In his heyday the French screen idol Alain Delon had the image of half-angel, half-yob. Once his good looks began to fade in the Eighties, he turned his hand to directing, without notable success. In later years his acting roles were increasingly reduced to cameo parts. He nonetheless built up a profitable business, and his contacts with the underworld together with his appeal to women rarely kept him out of the news.
When Delon arrived in Saint Germain des Prés, Paris, in the 1950s, it was not existentialism that brought him there. He had nothing more to show for himself than his astonishing good looks. He was already haunted by the cinema, having been hooked on it by his father, a cinema manager, and his