on 8/18/2024, 1:43 pm
Perhaps best known for his work with Jean-Pierre Melville (LE SAMOURAI, LE CERCLE ROUGE, UN FLIC), Delon was an icon of male beauty for the first half of his life, first coming to the attention of Americans via his portrayal of Tom Ripley in René Clément's PLEIN SOLEIL (PURPLE NOON), where his looks tended to upend the idea that he was somehow besotted with the man he would murder to replace. Only a minority of viewers were even slightly disturbed by this, however. He made an abortive attempt to conquer America with the alternately frenzied and static ONCE A THIEF, where he tries to carve out a believable character arc even as he is fending off the hysterical overacting of Ann-Margret.
Some of his most interesting films had at least an oblique connection to noir: L'INSOUMIS, a brooding post-Algeria meditation; MR. KLEIN, a taut Occupation-era fable directed by Joseph Losey, and Valerio Zurlini's LE PROFESSEUR, which might be his most courageous performance, capturing the downward spiral of a disillusioned intellectual whose love affair with a student turns into a slow train wreck of mutually-assured self-destruction.
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