2024-01-19 22:03:54
At 88 years old, the “last star”, as Jean-Pierre Melville called him, still fascinates. Just as much as the heartbreaks that run through his clan.
Alain Delon is the last great star of cinema, director Jean-Pierre Melville said of him, immediately adding (in his book of interviews with Rui Nogueira): “He is the last star I know, that goes without saying for France but I refer to the whole world. And like the great stars of the 1930s, he sacrificed this obligation, that of maintaining major scandals.” More than sixty years have passed since Samurai, but even at 88, Alain Delon is still our last star. What can they understand, today’s people, with their volatile fame inflated on a very small screen, voracious of transparency, of the illusion of proximity, of assertive parenthood, of exemplary ethics and permanent availability, everything what Alain Delon has always rejected? Even the obligation to maintain scandals is always there too, willy-nilly, without his agreement or on the contrary of his own schemes, not dissatisfied with him in the depths of his public heartbreaks between the darling daughter, the cursed son, the sacrificed youngest and the lady in waiting.
Sociologists have long believed that our fascination with celebrities reassures us, showing us that our personal failures are only pale reflections of the calamities that befall much prettier and wealthier people. But can we really be reassured in the face of the violence of this family confrontation? “I fired a warning shot,” Anthony Delon told us, admitting to having fired first. It was Melville who had already predicted the outcome: “No matter the ups and downs, a character like the Samurai never loses, not him, not really.”
#Delon #clan #fascination #Libération