The love story has become legendary, but it got off to a bad start.
When, in 1958, Alain Delon met Romy Schneider for the first time, the current did not pass as the documentary by Olivier Monssens
Romy and Alain, the eternal fiancés
clearly shows .
A meeting has been organized in Paris to prepare
Christine
, the film by Pierre Gaspard-Huit which will bring them together.
He does not speak English, and even less German, and she speaks French with difficulty.
During filming, she begins to realize how different this young actor is from the others.
She falls in love, and it's mutual.
They decide to live together.
They first settled on the Quai Malaquais, with Georges Beaume, Delon's agent, before making a private mansion on the Avenue de Messine their secret garden.
Turbulent relationship
A few weeks after their engagement, on March 22, 1959, they flew to Rome, where Alain was to shoot
Rocco et ses frères
.
Romy thus meets Luchino Visconti.
The current passes and, one evening, he proposes to the couple to be the headliner of
Too bad she is a whore
, which he must stage at the Théâtre de Paris.
Romy, supported by Alain, takes up the challenge.
She takes phonetics lessons, spends days and sometimes nights working on her text.
On the eve of the premiere, suffering from peritonitis, she was hospitalized and operated on urgently.
Two weeks later, she manages to resume her role.
On March 27, 1961, Alain and Romy triumphed in front of Tout-Paris.
The play is a success and they are now the heyday of a press that is not yet called "people".
There is matter!
We talk about marriage, but they fail, schedules oblige, to fix a date.
The shootings are linked and, in spite of tender daily telephone calls, the relationship becomes particularly tumultuous.
A photo stolen during the filming of
La Tulipe noire
, where we see a woman on the knees of Alain Delon, sets fire to the powder.
He assures us that it is a game, but Romy Schneider does not see it that way.
In 1963, after a long tete-a-tete in Rome, they announced a separation that had become inevitable.
An unfinished story
The story is not over, however.
Five years later, he demanded that she be his partner in
La Piscine,
which Jacques Deray was about to direct in Ramatuelle.
The photo at Nice airport where he welcomes her by falling into his arms will go around the world.
She then experiences a mini-crossing of the desert and, thanks to him, she becomes a star again.
"I think of her every day
," says the actor today.
Obviously, the public too.
