T here is a famous photograph of Alain Delon in 1967 , sitting on a couch next to Marianne Faithfull, with a subdued Mick Jagger on the other side of her, apparently taken around the time Faithfull was about to star in The Girl on a Motorcycle , in which Faithfull modelled a sleek leather body suit that Delon’s character would take great delight in unzipping. Faithfull is leaning over intimately as Delon murmurs to her, laughing, lit up in his presence, her body language entirely enfolded into his. Jagger can only look down uneasily at his cigarette.
Later Faithfull would say that she didn’t fancy Delon one bit, but confirmed that Jagger was very jealous. Be that as it may, it is hard to think of anyone who, if only for a split second, could have upstaged Jagger at that moment, who could have drawn the gaze of Faithfull and the press cameras to him. And that is Delon, in all his eerie, heartstopping, almost extraterrestrial gorgeousness.
He was one of the most – maybe the most – beautiful male stars in cinema history. Delon had a mesmerically demure, long-lashed, almost feline look that could indicate something mysterious, or wounded, or malign, and was very different from the more candid Hollywood beauty of Paul Newman or Robert Redford – and Delon never made it in Hollywood. He had an unlocatable charisma to go with his beauty, the dangerous apparent passivity and stillness of a predator, and it was this that got him cast in some of the most fascinating crime pict.