Alain Delon: Tragic finale: Film star's family torn apart

The last male superstar from the golden era of French cinema is back on the front pages, but not because of a new film or a late marriage.

Alain Delon, once described as the most beautiful man in the film world, is 88 years old, ill and practically a hermit.

The last tragic act in Delon's life, which is played out in the media before a public torn between horror and fascination, is the collapse of his family.

His three children fight over the traces of memory and fatherly love.

“Birds hide to die. Large animals do this in the full light of the projector,” is the first line of a long article in The World Newspaper dedicated to the saga.

It is a story, the newspaper says, that contains all the elements of a Greek drama – a torn family, a decaying mansion that was once the scene of magnificent festivities.

And above all, a suffering protagonist who is confronted with the demons of his own turbulent past.

For the French, Delon is the ultimate large fawn (big animal), who traveled through Europe with his charm and seduction in the wild 1960s and appeared in hits such as “The Leopard” and “Rocco and his Brothers”.