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Alain Delon Understood the Depth and Limits of His Beauty
In the early years of his career, the late French actor’s visage was more than a face; it was an existential fact.
In that sense, few directors used him as well as Jean-Pierre Melville, who cast Delon in three of his greatest policier s. In the now-iconic Le Samouraï(1967), he’s the pathologically quiet and patient hit man Jef Costello, who lives in monklike austerity and kills with surreal precision. In Visconti’s masterpiece, The Leopard(1963), Delon plays Tancredi, the dashing nephew of the Prince of Salina (Burt Lancaster), whose revolutionary exploits at the side of Italian independence leader Garibaldi planted the seeds of his family’s survival. Still, Delon’s retrograde politics didn’t seem to stop new generations from rediscovering the sublime work he did withMelville or some of the brilliant thrillers he made with the likes of René Clément (including 1960’s Purple Noon, still the best adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley) and Jacques Deray (in particular 1969’s TheSwimming Pool, which became a major repertory hit Stateside in the plague-damaged year of 2021).
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