First I join my voice to the choir to welcome Mr. Stansberry
in our Noir chapel !
"3 to Kill" is a title coming indeed from the French film
based on the original book by Manchette. The original title
of the book was: "Le petit bleu de la cô´¥ Ouest", which carries
a "cross-lingual" play of words, as it could be translated
as: "The little West Coast Blues", and the reference to the
style of jazz is part of the play of words. So in French, it
could be only spotted by people interested in jazz
music.
On the other hand, even with Delon, this film is far to be on
the same level as the book. In fact, Manchette was never very
well served by film adaptations of his books... and he, as
script writer, was never involved in really interesting
films.
From his books, the best film is IMO: "Polar" (1983) by
Jacques Bral. the film was based on "Morgue pleine" (again a
play of words, based on a famous part of Victor Hugo's verse:
"Waterloo, Waterloo morne pleine..." in the poems he devoted
to Napoleon the Great- meaning: W, W, dull plain... - the
title of Manchette's book means: the morgue is full).
"Morgue pleine" is one of the two novels wherein Eug讥 Tarpon,
Manchette's totally atypical PI appears- the second one is
"Que d'os" (= so many bones) which carries again a play of
word, phonetic play, related to "Que d'eau !" (historical
word by Mac Mahon, French general when he saw the ocean: "so
much water !"- he is the same general who squashed flat in a
blood bath, the Paris Commune revolt in 1870.
I explained the plays of word, because I see them also as a
form of
"dé´¯urnement" /"deviation" of the genre, this time with
irony.
E.Borgers HARD-BOILED MYSTERIES http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6384
POLAR NOIR http://www.geocities.com/polarnoir
>Tribe wrote:
>
>"As an aside, I've been watching Melville's Le
Samourai recently. I keep
>imagining Alan Deloin's character protraying the
anti-hero of Gunman."
>
>Delon is the protagonist in Three Men to Kill, the
film adaptation of
>Manchette's Three to Kill (although I seem to
remember that's not the
>book's original title, which was changed to match the
movie).
>
>Mark
>
>
>
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 04 Nov 2005 EST