On November 8, 1935, in a modest suburb of Paris just eighty kilometers from the grandeur of Notre Dame Cathedral, a little boy named Alain was born. No one could have predicted that this child, raised in fractured households and marked by hardship, would one day rise to become one of the most captivating and celebrated men of his era. His story, filled with struggle, rebellion, and transformation, reads like the opening chapters of a cinematic epic.

Alain’s early years were shaped by instability. His mother, a pharmacist by trade, had to adapt when his father decided to open a cinema hall. She took a job as a cashier there, immersing herself in the family business. But when Alain was just three years old, his parents’ marriage fell apart. Both remarried, and Alain suddenly found  himself caught between two worlds. From his stepfather’s butcher shop to his mother’s endless work, he often felt like an afterthought. A nanny became his primary caretaker, and while at first the arrangement felt novel, he soon realized the void it left—there was no steady anchor, no singular home where he truly belonged.