Alain Delon's death seen from Hollywood and abroad

The disappearance of the French actor had a major impact all over the planet.

He was one of the last sacred monsters of French cinema. One of the last French icons internationally. Alain Delon died and the world's press paid tribute to him this Monday morning.

In Hollywood, the essential Variety first makes the comparison with Jean-Paul Belmondo, who died in 2021, and who has “defined French cool at the beginning of the New Wave in Godard's Breathless. Delon and Jean-Pierre Melville redefined it very consciously in Le Samouraï, in which he plays a hitman who always adjusts his fedora to perfection, drawing comparisons to James Dean. But that comparison is limited: while the American actor tended to play emotional outbursts in his performances, Delon was far from expansive. What was considered cool in Le Samouraï seemed much colder in a lesser film, like Un Flic. Still, it is difficult for Americans to comprehend the extent of Delon's fame in the 1960s and 1970s, not only in France but in places as diverse as Japan, Communist China, and Latin America…”

The Hollywood Reporter recalls thatAlain Delondespite this popularity, never succeeded in Los Angeles: “With his dark and handsome physique, he starred in some of the biggest European films of the 1960s and 1970s. But although he was an idol of European cinemas, Delon never managed to become a star in Hollywood. He moved there in 1964, signed contracts with MGM and Columbia and appeared in six films. But he failed to make it big and left in 1967…”

The New York Times nevertheless points out “the great beauty” ofAlain Delona term that comes up repeatedly in tributes from around the world. Like this Guardian journalist who writes, across the Channel: “Fascinating and beautiful, Alain Delon was one of the most mysterious stars in cinema (…) He was a symbol of the lost beauty of the 60s (…) Alain Delon, in all his strange, breathtaking, almost alien beauty, was one of the most beautiful male stars – perhaps the most beautiful – in the history of cinema. A beauty very different from the more candid Hollywood beauty of Paul Newman or Robert Redford.”

The BBC recalls that, for decades, the French public followed the twists and turns of the tumultuous love life ofAlain Delon, “a love life just as prolific as his life in the cinema (…) a colourful personal life which regularly made headlines as he charmed and seduced across Europe at the height of his fame.”

The German newspaper Bild also points out that:Alain Delon was “also a kid. He was an egoist. He was the macho of Paris. Alain Delon was as much a dream man as a nightmare for women,” the journalist, who nicknames the French actor the ” Ice Cold Angel » (the icy angel).

The same tone is heard on the Italian side, where the Corriere de la Serra draws a sinister portrait of the actor in its opening, “one of the most attractive in cinema, a legend, who had a complicated endgame. Especially for family reasons, at the center of a dispute that saw his children oppose the court (…) And there was also this Franco-Japanese woman, Hiromi Rollin, who presented herself as his partner (…) Alain Delon was often ill, he suffered from having been abandoned by his sweet youth, to the point of considering suicide, but his end was then more banal”.

In the rest of the world, the Japan Times in Japan remembers “his idol image and his James Dean-like personality, which have made him one of the most acclaimed actors in his country”while the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera concludes by highlighting the public controversies that have marked the last decades of his career: “Even though he was adored by many, Alain Delon also faced a lot of criticism. He supported the politician Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front (…) This self-proclaimed right-wing activist was also much mocked for his ego, as he often spoke of himself in the third person…”