Today is the funeral of Alain Delon. His children rejected the offer of a state funeral in the "Invalids" and they decided to shorten his last journey - he will rest in the small chapel in his mansion in Dushi, sent by about 40 relatives and friends.
This must have been the will of Delon himself, given his disgust with the present world, which he had scornfully decided to leave even at the cost of suicide.
In the media paraded all kinds of low-quality subjects - modern directors, producers, journalists, penkellers, intriguers - who forced upon us the scandalous episodes of Alain Delon's life - how bad a person he was and how many destinies he had ruined. And I remembered an old interview with him and the reporter's question:
- They say you have a bad character - is it true?
To which Delon replied:
- No. I just HAVE character."
Alain Delon was not only a great French actor. He was France. The real, the wonderful, not subject to darkness and vulgarity, France. France of the French. France, which was cut down before our eyes.
A poignant example of how the common French mourns this titan, I found in a modest YouTube video created and uploaded by an author named Laurent Bartolucci of Line Press, in the early morning of August 18th, immediately following the news of Delon's passing. Bartolucci goes with his camera in front of Delon's property in Duchy and there he finds twenty people who have come spontaneously, at dawn, to pay their respects to the Samurai or the Cheetah - as Delon is called in his homeland, although in Visconti's immortal film based on the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, enters not in the image of Prince Salina (whose coat of arms is the cheetah), but in the difficult and ambiguous role of Tancredi.
Bartolucci turns to a man in borsalino and dark glasses, masterfully playing old tunes on the accordion - from Delon's youth.
- Who are you, where do you live, why did you come - asks the journalist from Line Press.
The man with the borsalino answers that he does not live in Dushi, but in another town. He heard the news of Delon's death on the first news of the day. He grabbed the accordion and arrived right in front of the iron gate of the mansion.
- I felt that I should be here - said the accordionist simply.
And it continued to play.