Star Review
Alain Delon remains one of the most iconic figures in recent French cinema history. Following a troubled youth, he joined the marines and was parachuted into the Dien Bien Phu siege in Indo-China. A friendship with actor Jean-Claude Brialy led to him attending the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, where he spurned a contract offer from David O. Selznick to make the first of his 80+ pictures on home soil. Initially cast in dashing supporting roles, Delon found fame in René Clément's Plein Soleil (1960) and became the darling of such Italian auteurs as Luchino Visconti and Michelangelo Antonioni. However, his image changed again after his bodyguard was found murdered in 1968 and he emerged from the resulting sex and drugs scandal that embroiled numerous politicians and celebrities as the bad boy of French film. He exploited the situation in a sequence of hard-boiled thrillers, but he was still in demand for weightier projects and won a César for Notre Histoire in 1984.
This boxed set includes features from the key phases of Delon's career. He exudes enigmatic charm and amoral menace in Plein Soleil, a simmering adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel, The Talented Mr Ripley, that sees him assume the identity of playboy pal, Maurice Ronet, and make a move on his put-upon fiancée, Marie Laforêt. Henri Decaë's glossy Italian vistas and Nino Rota's disconcerting score typify the contrasts in this teasing study in reckless opportunism, but it's the vicious intelligence of Delon's villainy that sustains the fascination.
He proves equally elusive in Antonioni's L'Eclisse (1962), as the suave stockbroker who transfixes Monica Vitti's commitment-shy translator. But the pair were merely parts of the mise-en-scène in this treatise on alienation and Delon shows to better advantage in Jean-Pierre Melville's Un Flic (1972), a modishly sour policier, in which Delon's commissioner shares a mistress (Catherine Deneuve) with drug baron, Richard Crenna.
Delon plays an equally world-weary cop pursuing psychopath Jean-Louis Trintignant in Jacques Deray's fact-based Flic Story (1975). But he again reveals his darker side as the doctor rejuvenating Annie Girardot with a murderously illicit serum in Alain Jessua's bleak chiller, Traitement de Choc (1972).
David Parkinson on 13th June 2007
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Film Description
A collection of five films starring the icy blue-eyed Alain Delon, one of the most iconic figures in recent French cinema history. This set has films from the key phases of his career, and features Plein Soleil (René Clément, 1960), L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962), Un Flic (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1972), Traitement de Choc (Alain Jessus, 1973) and Flic Story (Jacques Deray, 1975).
Plein Soleil, (remade in 1999 as The Talented Mr Ripley) is based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, and is a striking study of a glamorous and complex psychopath, the portrayal of whom was a career-defining moment for the young, beautiful and ultra-cool Alain Delon. He plays Ripley, an emissary sent by a wealthy American industrialist to save his errant playboy son from a life of decadence in Rome. Insinuating himself into Greenleaf’s existence, Ripley attempts to steal his life, his girl and his money.
Alongside L'Avventura and La Notte, L'Eclisse completes director Michelangelo Antonioni’s ambitious 1960s trilogy on doomed relationships in a fractured world. The tale involves a woman, Vittoria (Monica Vitti), who has just suffered the break-up of an imperfect relationship with a staunch intellectual. Piero (Delon), a brash young stockbroker, casts his romantic gaze in her direction and Vittoria’s resolve gradually relents, precipitating a tentative affair. Yet their innermost fears play upon them in ways that go against an honest expression of their love – and against a lasting relationship. A challenging, enigmatic work that won a Special Jury prize at Cannes.
Made the year before his death, Un Flic, Jean-Pierre Melville’s final film and his third with Alain Delon after Le Samouraï and Le Cercle Rouge, is the director’s most extreme and underrated gangster movie. Parisian police commissioner Coleman (Delon) is not a happy man, but he does what he can to get through each day, finding solace in his affair with Cathy (Catherine Deneuve), who also happens to be the girlfriend of Coleman’s friend, Simon (Richard Crenna), the head of a gang of daring criminals. As the commissioner’s pursuit of the gang intensifies, so does the rivalry between the two men.
In Traitement de Choc, Delon took a break from playing existential loners to portray a charming, amoral Doctor. it's an effective psychological thriller that also offers a comment on medical practice and the exploitation of the poor for the benefit of the wealthy. When Hélène Masson takes up a course of therapy at a centre run by the secretive Dr Devilers, she is at first encouraged by Devilers’ apparent success with his other patients. Soon however she becomes concerned when one of her fellow patients commits suicide. Later, when a serving boys disappears after asking her for help, she realises that something is seriously wrong.
Finally, Flic Story, based on the memoir of French police detective Roger Borniche, grippingly recreates a violent post-war crime spree that shocked the nation. When Emile Buisson, France’s most notorious criminal, escapes from a mental asylum, his bloody rampage has politicians and the press demanding results. Delon plays Parisian cop Roger Borniche, who gets the thankless job of finding Buisson and either bringing him in or stopping him dead. Through rooftop pursuits, alley stakeouts, nightclub showdowns, and car to car gun battles, Borniche, a stylish and scrupulously ethical cop, is forced to break the rules he usually only bends.
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Screen Icons: Alain Delon Collection
