A big thank you to French cinema – Euractiv

Alain Delon, whose death was announced on Sunday, was a film star whose influence extended far beyond his native France and even into communist-era Eastern Europe, where he was an icon of Western and European culture, writes Georgi Gotev

Born in 1935, Delon was the last of the generation of French action and detective film actors of the 1960s and 1970s. He played hundreds of roles in France and Italy, some of which are very famous: Plenty of sunlight (1960), Rocco and his brothers (1960), warrior (1967), erotic thriller swimming pool (In 1969, he was paired with his real-life lover Romy Schneider) Sicilian clans (1969), Borsalino (1970), Mr. Klein (1976) and many others, to name a few For the policeman’s skin (1981), which he produced himself.

Delon and his cinema idol Jean-Paul Belmondo (died 2021) were hugely popular in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

It may sound strange, but unlike Hollywood films, French films easily made it past communist censorship and most films by actors like Delon, Belmondo and Louis De Funès could be seen in cinemas in smaller Bulgarian cities. Sadly, most of these cinemas that were so important in my youth have disappeared.

I’ll never forget the first time I watched this gangster comedy Borsalino It was at the Summer Cinema, an open-air cinema on the Black Sea in Bulgaria. I was twelve years old and it was a magical moment.

I also watched this movie multiple times due to the cheap ticket price, but I didn’t achieve the same level as some of my friends who saw it 20 times.

At the time, French cinema was an unrivalled window to the world. It also greatly influenced local filmmaking, and we even had our own actor, based on Delon, the great Stephen Danailov (1942-2019), who became a very popular Minister of Culture in the 1990s and was one of the stars of the iconic Italian series octopus.

I later realized that Delon and other French film stars of his generation were not that popular in the United States, and some of them tried to break the glass ceiling in Hollywood but failed.

Delon and others represent a kind of French soft power and European film culture, and we Bulgarians feel closer to it. A Slovak friend told me that his country is the same.

Today, Europe has introduced a series of policies to promote the production of European films and has received a lot of financial support. The European Commission believes that the film and audiovisual industry is essential to maintaining Europe’s cultural diversity and sovereignty.

But overall, European filmmaking still lags behind Hollywood, and there is little chance of that changing.

Surprisingly, the film generation symbolized by Delon did more to promote European culture and win worldwide admiration without any specific agenda or EU funding.

EU funding should not be a compensation for brain drain. Perhaps the EU should rethink its policy on financing film projects, and the reformulated policy should be named in a way that suggests its focus on talent.

The name Alain Delon undoubtedly symbolizes the power of talent.

(Editing by Alice Taylor)