The weather for New York on Friday, April 12th, is set to be overcast, with an average temperature of fifty-two degrees. Rain may be waiting in the wings. So, hereâs an idea. Escape to Film Forum and watch Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, dripping wet and lightly broiled by a Provençal sun, make out beside a swimming pool. That should suck the grayness from your day.
The movieââLa Piscineâ (1969), directed by Jacques Derayâis one of eleven features that are being screened at Film Forum in tribute to Delon. He is still alive, at the age of eighty-eight, though reportedly in poor health. Of late, he has found himself at the center of a sour feud, involving his children and his housekeeper-companion, and the press has reported every wrinkle in the dispute. What better way to wish him well, and to register our scorn at the treacherous flow of time, than to behold him in his pomp? The retrospective, which runs to April 18th and has been preceded by a two-week run of âLe SamouraĂŻâ (1967), moves from the late springtime of Delonâs career to its high summer. The earliest works are âPurple Noonâ and âRocco and His Brothers,â both of which were first screened in 1960, and the last is â[Mr. Klein](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/09/the-hour-of-reckoning-descends-in-mr-klein)â (1976). Cultists will be gratified by the inclusion of the overheated âRed Sunâ (1970), which stars Toshiro Mifune, Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress, and Delon. What a cast! Itâs like a salad bar at the United Nations.
To be an international figure, in movies, is something of a glamorous embarrassment. As far back as 1964, Delon had to climb on board the âYellow Rolls-Royce,â a juddering M-G-M vehicle, in the company of Rex Harrison, Jeanne Moreau, Shirley MacLaine, and Omar Sharifâthe internationalist par excellence, a frictionless all-purpose âforeigner,â ever ready for a deft hand of bridge. Fifteen years later, I clearly remember staring, mouth agape, at âThe Concorde: Airport â79.â Delon, as the harassed captain of the plane, was joined by Bibi Andersson (an incandescent stalwart for Ingmar Bergman), Mercedes McCambridge (formerly the voice of Beelzebub in âThe Exorcistâ), and, as a flight attendant, Sylvia Kristel (no stranger to airborne tumult, as scholars of âEmmanuelleâ could tell you). Delon looked weary and resentful, probably because, for once, he was in danger of being outshone by a co-star more gorgeous than him. More galling still, she was made of metal. Appealing Delon may have been, but, in the gorgeosity stakes, the Concorde won by a nose.
As for American fame, Delon never quite broke the code, though it was not for want of trying. Look at him, hilariously suave, in white tie and tails, invited to present an Oscar at the Academy Awards in 1965 and, in so doing, to lay on the Frenchness like *crĂšme Chantilly*. âI am delighted to be over here, even though it is now spring in Paris and the chestnuts are in bloom,â he says. Bob Hope, standing beside him, cracks up, takes a beat, and adds, âYou should feel right at home. Some of mineâll bloom tonight, too.â Delon duly announces âMary Poppinsââor, as he calls it, âMarry Poppins,â like somebody issuing an instructionâas the winner for visual effects, and you can imagine his publicists, behind the scenes, planning their campaign. Maybe this cute kid could become, after Louis Jourdan, Hollywoodâs next in-house Gaul. Maybe they could find him another âLetter from an Unknown Womanâ (1948). Or, better still, another âGigiâ (1958).
If the plan faltered, it may be because neither the melancholic grace that Jourdan brought to the first of those films, not the charm-laced levity that he displayed in the second, lay within Delonâs ambit. In truth, his skills are fairly restricted. Fine actor though he is, no jury would convict him of being a great one. Yet he is a star of enduring magnitude, especially in France, and what he *did* do, when he was shrewd enough to operate within his limits, was so compelling that a formidable squad of directors was drawn toward him: Joseph Losey for âMr. Klein,â Michelangelo Antonioni for âLâEclisseâ (1962), and Jean-Pierre Melville for the bleak triad of âLe SamouraĂŻ,â âLe Cercle Rougeâ (1970), and âUn Flicâ (1972). Luchino Visconti used Delon twice, once for âRocco and His Brothersâ and again for âThe Leopardâ (1963). When asked why he had chosen Delon to play Rocco, the most saintly of the siblings, Visconti replied, âBecause Alain Delon *is* Rocco. If I had been obliged to use another actor, I would not have made the film.â
What is it about this particular actor, then, that marks him out and favors him with that uncanny, self-enclosing remoteness that we associate with stardom, even at its most gregarious? It was not his voice, for sure; when he is dubbed into Italian for Visconti and Antonioni, there isnât much of a letdown. If we watch him greedily, asking for more, it is for a reason so obvious, and so elemental, that stating it plainly seems almost indecent, but here goes. Alain Delon, in his prime, was the most beautiful man in the history of the movies.
The defining of beauty is a thankless task. It has taxed and eluded professional thinkers, bibulous poets, and writers of *billets-doux* so cheesily heartfelt that they have to be kept in the fridge. In the dusk of the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant argued for a disinterested evaluation of beautyââthe beautiful is that which, apart from concepts, is represented as the object of a UNIVERSAL delightââand was roundly abused, almost a hundred years later, for his presumption:
> From the very beginning, we get from our philosophers definitions upon which the lack of any refined personal experience squats like a big fat stupid worm, as it does on Kantâs famous definition of the beautiful. âThat is beautiful,â says Kant, âwhich pleases *without interest*.â Without interest?! Compare this definition with this other one, made by an âartist,â an âobserverâ truly capable of aesthetic appreciationâby Stendhal, who once called the beautiful *une promesse de bonheur*.
That could only be Nietzsche. No other philosopher would get away with hurling worm-based invective at his peers. As it happens, he slightly misquotes Stendhal, who proposed, in a footnote to his study of love, that beauty âis only the *promise* of happiness.â That âonlyâ adds a wonderful shrug; it hints that happiness may not be such a big deal, after all, and reminds us that promises are as often broken as kept.
Is even Stendhalâs attitude, worldly and accommodating as it sounds, permissible these days? The broaching of beauty, as a theme, is no longer to be encouraged. Ruminations on the subject now call for a handling so delicate that it verges on the paranoid, and they carry a high risk of nonsense: bullshit in a china shop. As moviegoers and critics, say, we hesitate to pass comment upon the appearance of a person onscreen, especially if that appearance makes us catch our breath, and we have good cause to pause. The dread of objectification cuts deep. Easier, by far, to approach the matter as a born-again Platonist, peering through the visible veneer of the characters, while you gnaw your popcorn, to discern the immanent forms below. Force of personality can be praised to the hilt, as can dramatic dexterity. If anything about the character gladdens the eye, however, itâs probably best to keep quiet. Even haircuts can be a minefield.
In one respect, this is nonsense. Movies, from their infancy, have been in the objectifying racket. The making of an appearance, however fiercely we may object to its methods, is their raison dâĂȘtre. Celluloid is a strip of flammable skin, coated with photosensitive chemicals, and unsurpassed in its registration of human fleshâthe warm and no less sensitive exterior of living creatures. If all that counts is inward essence, what the hell were those teams of makeup artists, coiffeurs, and cinematographers employed by the major studios, in the golden age, doing all day? What was the point of the costume tests, for example, that William H. Daniels, the director of photography on âQueen Christinaâ (1933), ran on Greta Garbo almost ninety years ago? Silently she smiles, poses, turns, casts her gaze upward and sideways, and confronts the camera head-on; at one dumbfounding moment, Daniels cuts her face in half, diagonally, with a scarf of black shadow, leaving just one eye exposed. She rests her hand on her chin, as though lost in thought. Garbo showed us all how to get lost.
And thatâs the kicker. Of all the stars that ever were, it is Garbo who best perpetuated the possibilityâor the captivating lieâthat film could be more than a simple surface. Beauty *is* skin-deep, but somehow, if youâre Garbo, you can intimate the blood flow of feelings beneath. Daniels, who photographed her in twenty-one films, had a keener grasp of that mystery than anyone else, though he was left with a specific regret. In 1969, the year before his death, he confessed, âThe saddest thing in my career is that I was never able to photograph her in color. I begged the studio. I felt I had to get those incredible blue eyes in color, but they said no. The process at the time was cumbersome and expensive, and the pictures were already making money. I still feel sad about it.â I like to think that, before he died, Daniels might have seen âPurple Noon,â and the eyes of Alain Delon. Here was a new kind of blue.
All of which is a brazen refutation of Stendhal. This Ripley doesnât promise happiness. He promises trouble, and from that springs the fundamental doubleness of *Delonisme*. Here is someone, evidently, from whom we ought to steer clear, yet we canât get away from him. We canât even look away. Whatâs more, Delon is highly unusual, among those of divine aspect, in that he is said to have cultivated connections with the actual underworld. Murmurs of scandal and impropriety dogged him for decades. In 1968, the body of a Serbian man named Stevan MarkoviÄ, who was a friend of Delonâs and had been his bodyguard, was found on a garbage dump in a village outside Paris. A Corsican gangster was arrested, charged with the killing, but then released. Darkly exciting rumors of parties attended by MarkoviÄ, Delon, and Claude Pompidouâthe wife of the French Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, who was campaigning for the Presidencyâadded to the mix. MarkoviÄâs death remained unsolved, and Delon was thereafter shadowed, though never overshadowed, by an air of menace. Indeed, he did little to dispel it. What better way to nourish, or to intensify, the fictional figures whom you are hired to portray than to allow your life, offstage, to feed into them?
With that murk in mind, itâs tempting to trace a direct line from Ripley to the assassin played by Delon in âLe SamouraĂŻ,â who, in a delicious gesture of prĂ«emption, already dresses like an undertaker: dark suit, dark tie, white shirt. Itâs like a uniformâa lethal update, so to speak, on the calculated nattiness of Piero, the broker played by Delon in âLâEclisse.â Piero is no villain, but he strikes us as morally null; when a drunkard steals his Alfa Romeo, crashes it into a river, and dies, all that really concerns Piero are the dents in the bodywork. âI think Iâll sell it,â he says. We first observe him darting to and fro at the stock exchange in Rome, but later he slows to wandering pace, strolling around half-empty streets, meeting up (or, famously and climactically, failing to meet up) with a woman named Vittoria (Monica Vitti). Whether they can summon the strength to be in love is open to question. One of their most impassioned kisses is impeded by a pane of glass. Even their lips canât meet.
Stand back from the retrospective at Film Forum; stop swooning for a minute; try to be as Kantian as you can, suppressing the thirst of your personal interest; and consider how the idea of beauty has been reconfigured by the case of Delon. First, beauty is *lonely*. In a relationship, one side of him remains unreachable; in a crowd, he is set apart. (Watch him ambling through a fish market, in âPurple Noon,â tracked by a handheld camera. People keep glancing at him, as if this were a documentary. The very fish take a peek.) Second, beauty is *modern*. The clean, carved lines of Delonâs face require outfits to match; in âThe Leopard,â he is dashing enough, yet oddly uneasy in period costume. He also sports a mustache, as slender as a rapier, and even that feels a little excessive. There are certain glories of cinema that we deface at our peril. (I have always refused to see the 1964 comedy âFather Goose,â on the ground that the trailer depicts Cary Grant with stubble. Blasphemy!) Third, beauty is *vulnerable*. There is a mournful sadism in the spectacle of Delon, in âRocco and His Brothers,â being hurt by a nocturnal brawl, and in the boxing ring. Heâs no featherweight, but he lacks bulk, and you wince to see him take his lumps. The tape applied to a cut on his eyebrow stays there, in the ensuing scenes, like the bruise on the cheekbone of Michael Corleone. Fourth, beauty is *serious*. For optimum effect, Delon should be neither laughing nor cavalier. His stabs at comedy, thankfully infrequent, are no joke.
Needless to say, that yen for solemnity is not exclusive to Delon. George Folsey was the director of photography on âLady of the Tropicsâ (1939), and his mission was to lend lustre to Hedy Lamarr. Not exactly demanding, youâd think, but there was a hitch. âShe was a very, very beautiful woman to photographâuntil she smiled. It was difficult for her to smile and be attractive,â Folsey said. By common consent, no one lovelier than Lamarr ever set foot on Californian soil; if only Kant had hung around and seen her in âAlgiersâ (1938), he would have leapt from his seat and shouted, âHey, *meine Herren,* check it out! Universality! Just like I told you!â
Yet the fact remains that Lamarr, like Ava Gardner or Gene Tierneyâor Delonâis stuck on the lower slopes of Mount Olympus. It is paradoxical (and, for mere mortals, cheering) that some of the greatest stars, the occupants whose slot at the top of the mountain is secure, were scarcely good-looking at all, and certainly conformed to no classical ideal of pulchritude. Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford: they knocked an audience sideways, but no one could mistake them for knockouts. Only very rarely do we encounter beings who simultaneously dazzle the senses, command the box-office, and remain, as it were, in communion with themselves. When I first glimpsed Edward Steichenâs *Vanity Fair* portrait of Gary Cooper, from 1930, I thought, O.K., so perfection *has* been achieved. Game over.
If I could cram one more movie into the Delon package at Film Forum, it would be Volker Schlöndorffâs âSwann in Love.â I havenât seen it since it was released in 1984. But I recall Jeremy Irons, as Charles Swann, pretty much fainting as he drinks in the fragrance of the corsage worn by Odette (Ornella Muti) between her breasts, which struck me as a useful guide to the etiquette of desire. Above all, I remember Delon as the Baron de Charlusâa trifle stiff, the bloom gone from his youthfulness, and a touch of twilight in the azure of his gaze. Grace notes of the homoerotic had been perceptible in Delon ever since âPurple Noon,â and now they evolved into a sad music, in the person of Charlus. With a white-gloved hand, as if flirtation had become an effort of will, he pinched the cheek of a beau.
Can we, or should we, cut beauty out of the conversation altogether? So natural an insult to our faith in human equality seems, well, unnatural. Yet there it is, no more liable to extinction than a peacock. In any case, the overwhelming majority of us will never know how it feels, or what it might mean, to be beautiful. Simply imagining that status, with its unearthly blessings and its many complications (whoâd want to be stared at just for walking into a room?) is a challenge. What we *can* conceive of, perhaps, is the fading of the glow: having the world at your feet, and your fingertips, and feeling it slip away as age dims the lights on your looks. Itâs the oldest story of all. Helen must have told it to herself, in her dotage, long after the ships had sailed home from Troy. In the messy mythology of our own era, Alain Delonâthe blue-eyed boy, the bad guy in the excellent suitâtold the story from the start. No doubt he will see it through to the end. âŠ
