Tag Archives: Alain Delon

Adieu l’ami/ Farewell Friend/ Honour Among Thieves (Jean Vautrin aka Jean Herman, 1968)

Uncategorized, , , , , ,

The first teaming of Charles Bronson and Alain Delon, a huge success in France with a two-year run in some cinemas in Paris; and one in a series of films that helped Bronson become an international star. Both have their shirts off for a large chunk of the film. One look better shirtless; the other with his clothes on. Guess which?

What role so much skin played in the film’s success in 1968 is open to question but clearly men’s bodies could be displayed for their ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ without needing violence as an alibi before Brad Pitt made it modish. The film is beautifully designed, looks terrific and the direction is efficient without it ever being inspired.

A very watchable heist film. Bronson and Delon are legionnaires who arrive in Marseille from Algeria the same day, meet by chance and end up being pitted together to the point where they end up the patsies in a pre-planned heist. The last third of the film involves finding the real culprits. A generally enjoyable genre piece marred by a kind of misogyny which one suspects is unthinking but which I find excessive even for the time (see clip below).

The fight sequences once more raise questions about historicising violence. They’re very different than what we’re used to seeing now (see below) and feel unbelievable and unexciting. Are they just bad or have current styles, aesthetics and conventions affected how action from another time may or may not spark audience excitement today?

Bronson gets a stupid recurring bit of schtick gambling on whether dropping a coin in a glass will make the liquid overflow. One detects the influence of Hawks’ Scarface here but the business didn’t do for Bronson what it did for George Raft.

There’s some suggestion that there are homosexual currents in the way that the relationship between Bronson and Delon is depicted though it could just be sketchy writing where a degree of projection aids whatever holes one wants to fill.

José Arroyo

Girl on a Motorcycle (Jack Cardiff, 1968)

Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Alain Delon’s ‘Swinging London’ film, even though it was shot in France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. On one level, the whole film is about putting Marianne Faithful in and out of a leather catsuit, and fulfilling a sexual fantasy for a generation of young men. It must be why this quite bonkers work became one of the most popular film of the year in the UK in 1968. It was also the first movie to be awarded an X rating in the US and had to be re-edited to obtain an R rating. The film begins with a psychedelic dream in which Rebecca (Marianne Faithful) is sleeping next to her husband (Roger Mutton) but is dreaming of Daniel (Alain Delon) as circus ringmaster whipping the clothes off of her in a circus as she’s standing on a horse/ riding her Harley. Faithful is the film’s object of desire. Daniel (Delon) is Rebecca’s (Faithful).

The initial dream

GIRL ON A MOTORCYCLE is about Rebecca leaving her boring husband to be with the cruel but sexy University Professor (Delon, who wears glasses, like Streisand – also a professor discoursing on love – did in THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES; though Delon also waves a pipe about). It is mainly a subjective account – Faithful in voice-over tells us why she’s on the road for him and how she met him – cueing a series of  flashbacks. It’s a certain type of masochistic discourse on free love: Delon wouldn’t marry her but gave her a Harley; she leaves her husband on the Harley, ditching respectability for sexual fulfilment. The dialogue is ludicrous. ‘Your body is like a violin in a velvet case’. ‘Skin me!’.  What was it about sex symbols in catsuits in this period (Yvonne Craig, Diana Rigg, Honor Blackman, Eartha Kitt); and for that matter sex symbols in Harleys, e.g. Brigitte Bardot? It’s a kind of psychedelic ‘Swinging London’ precursor to 50 SHADES OF GREY (‘Daniel allows me nothing, treats me like a slave…a Doctor of Pornography!’) One is tempted to laugh at much of it, and I certainly did, but there’s also a seriousness of intent that elicits a kind of a respect. It’s easy to laugh at but hard to dismiss. And certainly evokes a certain period’s ideas of sex, freedom, the road the bike, free love vs respectability, etc as well as any other film I can think of.

Some images from the film. Faithful’s catsuit is by Lanvin and an erotic work of art in its own right

 

Scorpio (Michael Winner, 1973)

Uncategorized, , , , ,

A 1970s paranoid thriller, one of the lesser ones. It’s bombastically directed by Michael Winner who shows no understanding of people but does love his zoom, which he seems to think sufficient to generate urgency or suspense. Burt Lancaster is the old CIA operative who wants out. Paul Scofield is his Soviet counterpart, both friend and nemesis, united through their sufferings as ‘premature anti-fascists’. Alain Delon is the younger operative Lancaster’s trained, now paid to off his old mentor. It’s a film with an over-complicated plot not too well conveyed; the whole film seems an over-extended, un-remarkable if not unexciting action sequence. The main reason to see it is the actors. Lancaster is a savvy showman, acting his character but always with an eye towards the audience, gaging effect. He knows what to do in a close-up and can use his whole body – he was famous for rehearsing every bit of movement or business to evoke grace, fluidity or whatever was needed for the audience’s understanding or pleasure; and he keeps it simple, doing the minimum for maximum effect. Paul Scofield is very good too, though in a completely different way. He evokes real feeling in close-up, but his performance can seem over-elaborate in a longer shot, too full of changing inflections and bits of business.

Burt’s star entrance: grace in movement

A little hop from Burt

Scofield Busy Being Drunk

 

Delon comes off the worst here, acting mainly with his eyes, very effective in close-up but not evoking much in the longer shots, even though he does quite a few of his stunts. Good thing Winner keeps him fondling cats in scene after scene as without that he’d evoke no character at all.

 

Something to think about is a scene of Lancaster trying to escape the CIA by passing as a black man. It’s ‘blackface’ in 1973 but unusual in that it doesn’t ‘send-up’ race; it’s ostensibly just meant to be an effective disguise. However, there is a sense that the audience is meant to find funny the idea of Golden blond blue-eyed Burt passing as a black man, so in that sense not too different from traditional blackface; and I would be curious to knowwhat the discussions on the set, if any, were like, considering Burt was one of the liberal Hollywood stars who lead the March on Washington where Dr. King delivered the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

 

BORSALINO (JAQUES DERAY, 1970)

Uncategorized, , , , , ,
Original Cinema Quad Poster – Movie Film Posters

Saw Borsalino last night, as good an example of a star vehicle as you’ll find. Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo are gangsters in 1930s Marseilles; Belmondo has taken over Delon’s girl while he serves time. When he gets out, they get into a fight over her, find they’re equally matched, team up and take-over the Marseilles mafia. Delon is feline, mysterious, aspiring to elegant living but not afraid to get dirty. Belmondo is good natured, happy with the simpler things, and likes to show off, either through his too-loud clothes or through his body, which is in much better shape than Delon’s. It’s a charming film, a good-natured pastiche of gangster films, all about fulfilling or playing with the audience’s expectations of what these particular stars do and the particular ways they glitter and shine. There are scenes of them in new suits, strutting up or down staircases, where you just know it’s designed to make the audience sigh or purr or go ‘WOW!’ That’s really what the whole film is for, a play on star personas to make them exponentially powerful together, rather like Brangelina at a later time. An enormous hit, a clear influence on THE STING in tone look, and even music. Perssonally I prefer watching the Delon/Belmondo to the Newman/Redford. A fun watch.

 

A great year for Delon as LE CERCLE ROUGE also made the list of top ten box office hits.

José Arroyo

Un flic (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1972)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

The only sentiments that mankind has ever been able to inspire in the police are ambivalence and derision (Frančois-Eugéne Vidocq).

People prattle on with their smart alecky dismissal of authorship – defined in the most reductive way possible so as to allow for a straw argument —  but in the first five minutes of UN FLIC you’re already in another, deeper, richer, more complex and more beautiful realm than in any of the Giovannis, or even Derays, or other polars. It’s so palpable: the wind, the fog, the waves, the lights turning on simultaneously as if to announce a sadness — gorgeous. No wonder Delon dedicated POUR LA PEAU D’UN FLIC (1981)to Jean-Pierre Melville. He made polars lesser directors could only aspire to. Delon acknowledged that he himself could never dream of making a film like Melville or Visconti; only they could make them. Delon had to make something else. What remained unspoken was that it was also something lesser, at least as a director

The seaside bank-robbery at the beginning is followed by a sequence in which Commissaire Edouard Coleman (Alain Delon) is called to a different type of robbery. A young hustler, under 18, has tried to rob an elderly gay man of a valuable sculpture (see clip above). The con is that the boys pretend they’re 20, steal from the older gents, but blackmail them into not calling the police as they’re minors. ‘We’re targeted by real professionals.’ ‘You’re only charged if you are repeat offenders,’ says the inspector. ‘We all are,’ says the victim.

It’s a beautiful moment in the film, one which made me understand why queers of a previous generation looked to film noir for representations of homosexuality. In this era homosexuality was a crime and it signifies criminality in these films. A queer appears and already they connote an underworld, blackmail, seediness, sadness, uncontrollable desire, transgression , liminality and perversity, The figure of the homosexual is as much a liminal figure — between desire and crime — in noir as the boxer, the gangster or the gambler, usually not given as much screen time, thus condensed into a more potent signifier. It has its romance but must then also have had social consequences: all those sad young men looking at these images, often the only ones available. It now has a certain romance but one can understand why it then politicised critics like Vito Russo.

When I first saw UN FLIC, I took the representations of gay and trans figures in this film as homophobic. Having now seen the film again, I see it differently. There’s an understanding and a generosity in the figure of Coleman as played by Delon and as filmed by Melville. Note the sympathy in the blackmail scene to the elderly man. Note too that he could have arrested him but doesn’t. Lastly, see how the elderly victim also asks Coleman not to ‘kill the sinner,’ ie. not to be too rough on the young boy. They’re all in this world, one not of their own making, together, even if each has to play a designated role not chosen by them. The old man is sympathetic to the young boy, just as Coleman is to him.

The complexity of this representation is underlined in Inspector Coleman’s dealings with his trans informant. See the exchange of glances in the clip above, the softness with which she says ‘Merci Edouard’, but in voice-over on his face. The way they look at each other suggests a tenderness, a hint that there might have been something between them. Note how the camera stays on Delon’s face at the end, a hint of — a smile, something suggesting tenderness or sympathy — appears.

This is underlined in the subsequent scene, where inspector Coleman thinks she’s been misinforming him. He’s no longer Eduard but inspector Coleman, hits her, calls for the cops to ‘get this thing out of here’. She’s no longer a person but a thing, dehumanised. And yet when the cops ask her if he wants them to book her he says, ‘no, take her out’. He could have booked her, just as he could have jailed the elderly gay man previously, but doesn’t. Melville again films this so interestingly, note in the clip above how she looks at him longingly, bewildered. He turns his back on her, the camera zooms in on her face, still expressing a surprise but also longing. The camera then follows her in a fantastic shot filmed from outside as she makes her way through all the various police procedurals and onto the street, the camera getting closer as she leaves the shot. No quips, no wise-cracks, no defiance; a sense of being hurt, misunderstood betrayed, in a world between police headquarters and the street, both filmed as a kind of jail. Our sympathy is with her. Expressing that, and what she might feel, and how what she might feel is a commentary on the film’s world —  to not only re-humanise her but for that moment make her the locus of our perception and understanding — is the shot’s sole purpose. It’s beautiful.

It’s a structure of feeling the film shares with Aznavour’s ‘What Makes a Man’:

‘I ask myself what I have gotAnd what I am and what I’m notWhat have I givenBut an answers come from those who makeThe rules that some of us must breakJust to keep living

I know my life is not a crimeI’m just a victim of my timeI stand defencelessNobody has the right to beThe judge of what is right for meTell me if you canWhat make a man a man
The Aznavour version can be seen here

UN FLIC  is full of such extraordinary scenes. My favourite is that of Delon, cigarette dangling, stopping to play the piano. Deneuve steps out to look. He’s the object of her gaze but it’s her the camera lingers over. She catches his eye. He  smiles knowing that she’s been looking. A third person (Richard Crenna) enters and he’s called away. He blows her kisses. She does the same. But she’s already betrayed him. All this smokey perfection wafts through on a gentle jazz piano, sound and image masterfully conceptualised by Melville. It’s hard to think of who and what’s more perfect: he, she or the direction that’s orchestrating all of it.

The reason the scene above fascinates me is the gun in the bed, as potent a metaphor for noir as I’ve seen, here encouched in an ambivalence created by the doubling/reflection, distorted and partial of the mirror, the role play, the dialogue. She’s betraying him. Does he suspect at this point? Does he care?

Deneuve is a cold-blooded murderess. Delon lets her go, just as he let the gay man and the trans woman go. But here it’s not sympathy, or understanding so much as his feelings for her, which take precedence over her actions and the law. This film, all tinged in blue filters is all about that moral ambiguity.

 

I love the scene above where Paul Weber (Riccardo Cuciolla) the former bank manager turned bank robber is allowed to commit suicide. There are parallelisms and foreshadowings here. Paul’s wife (Simon Valère) is the third blonde in the film, the only law-abiding one. Melville does a wonderful thing  with lights when they are alone together in their flat, the wife turning on the light to try and find answers, the husband turning them off to block her; this is later reversed. In this scene Inspector Coleman allows Paul to commit suicide, just as he’ll do later with his friend (Simon) who he shares Cathy (Deneuve) with.

In the middle of the film, there’s a superb heist, where Richard Crenna steals a suitcases full of drugs and escapes via a helicopter. It’s a dazzling scene, a cinematic tour de force practically no dialogue, no music, very suspenseful, and it’s a clear influence on the helicopter scene in Mission Impossible, though the latter is in a different, more spectacular mode and a much louder tone, a different type of tour de force but a tour de force nonetheless.

It’s a truly great film, the above merely a hint of its pleasures an complexities. It was also Melville’s last.

 

Michail J. Glass and I discussed it previously on a podcast here:

221 – Un flic

José Arroyo

Red Sun (Terence Young, 1970)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

The kind of movie Quentin Tarantino likes: lots of action, excitingly filmed, with characters that are all attitude and swagger, visual sweep, dead-pan tough-guy humour and not much substance. This one is sumptuously mounted and directed by Terence Young, fresh of his recent successes with Bond (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Thunderball) and others (Wait Until Dark), to take advantage of its sometimes snowy, mountainous Spanish locations. One of the ways you can tell it was filmed in Spain is that when the characters are eating you find the traditional bread, lemns and a big serrano ham on the table. The great Henri Alekan makes the most of the stars, the locations and the light: it looks gorgeous throughout. The director and cinematographer combine to incite real visual pleasure in the light, the mountains, the way the horses move in the landscape, a great shoot-out near the end filmed through reeds. Charles Bronson had not yet headlined and American production. But this is one of a series of films that would make him into an international box-office star without yet having made a dent at the US box office; something akin to what happened with Clint Eastwood a little bit earlier, and Bronson, approaching 50 was much older. This film is clearly indebted to Leone’s Westerns in various ways, particularly in Maurice Jarre’s attempt at personalising a Morricone style in the score. It’s great to see Alain Delon as a villain—a rare treat — all in black, with a silver tooth, much attitude and no scruples. Ursula Andress is the prostitute who loves him. Capucine is very charismatic as a Madam. Toshiro Mifune is one of the last of the Samurais who uneasily teams up with Bronson to return a sword intended as a gift from the Japanese emperor to the President of the United States in order to save the honour of Japan (and the Ambassador’s and the Samurai’s). Bronson only wants the money. There are many things to admire in this film: it moves beautifully, looks smashing, and is exciting to watch. It’s also one of those films in which every woman is either a prostitute or an innocent about to be raped; Mexicans are all victims; Comanches unknowable but for their violence and brutality. A blu-ray that looks terrific but with sound levels bouncing all over the place is still available; an indication that whatever its ultimate merits, the film has become a landmark or classic of some kind.

José Arroyo

Pour la peau d’un flic/ To Kill A Cop (Alain Delon, 1981)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

The more I view of Delon, the more impressive he becomes. In POUR LA PEAU D’UN FLIC, he directs as well as writes, produces and stars. He’s no Orson Welles. The film is but efficient fun. But he’s a lot savvier about driving a film to success than Welles ever was, and this was a big hit.

The film is a very cinephile one, with references to Cukor and his  HELLER IN PINK TIGHTS and LES GIRLS. We also see posters for DESERT FURY, THE BANDWAGON and many others. The most interesting aspect of the film is that it is already evidence of a certain playful postmodern turn.

George Cukor, connasse!

The film is a traditional polar based on a novel by Jean-Patrick Machette, just like TROIS HOMMES À ABBATRE, so there’s crime, and corruption, money laundering and drug deals. But here the darkness of TROIS HOMMES À ABBATRE is leavened by a comic tone. We see the kinds of quip-after-a-horror that we’d only see later in American cinema, with Schwarzenegger as the most famous practitioner.

It’s very self-referential of the genre and of Delon’s own star persona; Mireille Darc, his current girlfriend, makes a cameo and is insulted by a driver calling her by the name of oneJean of her films – LA GRANDE SAUTERELLE (above); Annie Parillaud, his future girlfriend, tells Delon how much more elegantly Belmondo reacts to pain (below).

The film also evidences the beginnings of a change in form that would be exacerbated through the eighties, not so much here by the way it intersperses the action (though that too, see below), but by the deployment of a soundtrack score (Crystal Gayle, Neil Diamond and many others, with Oscar Benton’s Bensonhurt Blues becoming a big hit), that requires a different kind of incorporation into the narrative and into the action. It’s a very enjoyable and interesting film.

The film is dedicated to Jean-Pierre Melville

José Arroyo

Trois hommes à abattre/ Three Men to Kill (Jacques Deray, 1980)

Uncategorized, , , , ,

Delon made 28 films in the 70s, also producing about half of them, including TROIS HOMMES À ABATTRE, one of his best, and one of his most successful in this period. In his seventh collaboration with director Jacques Deray, Delon plays a professional poker player who drives by what he thinks is a car accident, makes the mistake of playing good Samaritan, and takes the driver to the hospital. That car accident turns out to be a hit, one put out by a large and powerful conglomerate whose multi-million dollar arms sale depends on certain information not leaking. They think Delon knows something and they’re out to get him. It takes a while for him to realise what he’s experiencing is not a coincidence — someone’s really out to kill him — and starts fighting back. But how can one man win against so many powerful forces?

 

An excellent thriller, one Delon made in a conscious attempt to give  ‘his public’ what he thought they wanted; a shy, beautiful and lonely cat, content in his own business, but who can bare his claws and become dangerous when threatened. The film’s in colour but so bleak it ends in pitch black noir mode; with an ending so dark Delon’s distributor in Japan changed it for fear his fans wouldn’t find it acceptable; a surprise since, unike Belmondo,  dying in films was hardly new to Delon. In this period villains always seem to love cats and art as much as they disdain people — surely a nod to Blofield in Bond — and Pierre Dux makes the most of his role. I also loved seeing Dalila Di Lazzaro as Delon’s girlfriend, very beautiful, funny and sexy, completely relaxed and open to the camera. I’d never heard of her. A noir worth looking out for.

Delon seems to wear white socks throughout the film; a practice then in vogue but, as far as i can tell, never seen before or since with Delon.

José Arroyo

DEUX HOMMES DANS LA VILLE (José Giovanni, 1973).

Uncategorized, , , , , ,

A plea against capital punishment, something director Giovanni knew something about. Under the name of Joseph Damiani, he was sentenced to death for three pre-meditated murders in ‘48. He’d been previously denied all civil rights for having been a collaborationist and a member of the PPF Fascist Party in ‘46’; and later, in ’49, he was sentenced for ten years for blackmailing hidden Jews during the Occupation. Damiani was pardoned after serving 11 years and encouraged to write about his experiences. Under the name of José Giovanni, he wrote 24 novels, a staple of Serie Noir. Some were adapted to films —  LE TROU (Jacques Becker, 1960); CLASSE TOUS RISQUES (Claude Sautet, 1964); LE DEUXIÈME SOUFFLE adapted first by Jean-Pierre Melville in 1966 and later by Alain Corneau in 2007 – and they too became classics of a kind. I want to know more about Damiani/Giovanni.

I’ve not read any of Giovanni’s novels. But his films are coarse, pulpy, lacking in subtlety and depth and visually perfunctory. DEUX HOMMES EN VILLE is a good example. It’s a message film, a plea against capital punishment. Delon is a bank robber released thanks to the support of his social worker, Jean Gabin. Everything goes well until the policeman who sent him in ends up in the same provincial town and begins to make his life so impossible Delon ends up killing him in a rage and paying for it with his neck. It all culminates in a preachy court-room scene where Capital Punishment is decried as Delon is found guiltuy and followed by a crudely conceived guillotine scene – where all the film has led to, its singular point. Gabin gives the only un-interesting performance I’ve seen him give: sure, smug, patronising. It is nonetheless a pleasure to see him with Delon. Depardieu also appears in a small role, making of this film an opportunity to see three giants of French cinema together. The best performance in the film is Michel Bouquet as the Javert-like inspector who hounds Delon’s ex-con to the point of insanity and onto the guillotine.

DEUX HOMMES EN VILLE  was a big hit. It was remade in 2014 as TWO MEN IN TOWN by Rachid Bouchareb, with Harvey Keitel and Forest Whitaker in the Gabin and Delon roles respectively. I saw it in a restored version that looks crisp but. given what a trial it was to sit through, I didn’t much care. Delon produced.

José Arroyo

Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1942)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

Next to LE CERCLE ROUGE (Melville, 1970), MR. KLEIN is Delon’s greatest film of the 70s, the Canal + restoration so gorgeous that I’m still frustrated I couldn’t rip it to share some images with you. I suspect my external blu-ray drive doesn’t accept 4k and would welcome recommendations for a new one.
Robert Klein (Delon)is an antiques dealer profiting from the difficulties facing in Paris, 1942. We encounter him buying a Dutch master from someone who needs gold to escape in a hurry. He’s ever so apologetic, ‘I’m embarrassed to be buying at these prices’. ‘Then why do you?’ answers the man whom circumstances force to accept the deal. As he’s escorting the client out, the postman delivers a copy of ‘Informations Juives’, the Jewish community newspaper, addressed to him. Cognisant of the dangers this presents, he goes to the police to claim, as in so many Hitchcock narratives, that he’s the wrong man; and this sets a chain of events where as he begins searching for the other, Jewish, Robert Klein, and as the system increasingly begins to treat him as a Jew, he begins to question his own identity, increasingly admires the other Robert Klein, who seems to be loving, resisting, fighting back. By the end he becomes ‘The Other,’ but at great cost, as the film ends with the infamous Vel d’Hiv round up of Parisian Jews, where the French government itself delivered 13, 152 jews to the Germans, who promptly put them on trains to extermination camps. The extent of the French authorities’ collaboration was only beginning to come to light as MR. KLEIN was being released and might account for it not being a hit. It’s an extraordinary film. It took me most of yesterday to see because it’s a film about dread that evokes and makes you feel it, that dread increases and doesn’t let up until the final frame, so I used the pause button a lot, and I wish I hadn’t, a weakness, as one destroys all the filmmakers’ rhythms. I wish I’d seen it on a big screen.
There are many extraordinary scenes in this astonishing film. Reviewers often mention the opening, where a phrenologist measures and pokes a middle-aged woman to deduce whether she will be awarded the ‘not Jewish’ certificate on which her safety depends. I’ll merely highlight another,  a metonym for the film as a whole, a musical number based on the anti-semitic Jud Süs, where performers denigrate jews for the benefit of an audience including Nazi officials, but in which some of the performers are clearly men in drag, no doubt soon to follow the jews into the cattle cars provided by the Nazis. it’s a film full of such portentous moments.
Delon was one of the producers of this film and made it possible. I love the billing on the poster ‘Delon, Losey, Mr. Klein’ highlighting auteurism but putting the star system above all.
José Arroyo

LES SEINS DE GLACE/ ICY BREASTS/ SOMEONE IS BLEEDING (Georges Lautner, 1974)

Uncategorized, , , ,

When Delon died, the obituaries acknowledged his beauty and his stardom but were a bit sniffy about his acting. Watching his films from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, mainly in genre movies that he often produced himself, I’m amazed by his range: he plays working class blokes, aristocrats, haute bourgeois, gangsters, outsiders, villains; and he’s convincing as/in all. The only thing I haven’t seen him in is stylised comedy. I’ve also noted his generosity. He often turns over the films, in which he is always top-billed, to his female co-star (Annie Girardot in TRAITEMENT DE SHOCK or Mireille Darc in SEINS DE GLACE, often delaying his appearance until ¼ or a 1/3 of the way into the narrative). He’s completely self-assured, relaxed, and unafraid to surround himself with the very best actors (Signoret, Meurisse, Gabin, Girardot etc.,  all in this period). And for a man of such beauty, he lacks vanity. Note how he’s filmed in LE GITAN, stubbly, tired, puffy-eyed, from unflattering angles; and think how Warren Beatty in the same period would never have allowed himself to be thus filmed  (remember the hassle Beatty put the marketing department through to make sure his crotch was right in the posters for HEAVEN CAN WAIT).

In LES SEINS DE GLACE Claude Brasseur, cuddly and open-faced (he sleeps under a Snoopy blanket) falls in love with a mysterious woman walking on the beach. He asks her out and she eventually consents. She’s afraid. But of what? Is someone after her? Certainly corpses seem to multiply in her wake. But is it her, or is it Alain Delon, her lawyer, completely besotted with her but unfortunately married?

LES SEINS DE GLACE is clearly designed as a showcase for Mireille Darc, Delon’s then girlfriend, and she does have a fabulous body, fully on display, but has a simian lower jaw, which careless cinematography by Maurice Fellous here highlights, and a limited range of expression. That said, this is an efficient psychological thriller, with a surprisingly romantic if dark ending, heavy-handed in its symbolism, making too much use of the zooms so characteristic of the period but sufficiently entertaining. It was a considerable hit.

The film is based on Richard Matheson’s Someone is Bleeding (1953), his first novel

José Arroyo

 

Le Gitan/ The Gypsy (José Giovanni, 1975)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

A film full of attractions that don’t quite pay off. Alain Delon, Annie Girardot and Renato Salvatore re-unite after their great success a generation earlier in ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (Luchino Visconti, 1960) but Renato now round-faced and full girth is but one of many Delon sidekicks; and Girardot only appears 2/3rds into the film (why she took this role at the height of her box office is a mystery). Indeed, both are marginal to this narrative. The film is a dual story of two criminals chased by the police: A Gypsy (Delon), an ascetic who eschews even wine, freshly escaped from jail, who has no qualms about committing whatever crime is necessary to help his people; and Yan Kuq (Paul Meurisse), a high end jewel thief from a low-end background who steals as a form of class revenge and as a means to live the high-life. Their paths only accidentally cross when the police keep chasing after one and finding another.

It’s a crudely directed film, with Delon badly dressed at the beginning  (see above) with a ludicrous hat, a thick moustache and an earring. He becomes more effective as the film unfolds and common sense begins to assert itself on the costuming. The film does underline the oppression of Romani people but is mostly concerned with capers, shoot-outs and car chases

It has an amazing opening shot (see above) beginning in a beautiful bourgeois beach and ending on a run-down romani encampment; a fantastic star entrance for Delon (see below); a superb score played by Django Reinhardt; and very compelling performances from all the leads.

It’s a film where you can tell Delon is a gypsy because he wears an earring (see below)

 

 

José Arroyo

Diaboliquement vôtre/ Diabolically Yours (Julien Duvivier, 1967)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

Duvivier’s last film, unfavourably reviewed upon release and a rare box-office failure for Delon in this period. Today, it is disadvantageously compared to Julio Medem’s The Red Squirrel, rightly so, but I rather liked it. It’s a psychological thriller with Gothic elements but with Delon as the damsel in distress.

Alain Delon has a terrible accident, loses his memory, but finds himself with a beautiful wife, master of a lovely chateau. But why is there only one servant (Peter Mosbacher, in yellowface)? Why does he have nightmares about the Algerian war when he’s meant to have been carousing in Hong Kong? Why does he keep hearing thoughts of suicide in his sleep? Why do chandeliers keep dropping on his head? Why is his own Doberman hungry for his throat? Why did he almost fall from the attic and into sharp objects? Is someone trying to kill him? Could it be his wife? The kinky Chinese servant? The Doctor/Best Friend? And why?

The plot of the first two thirds of the film bear comparison with a gender-reversed Gaslight with Delon in the Bergman role. The last third is too obvious, pat and unconvincing. It’s a high-budget film (Duvivier, Delon, Henri Decoin as dop) that nonetheless feels under-produced. It’s a four-hander in a huge house, where the frame often feels empty. The whole film could have been more atmospheric; and whilst Delon is terrific, everyone else, particularly Senta Berger as the wife, could have been better, or at least more animated. Still, a terrific premise, entertaining if not quite good.

José Arroyo

Traitement de choc (Alain Jessua, 1973)

Uncategorized, , , , ,

In the ‘50s there was a fashion for ageing celebrities such as Dietrich and Noel Coward to go to a clinic in Switzerland – since the basis of the famous La Prairie brand of beauty products — to receive Dr. Niehans cellular treatment, where it was rumoured they got injected with sheep foetuses to reverse ageing. Traitement de choc (Alain Jessua, 1973) takes this a step further and makes the practice a parable for capitalism. In the 1970s France was dependent on migrant workers from Spain and Portugal as cheap labour to fuel their economy. And the film is quite explicit about this, beginning and ending with the arrival of a different set of migrant workers. Here it is not just their labour that is exploited but also their very organs, which are the basis for the rejuvenation serum  the rich and powerful rely on. Annie Girardot — then French Cinema’s most popular actress, is a chic career woman who’s made a fortune in prêt-à- porter but is now looking to hold back time. When her gay best friend commits suicide under suspicious circumstances she begins to investigate. Alain Delon, in my favourite phase of his career – still beautiful but visibly ageing; cruel to most women to the point of misogyny but tender and vulnerable to at least one; an archetypally Gothic type of hero but for Delon being too selfish and ruthless to suffer; is the sexy but evil Doctor. Sleeping with all of the female clients seems to be part of the treatment. The film is no great shakes as cinema but is a very efficient thriller, a successful star vehicle for Girardot and Delon – both then at the height of their box-office – with modernist 70’s design and chic early 70s fashions, low-belted dress shirts that hug and show off a figure, light green plastic jackets. It also a quite powerful social critique. Oh, and in keeping with the fashion of the day, both stars appear naked. The film was released in the UK as DOCTORS IN THE NUDE to exploit Delon’s full-frontal nude scenes. There must have been something in the air that year because ASH WEDNESDAY (Larry Peerce, 1973) also draws on the clinic for inspiration, but to different ends. The film has a lovely Brazailian-influenced score by René Koering.

José Arroyo

Burt in Scorpio

Uncategorized, , , ,

Michael Winner’s films are remarkable in that his camera placements always seems off. How he got to make so many is one of the great mysteries. Luckily you can’t go much wrong with close-ups of stars. This is from Scorpio, which also stars Alain Delon and Paul Scofield:

 

burt-scorpio2

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 224 – Le Cercle rouge

Eavesdropping at the Movies, Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

Listen on the players above, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.

We conclude our dalliance with Jean-Pierre Melville with 1970’s Le Cercle rouge, a heist film with an impressive cast of Alain Delon, Gian Maria Volonté, and Yves Montand. We discuss how genre conventions operate in the film – the shortcuts an understanding of genre provides allow details to make the difference, Mike suggesting that it all comes out through character relationships and quirks.

In discussing Le Cercle rouge, we think back on what we’ve learned about Melville’s style, themes and interests. For Melville, emotional attachment is dangerous and makes one vulnerable; it’s a rather bleak outlook, but José argues that his films aren’t without their romantic aspects. Mike remarks upon the way in which Melville’s style has been interpreted and appropriated by the filmmakers he influenced, noting that the vivacity with which, for instance, Quentin Tarantino effuses about Melville is not reflective of Melville’s films themselves, which are slower and more pensive than you might be led to expect. To José, it’s existentialist cinema through and through, and, naturally, he loves it.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 221 – Un flic

Eavesdropping at the Movies, podcast, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

Listen on the players above, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.

Jean-Pierre Melville’s final film, Un flic (A Cop), has a bleak feel, its characters isolated amongst harsh architecture and the neverending business of cops and robbers. Alain Delon’s cop follows the trail of Richard Crenna’s thief, whilst handling informants, other cases, and an occasional relationship with Catherine Deneuve.

It’s a film in which feeling shows through small actions, glances, and behaviour. The cop has seen the worst of humanity and carries a weariness with him, but that just makes his capability for generous gestures more meaningful. Mike remarks upon the similarity between cop and thief, both going about their work with a sense of lifeless inertia. We also note the central heist sequence’s clear influence on the climactic set-piece in Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible, comparing the ways in which the scenes work and what their intended effects may be, and José comments on the film’s blue-tinged look, something that contributes greatly to its sense of melancholy.

Those of you interested might follow up with Le samourai, Bob le flambeur, L‘armée  des ombres/ Army of Shadows and other Melville films.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

L’eclisse in a few words and images

The affair is ended. Money’s made and lost. Empire’s over but colonial relations return as the not-so-repressed oversexed stereotypes, and in black-face. I wish I didn’t love you. I wish I loved you more. But then maybe one shouldn’t love at all. One is fundamentally alone. Even when you have feelings for someone as gorgeous, rich and uncomplicated as Alain Delon, and he’s crazy about you, human relationships are like kissing someone through glass. None of it matters anyway because the Atom bomb will get us all.

Screen Shot 2018-06-14 at 13.21.56.png
Hasta la vista Paco — The end of the affair.
Screen Shot 2018-06-16 at 09.44.48.png
Money’s made and lost

 

Screen Shot 2018-06-16 at 09.42.45.png
Empire’s over but colonial relations return as the not-so-repressed oversexed stereotypes, and in blackface.

Screen Shot 2018-06-15 at 16.18.55.png

Screen Shot 2018-06-15 at 16.19.04.png

Screen Shot 2018-06-15 at 14.08.18

Screen Shot 2018-06-16 at 09.41.32.png
One is fundamentally alone. Human relationships are like kissing someone through glass.
Screen Shot 2018-06-16 at 09.45.23.png
None of it matters anyway because the atom bomb will get us all

Hanna Leiß has done a wonderful essay on how, ‘Vertical lines in the background of the image composition visually separate the two lovers in each and every shot from each other,’ which can be seen here:

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/filmadrid-mubi-the-video-essay-l-eclisse-lines

José Arroyo

Delon Love in L’eclisse

delon2.gif

Delon+Deneuve=Perfection

Delon, cigarette dangling, stops to play the piano. Deneuve steps out to look. He’s the object of her gaze but it’s her the camera lingers over. She catches his eye. He  smiles knowing that she’s been looking. A third person enters and he’s called away. He blows her kisses. She does the same. But she’s already betrayed him. All this smokey perfection wafts through on a gentle jazz piano, sound and image masterfully conceptualised by Melville. It’s hard to think of who and what’s more perfect: he, she or the direction that’s orchestrating all of it.

 

José Arroyo