Alain Delon: a love unrequited for our country

At that time he had asked for euthanasia, which the director achieved for him. Jean-Luc Godard (with whom he had worked on the film “New Wave”from 1990), but they did not grant it to him. He lived in France and Godard in Switzerland, where euthanasia is legal. One of the last times he was seen in public was at the funeral of his great friend, the last one he had left, Jean-Paul Belmondo (with whom he made the famous two parts of “Borsalino”). He was emaciated, pale, gloomy. Barely recognizable.

Another of the great blows he had suffered was the death of Lino Venturawith whom she co-starred in a film that, especially in Argentina, was an unprecedented success, to the point that it was on the billboard for more than three years, “The Adventurers” (1966, from Robert Enrico). Those were different times. That bond with Argentina was reciprocated.

Delon was a frequent guest of our country, with which he maintained a solid relationship. He first came in 1965 on a Metro Goldwyn Mayer tour. He is remembered in the Palermo Hippodrome giving a prize to the jockey Marina Lezcanoat the Mar del Plata Festival, in a tuxedo, and especially in the Las Flores prison, Santa Fe, where he met his friend again Carlos Monzonof whom he had been the promoter of his fights.

There he sat on an old chair in the courtyard, next to Monzon and Ceferino Moralesamateur champion. Before that, he had stopped to greet another athlete he knew, Carlos Reutemannat that time governor of the province of Santa Fe. In between, the whole road was covered by a mob of men and women waving hands and flags. They were not greeting the star, but the man who, from so far away and so high up, had come to see his friend in misfortune.

In the 90s, as was customary with almost all the famous people who came to the country, He visited President Carlos Menem at the Government HouseIn 1995 he had lunch alone with Mirtha Legrand, a program that broke the usual ratings of the diva. There he reviewed his work but, of course, he spoke especially about all the affections that linked him to our country.

The Landrú Foundation Today he recalled the visit that, in the 80s, during a promotional tour of his cosmetics brand, he made especially Delon to Juan Carlos Colombresthe real name of the great comedian whom Delon He admired it during a visit to Clarín. It was also an overdue attention to that newspaper that months before had organized an important French film show that he could not attend. The film had been screened there “Le toubib” (“Harmony”, by Pierrre Granier-Deferre)which he starred in.

Among his great musical passions was tango, especially those of Astor Piazzolla, some of whose melodies he used in films he produced.

Born on November 8, 1935 in Sceaux, with Corsican, French and German blood in his veins, he only began to discipline himself at the age of 18, during his military service in Indochina. It was a happy time, he said. He then tried various jobs, until one day he accompanied a starlet friend to Cannes, was spotted by a talent scout, and his path was set.

He started out as a dangerous heartthrob in films like “The goddess of the underworld”, “Be pretty and shut up”, “Clandestine loves”, “Women are weak”revealed himself almost at the same time as the beautiful and amoral cynic of “In Full Sunlight” (René Clement, 1959, based on “The Talented Mr. Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith) and the noble, long-suffering support of the family of “Rocco and his brothers” (Luchino Visconti)1960), and from then on, for a long time, he was an idol, a sex symbol, a star.

Also, an actor of solid presence, capable of transmitting everything with a minimal gesture, a disdainful or pleading look, a determined smile, to play a lover, an exhausted man, a murderer, even a Black Tulip and of Fox in French version.

It was required by commercial and refined directors, such as Antonioni, Deray, Duvivier, Vadim, Lautner, Granier-Deferre, Zurlini, José Giovanni, Losey, Tessari, Jessua, Schlondorff, Blier, Patrice Leconte and the mentioned one Godard.

Major titles, “The Samurai”, “The Red Circle” and “A Flic” by Jean-Pierre Melville (the director I admired most), “The Adventurers” by Robert Enrico (from which came the song “Laetitia”, which melted all listeners in her voice), “Farewell to a Friend”, “The Swimming Pool”, “Borsalino”, “The Escaped”, “Two Against the City”, “The Other Mr. Klein”, “Death of a Corrupt Man”, “The Skin of a Murderer” which he directed himself.

In total he directed 4 films, produced 39, acted in 107, received 9 Lifetime Achievement Awards (Mar del Plata before Cannes), had several loves (Romy Schneider, Mireille Darcothers), two legal wives, three children, a daughter with whom he did theatre, some bad company, a firm devotion to the general De Gaulle and Jean Marie Le Penwhich earned him no small amount of resentment (the same thing happened with Brigitte Bardot), and the declared hatred of feminists, who did not even tolerate her confession: “I have never acted, I have just been myself. The camera was a woman looking at me, and that is how I feel.”