Well, he is an idol of cinema. Idols, however, can crumble and fall, and I keep thinking about how, early in his career, Delon was repeatedly compared to James Dean, a comparison probably dreamed up by a flack looking for an easy way to publicize a client. Delon and Dean are very different, of course, with their performance styles and screen presence, but there are moments — with just that light and angle and the camera lingering on their faces — when each man’s look creates a strange disturbance in the air. They don’t just grab your attention, they command and disrupt your gaze, sometimes while also drawing attention away from the other performers and the film itself.
For most of his career, which has had more peaks and a few wincing lows, Delon has generated the same rapt attention for his offscreen life, which has been pockmarked by gossip, scandal and sometimes great contempt. He was questioned in the murder of Stefan Markovic in 1968. That scandal died down, but more followed. Delon admitted to slapping a woman, expressed homophobic views and voice support for France’s far-right party, all of which sparked protests and headlines in 2019 when the Cannes Film Festival announced it would present him with a lifetime achievement award. The festival ignored its critics; Delon took home his prize.
Recently, news outlets reported that Delon, who is in poor health and whose children have been fighting publicly over his custody, was placed under legal guardianship. On screen, the actors exist in a kind of mesmerizing state of suspended animation, their youth and beauty fixed forever. Dean’s accidental death at the age of 24 in 1955 left him eternally young off-screen. Of course, Delon lived. He continued to work, to star and to do, to seduce and seduce until he did not, and his gradual, increasingly painful disappearance began. Unlike Dean, who in dying youth escapes the mistakes and resentments that old age can bring him, Delon continues to prove that despite all our preoccupations, he is fully human.
Delon
Through April 18 at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, Greenwich Village, filmforum.org.
