The tribute paid in France and around the world to Alain Delon, who died on Sunday, August 18 at the age of 88, illustrates, if need be, his immense aura. Less well known is the influence in the world of cinema, and especially abroad, of the actor, who was also a director and producer.
If Rocco and his brothers (1960), a neo-realist film by Luchino Visconti, is a major date in Alain Delon’s career, it is in the detective genre that he will establish himself the same year in France with Full Sun by René Clément where he steals the show.
A sunny film, as its title suggests, set in the open sea aboard a sailboat helmed by Maurice Ronet accompanied by Marie Laforêt, the actor plays a very dark role that will definitively impose him by drawing a chilling character that will permeate his entire filmography, to the point of influencing filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino or John Woo. They were not the only ones to solicit him, since he refused the main role offered to him by Johnnie To in Revenge (2009) replaced by Johnny Hallyday. He will also and perhaps above all be a fashion icon in the archipelago: an ambassador of French elegance.
Reservoir Dogs (1992) is probably the first to summon the image of Alain Delon outside France, in the killers played by Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Tarantino himself and their acolytes, from the beginning of the film. Same black suits, white shirts and dark ties: a classic businessman elegance that blends them into the landscape, while expressing their coldness as executors of dirty work.
The reference to Alain Delon is notably there, in this new silhouette for the criminal in police films, now elegant and dark, like the Samurai imagined by Melville.
We will also find this slender image in pulp Fictionfrom the opening scene of the film, where John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson take over from those of Reservoir Dogs, into cold and implacable killers. The director will also find a feminine equivalent to this male model in the elegance of Jackie Brown, played by Pam Grier in the eponymous film.
However, if the silhouette and costumes of the killers of Reservoir Dogs and of pulp Fiction refer to the silhouette of Delon, they have nothing of the coldness of the French actor. More relaxed, not disdaining humor, their sarcasms detach them from the hieratic figure of the Frenchman.
“SIf the Japanese had been lucky enough to be white, he would have looked like Alain Delon“, declared the actor with a hint of self-sufficiency on the France 2 television news in April 1996. More than in France, Alain Delon is in Japan, or even in Asia, a “brand”: perfume, cigarettes, shoes, clothes bear his mark. Doesn’t the mute coldness of his roles recall the actors of the Kabuki theater of Land of the Rising Sun ?
It is no coincidence that his character as a hitman in The Samurai (1967) by Jean-Pierre Melleville uses the Japanese terminology which literally designates “he who serves (his lord)” until death. This is the fate that awaits Jeff Costello (known as the Samurai) in the last shot of the film.
If the dark side of the characters played by Delon will be expatriated into international cinema, the same will be true of this hieratic elegance that Melville invented in the portrait of his hitman: straight as an “i”, draped in his light raincoat and wearing a gray felt hat.
Like the American Quentin Tarantino, the Hong Konger John Woo has never hidden the influence of Melville on his films. First, we think of the French director in Face/Turn, where Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage), a dangerous terrorist, takes on the same classic silhouette that he will keep once he has grafted the face of Sean Archer, a CIA agent (John Travolta), to escape the forces of law and order and to foment his crimes.
Alain Delon has influenced many international filmmakers. The artist embodies the difference between the comedian and the actor. The first moves from role to role, the second interprets tailor-made characters, written for him, such as a Jean Gabin or a Louis de Funès. Alain Delon embodies a style. Which will not prevent him from going from cop to thug, but always with the same presence and elegance that characterize him.
In France, Daniel Auteuil and Pierre Niney claim it as their inspiration, abroad, George Clooney and Tom Cruise do not hide the fact that they have drawn inspiration from it in their performances, in Out of reach (Steven Soderbergh, 1998) for the first, or Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004) for the second. The Samurai will have a major influence on world cinema: Martin Scorsese (The Goodfellas1990), Michael Mann (Heat1995) or Jim Jarmusch (Down by Law1986)… Also, if we often identify the birth of the urban thriller with French Connection (1971) by William Friedkin, he is already at work in The Samuraiwhere Delon continues to haunt the streets of Paris.
In Italy, the “police officer” (neo-polar) derives directly from Melville’s films. The Middle Trilogy (Milan caliber 9, The Empire of Crime, The Boss) directed by Fernando Di Leo between 1972 and 1973 claims it and pays tribute to the French actor. The American director Antoine Fuqua, author of the franchise The Equalizer (2014-2023) states: “My biggest inspirations were foreign films from the 1970s, really (…). And of course, all those Alain Delon films, French films in particular, like The Samurai, with that kind of slow pace and character development as it unfolds. Those are the kinds of movies that inspire me.“. The same goes for Chad Stahelski, with his frankness John Wick (2014-2025) starring Keanu Reeves, who says he was inspired by Red circle (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970) and the Samurai.
The list of directors inspired by Melville’s model is endless: Yórgos Lánthimos, Jerry Schatzberg, Paul Schrader, Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Dario Argento, James Gray, Park Chan-wook… Who can claim such a legacy?