“He was part of our lives in cinema-color and his charisma crossed all the boundaries between dream and reality,” the Canadian singer praised on X. “Nothing resisted his talent as a seducer with a steely gaze and the smile of a spoiled child.”
“His departure makes me sad. I will keep his words whispered in my ear like a shared happiness for the duration of a song,” reacted Celine Dion, referring to “Paroles… Paroles…” which she performed as a duet with the actor during a television show in 1996.
“Sympathies to his family and to those who loved him as a father, as a king, as a wolf that he was,” she adds before sharing their interpretation of Dalida’s hit.
Across the Atlantic, the New York Times describes a man as “intense and intensely handsome,” an “international star” courted by the greatest filmmakers of his time. “The most handsome man in the history of cinema,” sums up the New Yorker.
The trade journal Variety points out that “it is difficult for Americans to comprehend the extent of Delon’s celebrity in the 1960s and 1970s, not only in France but also in regions as diverse as Japan, Communist China (where a 1975 version of “Zorro” starring Delon as the folk hero was one of the first Western films shown in the country after the Cultural Revolution) and Latin America.”
The German press is splitting tributes in French in the text: “Thank you, genius!”, headlines the Munich regional daily Merkur, “Fatal man”, also suggests the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
“The aura of the handsome angel of death made him a cinema legend. He formed a dream couple with Romy Schneider, and not only on screen,” recalls the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
“If we had to sum up the history of cinema in a few moments, what would remain? Chaplin’s tramp, James Dean’s coolness, Marilyn Monroe’s high-waisted dress, Hitchcock’s shower scene and of course Alain Delon in +Le Samourai+,” says Deutsche Welle.
The French actor had a special connection with Italy, where he had made several films. “Great actor and great reactionary,” summed up the Italian daily La Repubblica about an ambivalent character, hailed for his on-screen prowess as much as for his physique, but also criticized for his positions on women or homosexuality.
The Italian press, such as Il Corriere della Sera, did not fail to praise the “handsome and cursed” star actor, who was elevated to the rank of “legend”.
“No one has forgotten his smile as Tancred in The Leopard,” says Il Corriere.