Jean-Patrick Manchette

Scénariste

19 décembre 1942 — 3 juin 1995 (52 ans)
Jean-Patrick Manchette (19 December 1942, Marseille – 3 June 1995, Paris) was a French crime novelist credited with reinventing and reinvigorating the genre. He wrote ten short novels in the seventies and early eighties, and is widely recognized as the foremost French crime fiction author of that period. His stories are violent explorations of the human condition and French society. Manchette was politically to the left and his writing reflects this through his analysis of social positions and culture.

Eight of his eleven novels have been translated into English. Two were published by San Francisco publisher City Lights Books—3 To Kill (from the French Le petit bleu de la côte ouest) and The Prone Gunman (from the French La Position du tireur couché). Five other novels, Fatale, The Mad and the Bad (from the French O dingos, O chateaux!), Ivory Pearl (from the French La Princesse du Sang), Nada, and No Room at the Morgue were released by New York Review Books Classics in 2011, 2014, 2018, 2019, and 2020 respectively. In 2009, Fantagraphics Books released an English-language version of French cartoonist Jacques Tardi's adaptation of Le petit bleu de la côte ouest, under the new English title West Coast Blues. Fantagraphics released a second Tardi adaptation, of "La Position du tireur couché" (under the title "Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot" ) in 2011, and a third one, of "Ô Dingos! Ô Châteaux!" (under the title "Run Like Crazy Run Like Hell") in 2015. Manchette was a fan of comics, and his praised translation of Alan Moore's Watchmen into French remains in print.

Born December 19, 1942, in Marseille, where the war had temporarily led his parents, Jean-Patrick Manchette spent most of his early years in Malakoff, in Paris's southern suburbs. Growing up in a relatively modest family (his father started out as a factory worker, later to become an electronics sales executive), he was an excellent pupil and from an early age showed keen interest in writing. During his childhood and adolescence, he wrote hundreds of pages of pastiches of war memoirs and science fiction novels, gradually turning to attempts at "serious" fiction.

A compulsive reader, passionate lover of American film and jazz (he played the tenor and alto saxophone), he also developed a lifelong interest in chess and other strategy games. While his parents envisioned a teaching career for him, to their great dismay he dropped out of the ENS without graduating, and decided to try and earn a living writing. He went to England to teach French for one semester in a college for the blind at Worcester, then returned to France.

A left-wing activist during the War of Algeria in the early 1960s, he was at that time very much influenced by the writings of the Situationist International. ...

Source: Article "Jean-Patrick Manchette" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Films & Séries sur Plex

  • Gunman
    Gunman2015

Connue pour

  • Gunman
    Gunman2015
  • Les maîtres du temps
    Les maîtres du temps1982
  • Pour la peau d'un flic
    Pour la peau d'un flic1981
  • Le Choc
    Le Choc1982
  • Laissez bronzer les cadavres
    Laissez bronzer les cadavres2017
  • 3 hommes à abattre
    3 hommes à abattre1980
  • L'Agression
    L'Agression1975
  • Folle à tuer
    Folle à tuer1975
  • Nada
    Nada1974
  • L'Ordinateur des pompes funèbres
    L'Ordinateur des pompes funèbres1976
  • La Guerre des polices
    La Guerre des polices1979
  • La Crime
    La Crime1983
  • Légitime violence
    Légitime violence1982
  • Une femme aux abois
    Une femme aux abois1967
  • Les Globe-trotters
    Les Globe-trotters3 saisons
  • Mon nom est femme
    Mon nom est femme1970
  • Cher frangin
    Cher frangin1989

Filmographie

2017
2015
The Gunman · as NovelSur Plex
1989
1984
Polar · as Novel
1983
1982
Légitime violence · as Screenplay
1982
Le choc · as Novel
1981
To Kill a Cop · as Novel
1980
Three Men to Kill · as Novel
1976
The Probability Factor · as Screenplay
1975
Mad Enough to Kill · as Novel
1975
1974
The Nada Gang · as Novel
1970
1967
1966

1975
Apostrophes · as Self

1984
Black Sequence · as Adaptation
1982
The Time Masters · as Dialogue
1979
La guerre des polices · as Written By
1968
Le Socrate · as Dialogue
1967
Little Girls · as Story