Yesterday we lost one of the most prominent European actors of the 1960s-70s: French actor, writer, producer, and sex symbol Alain Delon. Let’s remember him via his many frock flick roles.
Franz Lobheiner in Christine (1958)
A love story set in 1906 Vienna; with Romy Schneider.
Le prince Albert/Le duc Albert (segment “Agnès Bernauer”) in Famous Love Affairs (1961)
An anthology film — Delon’s segment is about the 15th century mistress and possible wife (Brigitte Bardot) of Albert III, the duke of Bavaria.
Giovanni/Brother in Dommage qu’elle soit une putain (1961)
I’m pretty sure this is an adaptation of the play “‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore.” Again with Romy Schneider.
Tancredi Falconeri in The Leopard (1963)
Delon plays the “opportunistic” (IMDB) nephew in this film set in 1860s Sicily.
Julien de Saint Preux/Guillaume de Saint Preux in The Black Tulip (1964)
Set in France in 1789; a local nobleman pretends to be a Robin Hood-type character called “The Black Tulip.”
Jacques Chaban-Delmas in Is Paris Burning? (1966)
A film about the occupation and liberation of Paris during World War II.
Don Andrea Baldasar in Texas Across the River (1966)
A comedic western set in 1845.
William Wilson in Spirits of the Dead (1968)
An anthology of horror stories adapted from Edgar Allen Poe’s writings. In Delon’s segment, he plays a man “who is hounded throughout his life of cruelty and deception by a doppelgänger, whom he challenges to a fatal duel,” in the early 19th century, per Wikipedia.
Roch Siffredi in Borsalino (1970) & Borsalino and Co. (1974)
Two French gangster movies set in 1930.
Gauche in Red Sun (1971)
A spaghetti Western in which Delon plays a bandit.
Frank Jackson in The Assassination of Trotsky (1972)
Set during during Trotsky’s period in 1940s Mexico.
Don Diego/El Zorro in Zorro (1975)
An Italian take on the “Old California” masked swashbuckler.
Robert Klein in Mr. Klein (1976)
A mystery about a Parisian art dealer who is taken for a Jew during the Holocaust.
Robert, dit ‘le dingue’ in Le Gang (1977)
A neo-noir film about gangsters set just after World War II.
Baron de Charlus in Swann in Love (1984)
An adaptation of a Proust novel, with Jeremy Irons as a man obsessively in love with a courtesan in 1870s Paris. Delon’s character is a gay baron who introduces the two lovers.
Casanova in The Return of Casanova (1992)
Another one of those aging Casanova films.
Jules César in Asterix at the Olympic Games (2008)
Based on the famous French comic characters, set in ancient Gaul, Astérix and Obélix compete in the Olympics and Julius Caesar is there, naturally.
Which Alain Delon films are most memorable for you?
I haven’t see or heard of the actor, but rawr!
I’ll give him this, he was a comedy Caesar but he looked every inch the playboy-turned-World Conqueror (‘Annoyingly Handsome’ is a look that suits a person described by his enemies as “A man for every woman and a woman for every man’, not least because he kept sleeping with their wives).
He certainly was a hottie! Something about him also reminds me of the very cute Jason Issacs
That hairnet from Zorro IS in the film. He is pretending to be a ridiculous idiot of a governor when he is not Zorro, working undercover and all that. One of my favourite films with him, oh my teenage years.
Loved him in “The Leopard” – but I loved the film. He and Romy Schneider was the couple of French Cinema of their period.
My god, I saw “Famous Love Affairs” on television when I was a student in France. Very silly saucy-Gallic-romp affair, especially when Bardot is accused of witchcraft or treason or something, and has to display anger. Good fun, in other words. Delon’s great in “The Samourai,” which is neo-noir, but looks ’30s and Bogartian.