Remembering Alain Delon

Sad to hear that the legendary Alain Delon has passed away, and so one of the last great kings of cool has left the building. I had the chance to get my mind rocked from an early age, owing to a dad fairly obsessed with French cinema. Even if my young self couldn’t quite articulate what I liked and was drawn to, I could see Delon and his work was special. The scripts, the stories, the visuals, but charisma counts for a whole lot too.

Later, of course, I recognised the ripple effect in the films of New Hollywood, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe and elsewhere, as my film vocabulary grew and tastes expanded. Not only being an actor and screen icon throughout his career, the fact is that he inspired fashion trends, comics and anime, video games and all manner of pop culture. Chow Yun Fat’s iconically cool roles in John Woo classics, like A Better Tomorrow and The Killer, have been directly connected to the influence of Delon. This, in turn, sparked a generation of Eastern action imitators.

I always encourage young film fans to go back to the source and experience early work of celebrated stars and filmmakers, which is easier now than ever before. However, even if you’ve never seen Le Samouraï, Purple Noon, Zorro or Red Sun, with the influence so deeply engrained, all manner of legitimate tributes, hat tips, nods and even blatant rip-offs will have no doubt been seen. For that debonair, effortless cool, Nobody did it better.