Alain Delon was the most handsome actor in European cinema. And probably one of the most talented. With his passing at the age of 88, after having passed Recently, stormy vicissitudes with their children And marked by his misogynistic and homophobic remarks, which made him a controversial figure, An icon of world cinema has disappeared, an actor who made the screens explode in the sixties. When he received the Honorary Palme d'Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, He confessed: “I am an actor of the Lino Ventura breed, of people who were more in front of the camera than we were acting. I never acted, I was just myself. What is amazing is how quickly I felt in my element. The camera was a woman watching and that is what I felt. In 1957, no one knew who he was and in 1959, he was already a star.” Here are a dozen spectacular films by a performer who has at least another dozen major titles in a career that has spanned more than a hundred feature films.

In full sun (1960). “I went to dinner one evening at René Clément's, with him and the producers. They were hesitant to hire me and at the end of dinner, Clément's wife, from the kitchen and clearing the plates, shouted: “The kid is perfect! And that's how they signed me.” Delon embroidered the literary myth Tom Ripley, created by Patricia Highsmith, with the right mix of evil, charm, beauty, careerism and mischief. The most beautiful climber in the world.

Rocco and his brothers (1960). Luchino Visconti was in London, running a theatre, and there he attended a showing of In full sun. “I went to meet him and he told me I was Rocco and that he wouldn't take no for an answer,” the actor recalls. Rocco is the good brother, the youngest of five children, in a family of immigrants from southern Italy who are trying to make it in Milan. But the passion for a woman, the social situation, the capitalist machinery of the big cities and the different ambitions of the brothers will destroy their coexistence.

The eclipse (1962). Delon was not appreciated by the new wave, even though I ended up working with Godard, but for others authors reputed, as Michelangelo Antonioni. A young woman, Vittoria (Monica Vitti), breaks up with her boyfriend Riccardo (Francisco Rabal) to leave for another (Delon). Is this about The eclipse? No, at least in the background, Antonioni talks about the exacerbated materialism of today's society and the lack of human communication in big cities.

The Leopard (1963). “When they called me for the Palme d'Honneur, I said yes, because I accept it on behalf of all the directors I worked with and who are no longer with us: Losey, Visconti, Clément, Melville… They are all dead and that is why “I came”, he declared in Cannes in 2019 to underline all that he owed to the filmmakers with whom he worked. The Leopard, Beyond the mythical phrase of its writer Lampedusa, which beats at the center of the story (“If we want everything to remain as it is, everything must change”), it is the description of the end of a noble family of Sicily. from the middle of the 19th century. The top three are unbeatable: Burt Lancaster Delon and Claudia Cardinale. A drama as beautiful as it is devastating. Visconti was a master of these human landscapes.

The silence of a man (1967). Delon worked with Jean-Pierre Melville in three supernatural works. The first, initially titled The samurai, It's a master class from a director who knows the face he has in front of the camera perfectly. Looks, silences, feline movements… Delon uses his physique to build the professional assassin Jef Costello.

The swimming pool (1969). Delon and Romy Schneider They were a couple for five years and maintained their friendship until the actress's death. Thanks to this affection, an impressive chemistry was created on screen (Delon tried to rekindle the romance), as can be seen in The swimming pool, in which they play a couple on holiday on the French Riviera, whose relationship explodes when he tries to seduce the teenage daughter (Jane Birkin) of his former lover. Its filming was involved in a violent controversy, when one of the actor's bodyguards died in strange circumstances: Stevan Marković had warned his brother that if he died, Delon would be one of the culprits in a plot to hide sex parties and compromising photos, even from Pompidou's wife (eventually President of France).

The Sicilian Clan (1969). Delon, Lino Ventura and Jean Gabin, three tough guys among tough guys, a classic trio of French cinema to lead this film about a family of thieves capable of plotting robberies all over the world… if a police commissioner who is hot on their heels doesn't do it I'm not done with them before. And between the two, the seductions made in Delon. Very funny.

Borsalino (1970). After The swimming pool, Delon rehearsed with director Jacques Deray. and in Borsalino (named after the hats) Delon played with her close friend Jean-Paul Belmondo (they met at A dangerous blonde in 1959, which was Delon's second film). They both play two thugs from the Marseille underworld of the 1930s, involved in crime until a woman gets in their way.

red circle (1970). To have absolute creative freedom, Melville built the Jenner studio on the Parisian street of the same name. The filmmaker and the actor became close friends, until Melville died at the age of 55 in the middle of a meal. Before that, he had already suffered another blow: “One night [de 1967] They call me and tell me that the Jenner studio is on fire. I left with my car, and I arrived and the building was completely in flames. Melville, with his eternal hat and hand in hand with his wife, saw his whole life disappear, his papers, his books, his memories… Everything. He turned around and said to me “Coco”, because that's what he called me, “my life is over, our bed is on fire”. Yet he continued, and in red circle, chronicle of a spectacular jewel theft, Melville counted on Delon, Yves Montand and Gian Maria Volontè to create another marvel polar (THE thrillers French).

The other Mr. Klein (1976). “It was a story that had to be told, very risky, about French collaboration with the Nazis during World War II, and that's why I produced it then, even though it was a taboo subject,” explained Delon, who has produced nearly 25 films. Joseph Losey, An American exiled in the United Kingdom, he was the ideological opposite of the Frenchman, but in this work they found a common path, the story of art dealer Robert Klein, who leads a life of luxury in a Paris occupied by the Nazis until a newspaper finds him and puts him on the police radar, confusing him with another Robert Klein, leader of the resistance. Moreover, that year in Cannes, he won Taxi driver, and Delon, who has never been a very rewarded actor, also found himself without an award: José Luis Gómez won it, with Pascal Duarte.