Updated May 21, 2024 at 5:00 p.m.*
At the age of 26, he was a global heartthrob and enfant terrible of the French cinema, but Alain Delon already had already gained some serious silver screen credibility, notably with his role as Rocco Parondi in Italian director Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960).
At Cannes in 1962, photographers were focusing on Delon’s love story with another icon of European cinema: German-French actress Romy Schneider. In this photograph, Delon is pictured between Schneider and another emerging screen legend, from Italy: Sophia Loren.
Four years later, at age 31, Loren would become president of the jury of the festival — and remains, to this day, the youngest to hold the position. As for Alain Delon, he went on to received an honorary Palme d’Or in 2019 for his acting exploits in such classics as Purple Noon and The Leopard.
Cannes Festival – Sophia Loren and Alain Delon’s entrance in 1962 (©INA/OneShot)
Who won what at Cannes that year?
L’Eclisse by Michelangelo Antonioni, is considered one of the Italian director’s important films.
Alain Delon, then 26, was in Cannes to defend the film, in the company of Romy Schneider who is starring in Boccaccio ’70, a comedy anthology film directed by Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Mario Monicelli and Luchino Visconti.
L’Eclisse went on to win the Jury Prize, tied with The Trial of Joan of Arc by Robert Bresson. Although it was nominated for the Palme d’Or, it lost to to O Pagador de Promessas, a Brazilian drama written and directed by Anselmo Duarte.
What was special about Cannes ’62?
In 1962, the French Union of Film Critics created the International Critics’ Week — the first parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival. Now simply known as “Critics’ Week” its objective is to discover and support new talents, showcasing first and second feature films by directors worldwide.
With a selection of seven feature films and ten short films, this non-official sidebar is said to have help put the spotlight on the likes of Bernardo Bertolucci, Philip Kaufman, Ken Loach, Wong Kar-wai, Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Justine Triet.
*First published May 18, 2018, this article was updated May 20, 2024 with context on the 15th edition of the Cannes film festival.
