Alain Delon, Big Screened

Cinephiles with a long view of history — versus just a desire to soak up new releases — have been given a gift by the Riviera Theatre. The state-of-the-art venue, run and owned by the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, has begun screening older classics and broadening the historical overview of its program in recent months.

As a prime example, the Riviera is presenting the 4K restoration of Jean-Pierre Melville’s sleek portrait of an assassin, Le Samouraï, starting on Friday, May 10, and expanding the focus into a micro-festival showcasing the film’s coolly charismatic star, Alain Delon. Delon acolytes and film geeks can also savor the big screen context for the films The Leopard and Rocco and His Brothers — both directed by Luchino Visconti — along with the Melville-directed Le Cercle Rouge, Jacques Deray’s La Piscine, and René Clément’s Purple Noon. The latter is the first screen treatment of Patricia Highsmith’s devious Mr. Ripley character, later made popular by Jude Law and director Anthony Minghella in 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley and currently being portrayed on television (Netflix) by the talented Mr. Andrew Scott, who was feted at the 2024 SBIFF. 

[Click to enlarge] Alain Delon film posters. | Credit: Courtesy

Le Samouraï is a cinematic wonder unto itself, richly deserving a renewed big screen close up. Melville’s cool, cutting sense of style tapping into his new wave roots and neo noir and exerting a long influence over cinema. Echoes of the film can be detected in the case of Drive — starring Carpinterian Ryan Gosling — and David Fincher’s arty assassin saga of last year, The Killer, with Michael Fassbender channeling the unruffled detachment of Delon’s Jef Costello character in Le Samouraï.

As in The Killer, Le Samouraï follows the razor’s edge trajectory of an assassin whose sloppiness costs him the dogged pursuit of the law and the nasty disfavor of his employers. Delon’s wife Nathalie Delon plays a half-interested love interest, and Cathy Rosier, playing a Black pianist, is teetering between coziness and deadly peril. Jef’s closest friend, and spy, is his pet bird, as the fedora and trench-coated figure slinks through the mean streets and gives up nothing with his handsome poker face. Melville’s mise en scène proceeds with a seductive lurk, contrasting Hollywood-style grit and crime cinema cliches.

In short, the film warrants a visit to the Riv, especially in its newly polished 4K duds. “Mad About Delon” runs May 10-June 6 at the Riviera Theatre. For a complete schedule and additional details see sbiffriviera.com/mad-about-delon.