The one actor Alain Delon called the greatest ever: “20 years ahead of his time”
Alain Delon, never one to hand out compliments lightly, once reserved some rare praise for an often-overlooked gem of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Not many actors have managed to embody the idea of being “cool” quite like Alain Delon. He was right at the heart of the French film industry’s shake-up in the latter half of the 20th century. If a French director made waves and left a mark on cinema, odds are Delon crossed paths with them. He worked with the likes of Agnès Varda, Louis Malle, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Luchino Visconti, establishing himself as a proper who’s who of European film royalty.
Although Delon is associated with many subgenres of French cinema, he helped to pioneer the contemporary neo-noir style within classics like Le Samouraï and Purple Noon, both of which had a staggering influence on global filmmaking and inspired countless imitators. It should come as no surprise that one of Delon’s acting heroes was someone who had the same degree of impact on the earliest stage of the noir genre, which originated a few decades prior in America.
The noir genre was born out of paperback or “dime-store” novels that centred on mysterious hard-boiled detectives and reluctant heroes who were drawn into complex cases of intrigue and deceit. One of the earliest entries in the genre was Body and Soul, an intense drama about a powerful boxer who is surrounded by corrupting influences. While Body and Soul hasn’t quite retained the reputation that it may deserve, it did earn an Academy Award nomination for its lead actor, John Garfield.
Garfield had previously been nominated in the same category nearly a decade earlier for his role in the 1938 musical Four Daughters, but he soon developed a style of “method acting” in which he would become completely engrossed in his characters. While Garfield was working at a time in the industry in which there was significantly less press centred around the actual craft of performances, his techniques became highly influential on many of the stars that followed him, including James Dean and Marlon Brando.
It was Delon who claimed to The Los Angeles Times that Garfield was “20 years ahead of his time”. Although he also expressed admiration for Montgomery Cliff and Robert Walker, Delon said that “with Garfield, you could feel something coming from his guts”.
Delon’s reference to Garfield being better-suited for an industry two decades down the road isn’t just an acknowledgement of how ahead-of-the-curve his acting strategies were, but a note on the late actor’s tragic passing. It was during the height of his career that Garfield, along with many other popular Hollywood actors, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify about their alleged communist connections.
Although Garfield denied his involvement, he also refused to rat out anyone, which resulted in him getting blacklisted. It couldn’t have come at a worse time, as his performance in The Postman Always Rings Twice was hailed as a work of genius, and eventually even inspired a remake starring Jack Nicholson.
Tragically, the stress of being called to the national stage and the subsequent collapse of his career led Garfield to an early death at the age of 39 from a heart attack that was most likely brought upon by stress. While it’s deeply unfortunate that Hollywood has made its best efforts to erase Garfield and his groundbreaking methods from the history books altogether, icons like Delon have the good sense to keep his memory alive.
