The woman behind a shadow.

That could be one of the poetic (or just cheesy) nicknames that

Nathalie Delon

, the Spanish-born woman born

Francine Canovas

, hid under

.

First it was the shadow and the presence of the star

Alain Delon

that silenced her until she appropriated her name.

And later, or maybe at the same time, or maybe always, the eternal shadow of Romy Schneider who did the rest.

According to her memoirs published in 2006, the actress who played Sissi and whom Delon left for her, was a ghost throughout the marriage.

So she recognized it herself.

"Alain," Nathalie said in an interview, "never spoke to me about her but every now and then I saw a shadow of sadness in her eyes."

Nathalie Delon died on Thursday.

He died in Paris at the age of 79.

For the cinephile memory remains his role, not necessarily brilliant but memorable, in '

The silence of a man

', the film by

Jean-Pierre Melville

with the soul of a scalpel.

In it, the actress already with her husband's name offers her perfect presence to the fire of a masterpiece with a frozen soul;

a

stylized and deep

thrller

in which the American gangster cinema of the 40s intersects with the French police officer until it becomes an iconic piece of popular culture of the 60. In the background, the loneliness of the tiger in the forest, the loneliness Unfading of a man facing death, the samurai Jef Costello something more than just played by Delon.

Her son, Anthony Delon, gave the sad news: "My mother," he said, "died this morning at 11 am, in Paris, surrounded by her loved ones. She died quickly of cancer."

"Rest in peace," he wrote on Instagram, where he accompanied his message with a photo hugging her.

Until he adopted the surname Delon, his life passed between his native Oujda (Morocco) and France.

She was the daughter of Louis Canovas (1915-2003),

pied-noir

from Oran (Algeria), who abandoned her at eight months in 1942.

Her mother was from Melilla.

She married for the first time with Guy Barthélémy with whom she had a daughter also named Nathalie.

He was soon divorced.

And so on until she attracted all eyes when on August 13, 1964, she married the most idolized public figure of the moment.

The Alain Delon who was permanently in the media due to his permanently stormy relationship with Schneider became her husband and, incidentally, the shadow that would hide even his real name.

On the set of Melville's film, the chronicles say, the tension between the two grew until shortly thereafter led to

divorce in 1969.

From the 1970s on, she continued her acting career.

Titles like '

Blue Beard'

, by Edward Dmytryk;

A romantic Englishwoman

, by Joseph Losey, or '

A faithful woman',

by Roger Vadim, mark a discreet and somewhat hidden career in which she also had the opportunity to direct two films:

Ils appellent ça un accident

and

Sweet lies.

A whole life overshadowed and illuminated at the same time by a surname and, in his words, a ghost.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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