Fame, Fortune, and Murder in 1960s France
Foreign Policy · Marie Le Conte ·
What a scandal involving movie star Alain Delon can—and can’t—tell us about French society.
What a scandal involving movie star Alain Delon can—and can’t—tell us about French society.
It helps if you think of the so-called Markovic affair as an accordion. At the beginning, the story is at its thinnest—small and compact. The year is 1968, and a dead body is found, by accident, in a ditch. The corpse is assumed to be that of a vagabond. He receives a half-hearted autopsy—his skull was smashed in, an obvious cause of death—and gets put in the ground.
Still, the judge investigating the case studies the autopsy report and wonders if there is more to it than meets the eye. Would a random, lowly criminal really have perfectly manicured fingernails? A fingerprint match confirms his hunch: The body belonged to Stevan Markovic, an associate of Alain Delon. That’s where Murder in Paris ’68 really picks up.
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