The legend, – and some statistics, said that the two of them, they drew nearly 300 million viewers in dark rooms. As is often the the big players, they can boast of having nicknames as famous as their surname. On the 29th of may, a few days before his 70th birthday, the editors of Paris Match has invited the Beautiful and the Samurai to come and lend a game to a photo session history. For this number the exception, it seemed essential to bring together for a new arm of iron-friendly, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon.

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Belmondo and Delon or alain Delon and Belmondo, in order not to offend anyone, it is a long friendship of more than sixty years, punctuated by moments of rivalry. The two men are getting acquainted in the mid-1950s between Pigalle and Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Delon returned from the Indochina war and is looking for a future. Belmondo is the enfant terrible of the Conservatory. The seventh art does not know yet that it takes two actors of exception.

Borsalino or the history of the friendship-rivalry of the males of the French cinema

The big screen the meet seven times. The anthologies recall that their first encounter film occurs in Be beautiful and shut up (1957) by Marc Allegret. And then they can be found in Paris brûle-t-il in 1966 by René Clément. Delon embodies the general Chaban-Delmas, and Bébel a resistant.

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In 1970 fate Borsalino directed by Jacques Deray, inspired by Bandits of Marseille of Eugène Saccomano. Alain Delon, who is the producer of this blockbuster before the letter to the French, desperately wants to get Belmondo to his sides so that they embody together the two heroes, the two thugs beautiful Roch Siffredi and François Capella. The scenario will resume at the extreme the game of their true relationship in the life, mixed of comradeship schoolboy and rivalry. The personality to the screen of these two guys blend in here, to the delight of the public, with what they offer us a glimpse of their complicity in real life away from the camera. The epilogue is at the height of this romantic and masculine duality: François Capella-Bébel the gouailleur will eventually die in the arms of Roch Siffredi-Delon the easily offended. Despite some bisbilles between the two monstres sacrés at the end of the film, the success will be the appointment with some five million spectators.

for a Long time catalogued popular actors, Delon and Belmondo have not received the time of their glory by the consecration cinéphilique they deserved. The Cannes film Festival and the Academy of Caesar repaired in recent years these oversights, unfortunate in their awarding of trophies for the whole of their career. The Samurai, which has long refused such recognition, comes, at the age of 83, to accept the palme d’honneur, in the name of his master, Clément, Visconti, Losey…, that have shaped it. And as nothing happens by chance, this new humility displayed earned him the cover of Inrocks . Now Bébel, always rigolard and never breathless , waiting for him to become the ace of the Inrockuptibles. It will not be long.

● Bébel and the Samurai to 70 years of Paris Match

● Belmondo and Delon, the picture of an eternal friendship