, Jean 121, 123 n.15 rock music 129, 137–8 “role-character formula” 31 Romance, Viviane 79 romanticism 99 romantic music 127, 136 rom-com 10 Rome 2, 24, 45, 93, 105, 146 Ronet, Maurice 18–19, 38, 53, 151 Rosier, Cathy 26 Ross, Kristin 83, 145 Rossi, Tino 127 Rota, Nino 66, 69 Rotunno, Giuseppe 145 Roudnitska, Edmond 149 Roulier, Daphné 159–60 Royal Albert Hall, London 126

Russian television Delon in 140 n.2 новым годом, мамы!/Happy New Year, Moms! (2012) 10 Rutherford, Susan 133 Sabatini, Carlo 73 n.20 sadomasochism 24, 36 Saigon 2 Saint-Paul de Vence 45 Saint-Tropez 33, 149, 151–2 Saka, Pierre 127, 137 Salvatori, Renato 4, 53, 63 Le Samouraï/The Samurai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967) 1, 26, 40, 42 n.4, 75, 84–5, 92, 98, 105, 114, 116–17, 123 n.13, 126, 147 costume 143, 144f Jef Costello, Delon’s role and gangster/flic persona 25–6, 34, 36–8, 85, 143, 147 Samson, A 120, 123 n.15 Saraut, Marion 26 Sarkozy, Nicolas 143 Sartre, Jean-Paul 16–17, 23 Schifano, Laurence 146 Schlöndorff, Volker 40, 106 Schneider, Romy 18–19, 39, 49–50, 114, 117, 155f Delon’s relationship with 1, 16, 28 n.3, 45, 50, 52–3, 55–6, 152–4, 158 n.5 image as Sissy 52–3, 152 reunion with Delon 152, 158 n.5 Schumaker, Michael 167 Scorpio (Michael Winner, 1973), 96, 98, 101–4, 102f, 107 Scott, George C. 99 screen cultures 60, 91, 107 screen myths 4 screenwriting 3–4, 11, 39, 78–9, 84, 111–23 Sebastien, Hervé 173 Secomb, Linnell 17 secondary narcissism 15 Second World War 81, 84 Segal, George 100, 161–2 Segal, Lynne 162 Seigner, Emmanuelle 127

Index Les Seins de glace/Someone is Bleeding (Georges Lautner, 1974) 115 self-appreciation 11, 13, 25. See also narcissism self-mockery 12, 26–7, 29 n.8, 33–4, 42 n.3, 65, 85, 128, 130, 136–8 Selznick, David O. 2, 45–6, 49 Série noire 112, 116, 123 n.9 Série noire (Alain Corneau, 1979) 120 Serrault, Michel 164 Servat, Henri 6–7, 25, 28, 29 n.8 settings 6, 18, 60, 76–7, 79–83, 85–6, 90–1, 100–1, 104–5, 107, 117, 119, 145, 152–3, 169 sexual orientation 21 shared experience, actor-spectator 31–2 Sharif, Omar 105, 109 n.11 Sheila and Ringo 130 Shochat, Ella 64, 72 n.18 shot reverse-shot sequence 23 Showalter, Elaine 161 Siclier, Jacques 50 Signoret, Simone 164 silent films 127 Simonin, Albert 79 Sinatra, Frank 127 Singapore, Delon’s fandom in 143, 157 Un singe en hiver/A Monkey in Winter (Henri Verneuil, 1962) 75, 77, 79 singer-actors 140 n.3, 167 Single Man, A (novel; Christopher Isherwood, 2009) 151 Singles. See solos Sissi films 52–3 Sissi trilogy (Ernst Marishka) 152, 158 n.3 Sisto, Antonella 72 n.16 Slimane, Hedi 148, 150–1 slogan 33 Small, Pauline 71 n.1 Smith, Jacob 70 Smiths, The 92 S&M scenario 152 SNC (Société Nouvelle de Cinématographie) 97 social class 56, 60, 91, 96, 99 social reality 31 social structure 79 soft-rock genre 136

203

Soila, Tytti 71 n.3, 98, 103–4 Sois belle et tais-toi/Be Beautiful but Shut Up (Marc Allégret, 1958) 49 Soleil rouge/Red Sun (Terence Young, 1971) 93, 96, 100, 104, 108 n.7 solos 125–7, 131, 134–8 sonic sound 64–5 sound arranging/producing 129 cinema 4 design 61 of dubbed voices 59–73 and gesture 72 n.16, 128 and images 64–5 and intonation 69 practices of Hollywood cinema 64 recording techniques 125, 127 scene and 81 as secondary 61 synchronized 64 soundtrack 63–5, 69, 72 n.15, 81, 84, 106, 125–40 Soviet Mosfilm studio 97 Spain 64, 100 Spanish 95–6, 100, 103, 106, 108 n.7 Stam, Robert 64, 72 n.18 star power 13–15, 45, 56, 78, 86–8, 111, 115, 133, 138, 161–2, 167 Les Stars/Stars (Edgar Morin, 1957) 4 star studies 31, 43 dubbing, lack of discussion on 61 in Italian context 59 star vehicles 8, 37, 112, 135 Stone and Charden 130 story idea 113 storytelling 96 Stouvenot, Michèle 165 Stovall, Tyler 126 Straayer, Chris 5 strapline 33 Street, Sarah 145 Streisand, Barbra 127 stunts 118, 120–1 style 1, 3, 8, 11, 38–9, 48–9, 52, 59–60, 70, 92–3, 96–7, 100, 102, 107, 112, 116–21, 123 n.15, 125–6, 134, 136, 138, 141–58, 170, 173 surreal drama 122

204

Index

Taithe, Bertrand 21, 26 Talented Mr. Ripley, The (novel; Patricia Highsmith, 1955) 18, 95, 149 talking films 127 Taylor, Jodie 129, 133 teasers 123 n.14, 153 technology 4, 6, 61–2, 64, 70 Teheran 43: Nid d’espions/Assassination Attempt (Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov, 1981) 97 telephone 133 Télérama (French magazine) 55 Tessari, Duccio 93, 108 n.7, 157 Texas Across the River (Michael Gordon, 1966) 95–6, 98, 100–1, 103, 107 TF1 169 theatrical performance, Delon 51 Une journée ordinaire/An Ordinary Day (2011) 10 Les Yeux crevés/The Gouged Eyes 163 Thompson, Kristen 73 n.19 “Thought I’d ring you” (song, Delon-Bassey, 1983) 126, 136, 138–9, 140 n.8 three-shot composition 24 thrillers 8, 40, 77–9, 90, 96, 98, 101–2, 104, 107, 109 n.10, 112, 116, 120–1, 123 n.15, 143–4, 150–1, 158 n.1, 169–72 Tidd, Ursula 17 Timberlake, Justin 150 Tissier, Bernard 53 Titanus 72 n.14, 97 tobacco law 149 To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955) 45 Tomasi di Lampedusa, Giuseppe 6, 147 tone 48, 53, 79, 84, 99–100, 120 Top New Male Face (Laurel award) 35 Tosi, Piero 146 Totocalcio (Italian sports newspaper) 71 n.7 Toubiana, Serge 2, 8, 13, 112, 117, 143, 160, 162–4, 173 Le Toubib/The Medic (Pierre GranierDeferre, 1979) 103 Touchez pas au Grisbi/Hands Off the Loot (Jacques Becker, 1954) 77, 79, 81 tradition artistic and philosophical 149

and modernity 44, 52, 75–90 rhetorical 129 traditional culture 44, 52–3 trailers 123 n.14, 151, 163 Traitement de choc/Shock Treatment (Alain Jessua, 1973) 29 n.7, 102, 144 transcendence 17, 21 transnational cinema culture 3 transnational film industry 60, 91–8, 107 trauma 86, 89, 160–1, 166, 173 Travelling (CD compilation of French actor-singers, 2007) 127 Trebay, Guy 151 Trinian, John 79, 82, 90 Trintignant, Jean-Louis 79, 95, 115, 173 Trois hommes à abattre/Three Men to Destroy (Jacques Deray, 1980) 112–13, 118, 120, 123 n.11 reception 113 source novel for 113 La Tulipe noire/The Black Tulip (ChristianJaque, 1964) 32, 106 TV series, Delon 118, 169–73 Fabio Montale (2002) 10, 169–73, 169f Frank Riva (2003–2004) 10, 159, 170, 172–3 Le Bel Indifférent (1978) 26 TV shows Dick Cavett Show, The (US) 95 Les Guignols de l’info 27, 33 talk shows (French) 95 Twentieth Century Fox 84, 97 typecasting 42 n.1, 106–7 Umberto D (Vittorio De Sica, 1952) remake of Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D (1952) 159 Un amour de Swann/Swann in Love (Volker Schlöndorff, 1984) 40–1, 161 Une chance sur deux (Patrice Leconte, 1998) 9–10, 167 Une journée ordinaire/An Ordinary Day (2011) 10 Une parisienne/La Parisienne (Michel Boisrond, 1957) 49 Un flic/Dirty Money (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1972) 1, 114, 126, 143 UniFrance 127

Index L’Unità (Italian paper) 72 n.13 United Artists 101 United States 46, 83, 91, 95, 97–104, 108 n.4, 127, 156, 158 n.1 universality 59 Universal Studios 97, 100 USSR, Delon’s fandom in 79, 157 Valentini, Paola 64–5 values 3, 17, 28, 43, 55, 59, 76, 81–6, 88, 104, 116, 137 Van Damme, Jean-Claude 167 Varda, Agnès 93, 106 Various Artists 127 Vartan, Sylvie 130 Ventura, Lino 51, 53, 76, 84–5, 114, 163–4 Verlant, Gilles 140 n.7 vernacular language/“vernacular stardom” 49, 71 n.3, 79, 98 Verne, Jules 105 Verneuil, Henri 1, 36, 75–90, 108 n.6, 113–14, 144 life and career 77–8 Versace family 147 versatility 6–7, 9, 106, 146 Vertovec, Steven 94 Vidal, Gil 45 Vidal, Henri 8, 48 Vienna 101 View to A Kill, A (John Glen, 1985) 136 Vignaud, Roger 78 Vincendeau, Ginette 2–3, 5, 13, 18, 21, 25, 32, 49, 56, 59–62, 76–8, 84–5, 87–8, 90, 93, 95, 102, 104, 108 n.3, 108 n.5, 109 n.10, 111–12, 114, 118, 122, 123 n.4, 123 n.8, 129, 144–5, 160–1 vintage masculinity 142, 148–51, 154, 156–7 vinyl records 127 Violet, Bernard 15, 23, 28 n.2, 45, 108 n.2, 113, 115, 117–18, 123 n.14, 126, 135 viral marketing 143 Visconti, Luchino 1, 4, 6–7, 10, 25, 35, 40, 45, 49, 53–4, 59–73, 75, 93, 106, 113–14, 116, 144–7, 168 visual culture 12, 21 1960s 141–58 visual expectations of audiences 133–4

205

visual style 96, 120 Vitti, Monica 146 vocal star system 65, 72 n.18 Vogue 147 Vogue Hommes International, Autumn/ Winter 2010–2011 edition 150 voice acting and dubbing 61 and body synchronization 63–4 dubbing 59–73 elements of 69–70 interplay between face and 65–70 principal characteristics of 71 n.5 voiceover 81–2 Volonte, Gian-Maria 37 “Un voyage à Cythère” (poem; Charles Baudelaire, 1982) Delon’s recitation of 127, 139 voyeurism 19 Walser, Robert 138 Walsh, Raoul 81 war film 75, 98, 107, 158 n.1 Washington, D.C. 101 Watson, Paul 133 Weiner, Matthew 150 Western Europe 10 West Germany 98 Whiteley, Sheila 130 Whittaker, Tom 64, 70 Williams, Michael 5 Wilson, Carl 34, 45, 53, 137 Wilson, Henry 45, 53 Winner, Michael 98 Wojcik, Pamela Robertson 61, 71 n.5 women, marginalization of 78, 129–30, 173 Woo, John 40, 92, 143 World Expo, Shanghai 143, 157 xenophobia 91 Yanne, Jean 127 Yellow Rolls Royce, The (Anthony Asquith, 1964) 60, 98–9, 105–6 Les Yeux crevés/The Gouged Eyes (play; Jean Cau) 163 Ying huang boon sik/A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986) 40, 92, 143

206 Young, Terence 93, 108 n.7 Young, Vernon 63 Zanchi, Leonello 21 Zidane, Zinedine 150, 167

Index Zondagsvriend (German magazine) 52 zooms 29, 35, 170–1 Zorro (Duccio Tessari, 1975) 93, 95–6, 100, 106, 108 n.7, 157 Zurlini, Valerio 6, 147