Alain Delon
If Looks Could Kill
A new investigation takes a tremendously stylish trip back to late sixties Paris, where Alain Delon, then causing hearts to throb close to the point of hospitalisation, was deeply implicated in the infamous Affaire Markovic, an unsolved murder that threatened to spatter every tier of French society.
Has anywhere ever been cooler than France in the sixties? Tremendously good-looking people zipping between Paris and Saint-Tropez in impossibly stylish little cars, stopping only to do something passionate after shouting at each other, then puff on a Gitanes? There are a few candidates, but to qualify for consideration they have to have left a formidable cinematic record. Inescapable in France's own representation of the era is the figure of Alain Delon, possibly the most attractive man ever to have lived, possessor of a magnetism that turned even the toughest specimens to stuttering jelly, and who in his many roles as cops or delinquents played character after character that neither camera nor audience could quite credit what he was doing to them.
I always lived my roles, I never acted. — Alain Delon
The murder in question here, also described with a stylishness appropriate to the air of mystery and danger that Delon radiated, is a famous one in France, on a par with the British Profumo affair for the delicious tentacles of scandal it spread to unexpected levels of political responsibility. L'Affaire Markovic burst into life when a tramp discovered a body in a sack by the road in a rural section of southern Paris popular with fly-tippers, on October 1, 1968. Of course, it had to be France's year of maximum domestic drama. The head was badly smashed in, and one of the first gendarmes on scene noted that "these aren't the hands of a labourer."
The discovery eventually hinted at a lurid story.
A corpse in a plastic sheet. A legendary film star. A Prime Minister's wife. Blackmail, gangsters, orgies, Cold War spies. Even the French police couldn't believe what they were uncovering. — Edward Chisholm, author
To take a good run at the facts, Edward Chisholm, author of the also magnificent A Waiter in Paris (Monoray, £12.99), immerses himself in the original police reports and enquiries, where "the volume of material was colossal", he says. "One historian estimated the archive at five tons." The corpse was that of Stevan Markovic, 31, a Yugoslavian emigré seeking a foothold in France. He had been in the orbit of Delon, oscillating in proximity and importance. The detectives to whom the case was assigned struggled to pin him down. "They've been told Markovic was a driver. A bodyguard. A hanger-on… Not a gangster, perhaps, but not far from the margins of that world."
This shifting intimacy with the actor — who, let's not forget, was in the sixties just about the biggest celebrity France has ever experienced — seems to be a key part of the story. Markovic's brother Alexander turns up at the police station too, bringing accusations: "For all my misadventures, speak to Alain Delon, as the one 10,000% responsible," he tells them. He tosses in the name of a leading Corsican gangster, as well as the fragrant Mrs Nathalie Delon. "Never speak to her, she's the biggest liar in the world," he shares, before producing a couple of intimidating letters.
As you can probably tell, this is exquisite material, and Chisholm soon leaves the station to plunge into the story via his five tons of research material in an attempt to address the many gaps that remain in the record. Murder is worth reading for the evocation of the France of the day alone, where cops and gangsters often worked hand in hand, and where wartime networks and favours translated into post-war politico-criminal power alliances in cities like Marseille. In exchange for peace on the docks and votes in the election, one crime clan was given a free hand to import whatever they pleased for decades. Politicians of substantial local and national influence were barely a step away from the electricity of the underworld, whether through intermediaries, quid pro quo understandings, at the discos or on holiday on the Riviera. The police operated according to their own rules and the press had desks inside the various police departments. France was economically vigorous and modernising at velocity, and loved the cinema like no country ever had before. Hence Delon, prime representative of these tough archetypes in the greatest source of national cultural pride, was elevated heavenward.
So, what happened, officer? How did M. Markovic end up fly-tipped by the roadside? And what did it all mean for the dazzling star, the occupants of the Élysée Palace and the darkest presences in that country's underworld? Why adopt such elaborate legal contortions for a Balkan bodyguard? To overshare here would be to spoil the pleasure, and one or two of the details may remain vexingly hazy to even the closest of readings, but for an immersion in incomparable French stylishness avant tout, this will make you yearn for a return to le 1968.
Q&A with Edward Chisholm
What first made you decide that Alain Delon deserved more of your attention?
I have always been fascinated by him. He looms pretty large over French culture and especially cinema, which is something of a passion, but I always felt there was something mysterious and quite unknowable about him, and when I came across this story it had always percolated in the background. I always kept little bits in notebooks, but I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it and I thought maybe I could transform it into another story. The more I started to dig around Delon, the more fascinating he became. There was a biography written by Bernard Violet, the first unofficial biography, that was banned on the basis of the outline that he gave to his publisher. He didn't want stuff to come out on what is the reality? What's the truth about him? And that is quite fascinating.
Do people still care about the Markovic affair? Is it a big deal in France?
It is for a certain older generation. A book about it came out last year by a political journalist, but it is very much the political side that interests them, all the stuff with trying to smear the name of (Georges) Pompidou and prevent him going into government, but the Delon underworld link seems to get less attention. And it is not a huge story for younger French people. When they ask me what I'm doing and I tell them I am writing about the Markovic affair they have no idea what it is.
How powerful was Delon at his peak?
I think he was hugely powerful. Markovic had this impression, and he wrote that Delon was making so much money for the French government in taxes, and with soft power, that he had the ear of lots of ministers and lawmakers. Was he above the law? The way he operated even up to his death suggests he was. For example, when you die you can't just be buried in your garden, it has to be in consecrated ground or a churchyard. But Delon was buried in his garden with his dogs in complete disregard for French law.
You describe these secret gatherings as "a grey zone of elite libertinism." Is it fair to say that France was a world leader in that field in the sixties, or would one have found the same thing in Washington or London?
It's a tough one. One of the strands I wanted to dig into deeper was this libertinism and orgies and group sex, the partouzes, as the French call them. I had a grand idea that I was going to go to these clubs and meet people, but it is a really closed and secluded world for obvious reasons. One thing that struck me is our memory of the whole Paris in 1968 thing being of students, a very liberal time, throwing off the shackles, but at the same time it was only a very small amount of people who were acting like this. It also has echoes with what is going on today in the Epstein affair, these elite people who behave in a certain way, but the rest of France was… de Gaulle was still in power, it was incredibly Catholic, homosexuality was banned, in fact there was this whole unit in the police dedicated to homosexual affairs, so it was really hard to get into.
What was the attitude of those people still alive towards your interest in this case — is there even now an unwillingness to reveal details or are people just over it?
I was really surprised at how closed people were. It was difficult to find people who were still alive, and of those who were and had been remotely related to it, they didn't want to talk about it. I did manage to speak to a guy who was the equivalent of an MI5 officer and he said, "yes it is very fascinating". I said, "well, here's my theory, what can you tell me?" And he said, "I can't tell you anything!" I said, "come on, surely this has gone", and he said, "no one is going to talk about it."
For people who lived through it, it was such an intense case, and it was dirty and toxic, to use modern language, so they all sort of moved away from it. People's careers were ruined by it and there was this whole rumour that was confirmed by Pompidou's historian/biographer that there is this black book that he kept in office, and he found everybody who was involved on the political side of the scandal. To this day that book is under lock and key until everybody is dead, apparently. That's how it works in France. They have slightly different privacy laws.
Why do you think the Markovic murder was never solved?
I think it just became too messy and too many people got involved. Once the political angle was in full motion too many people's names were getting dragged in. It became a he-said, she-said sort of thing, and the more it went through the courts, the more public it became. When you start talking about these high-end brothels and all these politicians or embassy folk or air force brigadiers who were all there, they thought people didn't need this anymore. And it dragged on for so long, it just needed to go away for so many people.
Do French men still long to be Delon?
He is definitely still a style icon. You see him referenced quite a lot in magazines. In the early 2000s they took footage from La Piscine for a Dior campaign, and another film of his, Les Aventuriers, from prime, peak Delon, was used to sell luxury items. There is this kind of preppy style in France, called BCBG, Bon Chic, Bon Genre, very west Paris, 16th arrondissement, well-heeled individuals, and he is the sort of touchstone for that kind of Gallic cool for these men, for sure, in his timelessness. But again, it is separated from any of the later stuff. There's a division between the young Delon, who seems not to age, because he is in films and photos, and the older Delon who did and became less relevant.