One of the great icons of post-WWII European cinema, Alain Delon (1935-) is a mercurial & emblematic symbol of both the resilience of genre cinema & the cool, modernist abstraction applied to it by such directors as Jean-Pierre Melville & René Clément. Extraordinarily beautiful & immaculately presented, Delon projects an elegant but stark aura that is an almost perfect symbol of the detachment & ironic distance that, for many, characterises the essence of modern existence (a quality emphasised by such directors as Melville, Antonioni, Visconti, Losey & Deray). As David Thomson argues, “It was that saintly grace, allied to the unmistakable aura of a modern young man, that made Delon’s best films so interesting.”

But despite this sense of implacable distance, & the wonderfully minimalist nature of many of his performances, Delon is also a very modern celebrity who is as famous for his dalliances off-screen as on; including infamous brushes with the underworld & relationships with such stars as Romy Schneider & Nico. This season concentrates on the first 30 years of Delon’s career, taking in his breakthrough performance as the talismanic Ripley in Plein soleil, the crime genre peak of Melville’s extraordinary Le cercle rouge, the overt display of glassy beauty in Deray’s La piscine (where he appears with an equally gorgeous Schneider), his hardboiled, first directorial effort, Pour le peau d’un flic, & the late career highlight of Godard’s idiosyncratically revisionist Nouvelle vague.

7:00 - PLEIN SOLEIL
René Clément (1960) 112 mins PG

The elegant psychopath & title character of Patricia Highsmith’s series of Ripley novels is skillfully rendered by Delon who works with Clément’s careful direction to create an intriguing & ambiguous exploration of villainy. For the uninitiated, Tom Ripley’s criminality is as fascinating as it is audacious; a man who literally gets away with murder. Add to the mix some striking colour cinematography (by Henri Decaë), stunning locations & a superb score by Nino Rota, & the result is something close to immaculate. With Maurice Ronet.

35mm print courtesy of CULTURESFRANCE

Trailer @ Youtube

9:05 - LA PISCINE
Jacques Deray (1969) 120 mins

Visually stunning & psychologically intense study of an unemployed writer (Alain Delon) who lives with his lover, Marianne (Romy Schneider), in a beautiful villa near St Tropez. Deadly consequences arise when Marianne’s former boyfriend (Maurice Ronet) arrives with his daughter (Jane Birkin). Deray’s uncharacteristically complex & existentially taut drama, centred mostly around the eponymous “swimming pool”, is a fascinating exploration of the relationships between these four characters that plays-off the tension & residual attraction between past lovers Schneider & Delon.

35mm print courtesy of CULTURESFRANCE

Trailer @ Youtube

7:00 - NOUVELLE VAGUE
Jean-Luc Godard (1990) 89 mins

An accident on the road after which a hitchhiker (Delon) is taken in by an Italian heiress (Domiziana Giordano) –provides the hinge for a dialectical analysis of the relationship between sound & image, Man & Woman, art & commerce, wealth & poverty. Fragmentary in its narrative, Godard’s film is ravishingly shot by William Lubtchansky, whose constantly tracking & craning camera only occasionally “intersects” with a soundtrack that consists of a dense tapestry of quotations (with every line purportedly taken from a literary source), music & ambient noise.

35mm print courtesy of CULTURESFRANCE.

Trailer @ Youtube

8:40 - MR. KLEIN
Joseph Losey (1976) 123 mins M

Losey’s first French-language film is an atmospheric & enigmatic mood piece set during WWII about an amoral & exploitative antiques dealer (played with immaculate reserve by Alain Delon) who is mistaken for a wanted Jewish man with the same name. Co-produced by Delon, this is one of the actor’s most intriguing & effective films of the 1970s, an exploration of the porous nature of identity & the complex moral & ethical questions that underline individual action. With Jeanne Moreau, Michel Lonsdale & Juliet Berto.

35mm print courtesy of CULTURESFRANCE.

Trailer @ Youtube

7:00 - LE CERCLE ROUGE
Jean-Pierre Melville (1970) 140 mins M

A man is released from a 5-year prison term on the same day that a convicted murderer escapes from a train. Melville’s penultimate film was his largest commercial success in France & is perhaps his most perfectly-realised work, the summit of the distinctively crisp & aphoristic style that he refined in his crime films. The last of the director’s films to be shot by his great collaborator Henri Decaë, it is a flawlessly cast, autumnal work featuring a set of quintessentially Melvillian trench-coated anti-heroes played by Alain Delon, Yves Montand & Gian Maria Volonté.

CTEQ Annotation:
'Le Cercle Rouge' by Michael Healey

Trailer @ Youtube

9:30 - POUR LE PEAU D’UN FLIC
Alain Delon (1981) 105 mins

In his directorial debut, Delon plays insider turned outsider Choucas, a cop turned private detective who is unafraid to employ unconventional & sometimes questionable methods in his work. Choucas accepts a seemingly uncomplicated case but quickly finds himself entangled at the centre of a complex web of collusion that goes all the way to the top. As a director, Delon embraces & engages with the shadier side of police business in this sophisticated & brutal action thriller that demonstrates the lessons he learned from such masters as Melville & Clément.

35mm print courtesy of CULTURESFRANCE.

Trailer @ Youtube

7:00 - PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE
Jean Renoir (1936) 40 mins

Renoir’s sensuous celebration of nature, based on a wonderfully bittersweet Guy de Maupassant story, perfectly captures the melancholic character of transience as a Parisian merchant takes his family on a Sunday trip to the country. Renoir’s unfinished, socially insightful & moving masterpiece, wholly capitalising on Joseph Kosma’s haunting score, has “all the revelation & freshness of touch of a sketch by a great painter” (Georges Sadoul) but also feels more fully-formed. Renoir was assisted by Luchino Visconti, Jacques Becker & Henri Cartier-Bresson.

35mm print courtesy of NFSA.

7:50 - ROCCO & HIS BROTHERS
Luchino Visconti (1960) 177 mins M

Novelistically structured into four chapters, Visconti’s sordidly operatic tale of a young flyweight boxer Rocco’s (an indelible Alain Delon) journey with his family from the poverty of the Italian south to the bright, cold lights of Milan is an immense film inspired by such literary touchstones as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, & Thomas Mann’s Joseph & His Brothers. A significant influence on such Italian-American filmmakers as Martin Scorsese & Francis Ford Coppola. Lyrical score by Nino Rota & co-starring Annie Girardot & Claudia Cardinale.

35mm print courtesy of BFI.

Trailer @ Youtube