CANNES Festival 2019

[Chris Knipp]

Controversy over that special Palm for French film actor Alain Delon.


ALAIN DELON [VARIETY]

The Cannes Film Festival is going forward with its decision to award an honorary Palme d’Or to Alain Delon despite criticism from the U.S. organization Women and Hollywood over comments that the veteran French actor has made about slapping women, opposing the adoption of children by same-sex parents [he's called it "against nature"] and supporting the rise of the far right in France.
VARIETY

Alain Delon is one of the most glamorous and iconic French movie stars of all time. The French are not amused by the PC American condemnation of Delon's getting an honorary Palme at 83, and call it a reversion to the McCarthyism of the Fifties. When one thinks of Delon one particularly recalls René Clément's classic Patricia Highsmith adaptation Purple Noon/Plein soleil and Jean-Pierre Melville's noir masterpieces Le Samouraï and Un flic. With his cool, hard-edged French male beauty and subtle physical acting, Delon is one of the great ones, whatever bad views he has expressed on talk shows as a sad old man. AS Frémaux said, this is not the Nobel Prize, it's a movie award. He was also chosen by Antonioni to costar with Monica Vitti in L'Eclisse.


ALAIN DELON IN RENÉ CLÉMENT'S PURPLE NOON