Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon on the set of Borsalino.
What happens when you put two of the icons of 1960's French New Wave cinema together in the same movie? You get 1970's Borsalino, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon. Borsalino is a gangster movie, a buddy pic that plays a bit like a French version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The movie is all about the chemistry and charisma of the two stars. And that's enough to make an entertaining movie when the two stars are Belmondo and Delon.
Belmondo and Delon are well paired. They were two very charismatic men, but they each had a distinctly different appeal. Belmondo's nose had been flattened thanks to his early career as a boxer, and movie producers initially thought he was "too ugly" to be a leading man. But audiences didn't care, as Belmondo brought a sexy physicality to his roles, and a huge amount of charm. Delon, on the other hand, was classically handsome, with a beauty that was almost feminine. Both men had breakout films released in 1960: Belmondo opposite Jean Seberg in Breathless, and Delon in Plein Soliel, known in English-speaking countries as Purple Noon. Throughout the rest of the decade, Belmondo and Delon dominated European cinema, releasing hit after hit.
As Borsalino begins, we see Delon's character getting out of jail. A lot of Delon's movies start this way. Delon tracks down his girlfriend Lola, who is now with Belmondo's character. It seems superfluous to call the characters that Delon and Belmondo play by their character names, rather than the actors, since we're really watching Delon and Belmondo play variations on their film personas. After a fistfight, Delon and Belmondo join forces to try and conquer the underworld of 1930's Marseilles.
Borsalino is the first movie of Belmondo's I've seen, and I enjoyed him in it. Belmondo reminded me a bit of Steve McQueen; he has the same kind of rugged charm and masculinity. Belmondo has this extroverted charm that just pours out of him in every scene. I was surprised to see that Belmondo was shorter than Delon.
Delon is fantastic, of course. Just watch the first few minutes of the movie. Your attention is riveted on Delon, but he's not doing anything. He just commands the screen, very much like Gary Cooper. Speaking of Gary Cooper, Delon said he wanted the movie to have a title that did not need to be translated into different languages—he wanted a title like Vera Cruz, the 1954 western with Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster. So, the movie was titled Borsalino, after the Italian hat maker of the same name, whose hats were popular with gangsters during the era in which the movie is set. It's interesting that Delon mentioned Vera Cruz, since there are some similarities in the casting of the two movies. You have the vibrant, outsized, charismatic performer, Burt Lancaster and Jean-Paul Belmondo, paired with the reserved man of few words, Gary Cooper and Alain Delon. I hadn't thought of Cooper and Delon being similar before, but they both had that presence. They could be watching paint dry, and yet it registers on film, and the audience would be happy to watch them. That's a skill that not every performer has.
The costumes and period details in Borsalino are wonderful to see. I don't think Belmondo's sideburns are accurate to the 1930's, but who cares. When Delon shows Belmondo his new house/nightclub, Delon asks, "What do you think of it?" Belmondo replies, "It's very opulent." That struck my wife and I as a very funny passive-aggressive non-answer to Delon's query.
Towards the end of the movie there are some scenes where Delon is wearing a white tuxedo in his new, opulent house/nightclub, and I thought again how perfect Delon would have been as Jay Gatsby. In Manhattan, audiences actually applauded when Delon appeared on screen wearing his white tuxedo. Delon had everything needed to play Gatsby: a stoic, brooding romanticism, and the gangster danger hiding just beneath the surface. People say of Gatsby "He looks like he's killed a man," and Nick Carraway describes Gatsby looking that way during the confrontation at the Plaza Hotel with Tom Buchanan. Alain Delon had that look. Carraway also describes Gatsby's smile as affirming all the best parts of someone. Delon had that kind of smile too.
Borsalino has great theme music by Claude Bolling, which will no doubt get stuck in your head. It's so perfectly of the time: 1920's and 1930's jazz filtered through a late 1960's sensibility. I was also struck by how many scenes don't have music underscoring them, which surprised me a bit.
Delon's production company produced Borsalino, and it was directed by Jacques Deray, who had directed Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet, and Jane Birkin in the steamy thriller La Piscine the previous year. Supposedly, Delon and Belmondo had to have the same numbers of closeups in Borsalino. I didn't count the closeups, but I felt like Belmondo had slightly more to do in the movie, since his character has romantic subplots, and Delon's character doesn't. It seems like a bit of a waste to have Alain Delon in a movie and not have a romantic plot for him. Instead, he just goes around looking romantically detached from things and vaguely unhappy.
After Borsalino was released, Belmondo actually sued Delon because the words "An Alain Delon Production" appeared on screen before Belmondo's name, even though when their names appear on screen in the title credits, Belmondo's appeared in front of Delon's. Sigh, egos can be so fragile. At some point, Belmondo and Delon must have patched up their differences, as they starred together in 1998's Half a Chance. Delon and Belmondo remained friends for the rest of their lives. Both men were 88 years old when they died, Belmondo in 2021 and Delon in 2024.
As a film, Borsalino is more of an entertainment than a work of art. But it is splendidly entertaining. After I watched Borsalino, I thought how lucky we are that this movie exists. There are a million times in life when things don't work out, when schedules or the stars do not align. Borsalino is a movie where things worked out—when Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon made a movie together at the height of their handsomeness and star power. Borsalino is far from perfect, but I'm very glad it exists.
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