I have been terribly remiss in sharing this news from Miroslav, a French reader who continues to send me great stuff even though I seem to take forever to post it. But as I’ve said before, nothing that is e-mailed to me is forgotten. I’ve got lots of great cover scans and other goodies in the files that will all make it here eventually. My problem is, I always think I’m saving this stuff for some super-awesome mega-post, when what I really ought to be doing is just giving you the damn information. I’ll work on that.
Anyway, Miroslav provides the cover of the French edition of Darwyn Cooke’s The Outfit, and provides some great backstory.
Translation is no more by Tonino Benacquista [who did Cooke’s The Hunter], but by Doug Headline. Doug is the (pen name of the) son of one of the most famous French noir writers, the late Jean-Patrick Manchette (Headline is an English translation of one of the meanings of the French word “manchette”)
JP Manchette had a correspondence with Donald Westlake (I think some of the letters have been published in France). Moreover, Manchette started publishing in the lead crime collection “La série noire” in the late 60s/early 70s at a time when all Stark novels were published in the same collection. (In the 60s a short story collection by Donald Westlake was also published in la “série noire” with a foreword by the publisher underlining that the young Westlake was a major author). Another link, albeit subjective: I always considered Manchette’s first in “série noire” (whose French title could be translated in “let the corpses sun tan”) bore the influence of Stark prose, before Manchette developed his own distinctive style.
Since the 90s, Manchette, Stark and Westlake were no more published by “série noire” but by “Rivages” where Westlake was sometimes translated by Manchette and/or his son. Rivages still promotes today Westlake/Stark. I think they picked Memory for this year.
I’ve not read Jean-Patrick Manchette, although, as Detectives Beyond Borders points out, the opportunity to do so in the good ol’ USA has recently arisen.
This brief roman [Fatale] noir tells the story of Aimée, a hitwoman who comes to a French town to sniff out the money and stir things up. Not especially cold or distant, she nonetheless finds just one kindred spirit, an old baron off his nut who scandalizes the town while nonetheless remaining part of it.
Sounds good to me. Unfortunately my TBR pile is massive right now, so it will be awhile before I check it out. [Update: See Sarah Weinman’s article in the Wall Street Journal for more on Manchette.]
Miroslav continues with some unfortunate news, or, rather, lack of news.
The other potential Stark French front is unfortunately very quiet: still no DVD edition of Alain Cavalier’s Mise à Sac in sight. The restoration I mentioned a while ago seems to have been a one off initiated by the cinematographer, proud of this work in this dark movie (in every meaning of the word).
Mise à Sac is the French film based on The Score. I don’t think it’s lost, but it’s in danger of becoming lost. Miroslav told us awhile back that it used to air on French television regularly, which means someone has a copy. I’ve tried every means, legal and illegal, that I can think of (other than becoming so rich I can fly to France, track down a print, and purchase it myself) to get this film, but with no luck. I’ve been hunting for it for a good twelve years at this point.
Why on earth can no one see this film? Alain Cavalier is still directing movies. I’ve heard from a few sources that this movie is good. Buckets of film noirs seemed to be dumped onto DVD every week of the year. Why hasn’t someone, in France, America, or anywhere else, decided that this film is worth a release on video?
A couple of months after sending me all this great information that I pathetically didn’t post at the time, Miroslav followed up with more:
I came across a Westlake interview on the web.
It is in French.
It is an e-mail interview dated 2006 on the website of a french bookstore devoted to crime fiction.
Westlake among other things explains the origin of Child Heist.
[Translated]
“Universal Pictures asked me to write a script about the Peugeot Kidnapping in Paris where the story would come from a Lionel White book. i e Americans watching a movie and then doing a score. When the film was not made, they were OK for me to take the story and I decided to use a novel as source. Afterwards, I had the idea of Dortmunder and Co using a non existing Parker Novel”.
The Peugeot kidnapping took place in the early 60s in Paris and happily ended with the return of the child.
I do not know what Lionel White novel DW refers to. [Update: It’s The Snatchers, from 1953.]
Nor do I–this is all new to me. I had no idea that Jimmy the Kid originated as a movie concept.
Great stuff, Miroslav. Thanks again, and sorry it took me so long to post!
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I too have been looking long and hard, high and low for Mise a Sac and haven’t gotten any closer to tracking down any kind of version for as long as you have, and for as long as I’ve had this here computer contraption and all the corners of the WWW and Usenet it can dig into. I even had access to a site that has 23 rips of many various Alain Cavalier films, but alas, still no Mise A Sac….however, I did manage to find the complete dvd of Le Couperet (The Ax[Anybody ever notice DEW’s quick cameo in it, BTW?])and Alain CORNEAU’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s A Hell Of A Woman (Serie Noire) so all was not a waste of effort, but that damn Mise A Sac is a real thorn in my side…someday it’s going to rear it’s head, and of course when it does it will probably be sans subtitles and then I’ll just have to blow my brains out, or go back to school…
DEW in Le Couperet:
http://existentialennui.blogspot.com/2011/05/westlake-addendum-donald-e-westlake.html
Thanks! Glad to know it wasn’t some sort of hallucination and that someone else saw him too! I hadn’t seen any other reference to the cameo, and I was starting to think it was an excellent look-a-like!
I just noticed an ebay offer with several photos and a poster of the German version of Mise a Sac (Der Millionen-Coup der Zwölf), while searching for the film. There are some nice pictures of the movie, but sadly not much more. It is as hard to find the german copy of film as ist must be for the original version. If anyone of you is interested:
http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350454897809
“I do not know what Lionel White novel DW refers to.”
That would be “THE SNATCHERS” from 1953. Here’s a description I found on-line.
“An unforgettable story of a kidnapping- the novel that made headlines when fiction became fact!”
The description on the back of the book reads as follows…
“A trusting child, a stolen car hurtling through the night, an isolated beach house, shrouded by
sea-mists and pulsing with horror- these were the ingredients for the greatest crime of all, a plan
of simple cruelty that would enrage the world. Within hours, police and F.B.I. were hard at work,
sifting clues, searching for leads, drawing the massive dragnet tighter and tighter. And in the
gang’s remote hideout, arrogance was diluted by fear as the net closed about them. For time and hope
were running out for the planners of the foolproof crime. And for their tiny victim, wrapped in the
harsh cocoon of terror?”
The review blurb reads as follows.
“Lionel White’s taut story of kidnapping has been one of the most highly publicized crime novels of
all time. This modern classic is fiction, but, as any newspaper reader must know, there are times
when fact and fiction become alarmingly alike.”
As I said, the book was publish in 1953. It is 143 page long. Hope this helps!
– Jesse
Thank you for the kind words Trent, and for a very stimulating website and thank you JGA for identifying “the snatchers”.
The “Série Noire” writers dictionnary states that “the snatchers” was made into a british 1968 film by Hubert Cornfield (who did the script) with no less than Marlon Brando and Richard Boone!
this film is below the radar for me. (The cast list shows french character actors perhaps signalling one of these tax-motivated-euro-co-productions , and Marlon Brando pathetic filmography – apart from a few movies everybody remembers – has many of them).
IMDB quote it with a french title “la nuit du lendemain” and state it was shot in Paris.
Has this film anything to do with the work DW was commissioned to do according to the interview?
By the way, i realized that “mise à sac” is a french-italian production with productions companies long gone: maybe the rights for the film just sit in limbo.
The Snatchers = Night Of The Following Day for those who want to find it by the English title. It’s not a great film, but worth a view if you like ‘arty’ noirish type films.
And it seems the two novels by J-P Manchette that City Lights of San Francisco psihbuled a few years ago, The Prone Gunman (La Position du tireur couche9) and 3 to Kill (Le Petit Bleu de la Cf4te Ouest), which were out of print, are both set to be reprinted and should be available again soon (it they’re not out already). Both are very much worth catching if you like classic Noir.