Pierre Mac Orlan
Encyclopedia
His novel Quai des Brumes was the source for Marcel Carné
Marcel Carné
-Biography:Born in Paris, France, the son of a cabinet maker whose wife died when their son was five, Carné began his career as a film critic, becoming editor of the weekly publication, Hebdo-Films, and working for Cinémagazine and Cinémonde between 1929 and 1933. In the same period he worked in...
's 1938 film of the same name, starring Jean Gabin
Jean Gabin
-Biography:Born Jean-Alexis Moncorgé in Paris, he grew up in the village of Mériel in the Seine-et-Oise département, about 22 mi north of Paris. The son of cabaret entertainers, he attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly...
. He was also a prolific writer of chansons, many of which were recorded and popularized by French singers such as Juliette Gréco
Juliette Gréco
Juliette Gréco, — also Michelle – is a French actress and popular chanson singer.-Early life and family:Juliette Gréco was born in Montpellier to a Corsican father and a mother who became active in the Résistance, in the Hérault département of southern France. She was raised by her maternal...
, Monique Morelli, Catherine Sauvage
Catherine Sauvage
Catherine Sauvage , born 26 May 1929 in Nancy, France and died on 20 March 1998 in Bry-sur-Marne was a French singer and actress.- Early life :...
, and Germaine Montero.
Life
Born in Péronne, SommePéronne, Somme
Péronne is a commune of the Somme department in Picardie in northern France.It is close to where the Battles of the Somme took place during World War I...
in northern France, Mac Orlan lived in Rouen
Rouen
Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...
and Paris as a young man, working at a variety of jobs and learning to play the accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
. In his twenties, he travelled widely in Europe, before returning to Paris and becoming a noted figure in Bohemian
Bohemian
A Bohemian is a resident of the former Kingdom of Bohemia, either in a narrow sense as the region of Bohemia proper or in a wider meaning as the whole country, now known as the Czech Republic. The word "Bohemian" was used to denote the Czech people as well as the Czech language before the word...
art circles. In particular, his song performances were a regular feature at the Lapin Agile
Lapin Agile
Lapin Agile is a famous Montmartre cabaret, at 22 Rue des Saules, 18th arrondissement of Paris, France.It was originally called "Cabaret des Assassins". Tradition relates that the cabaret received this name because a band of assassins broke in and killed the owner's son...
cabaret. During this period, he was part of a broad circle of writers and painters including Max Jacob
Max Jacob
Max Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.-Life and career:After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career...
, Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
, Maurice Utrillo
Maurice Utrillo
Maurice Utrillo, , born Maurice Valadon, was a French painter who specialized in cityscapes. Born in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of Montmartre who were born there....
and Francis Carco
Francis Carco
Francis Carco was a French author, born at Nouméa, New Caledonia. He was a poet, belonging to the Fantaisiste school, a novelist, a dramatist, and art critic for L'Homme libre and Gil Blas. During the War he became aviation pilot at Étampes, after studying at the aviation school there...
.
He fought in the war against Germany until wounded in 1916, after which he worked as a war correspondent
War correspondent
A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. In the 19th century they were also called Special Correspondents.-Methods:...
. In later years he earned a living as a writer in Saint Cyr-sur-Morin, outside Paris. In the late 1920s he became an influential critic of film and photography, writing important essays about the work of Eugène Atget
Eugène Atget
Eugène Atget was a French photographer noted for his photographs documenting the architecture and street scenes of Paris....
, Germaine Krull
Germaine Krull
Germaine Krull , was a photographer, political activist, and hotel owner. Her nationality has been categorized as German, Polish, French, and Dutch, but she spent years in Brazil, Republic of the Congo, Thailand, and India...
and others.
Works
In addition to Quai des Brumes, his many novels included A Bord de l'Etoile Matutine, translated into English by Malcolm CowleyMalcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...
as On Board the Morning Star. Among the popular chansons written by Mac Orlan are "Fille de Londres", "Le Pont du Nord" and "Nelly". The French singer Germaine Montero released an extensive set of her interpretations of Mac Orlan songs on the CD Meilleur de Germaine Montero.
Using his real name, Pierre Dumarchey, and various pseudonyms including: Docteur Fowler, Pierre du Bourdel, Pierre de Jusange, Sadie Blackeyes, Chevalier de X, and Sadinet, he was for several years a writer of pornographic novels, which frequently depicted flagellation and sado-masochism. Some of these titles include: La Comtesse au fouet (1908), the story of a cruel dominatrix, Les Grandes Flagellees de l'histoire (1909), Lise Fessee (1910), Masochism in America (1910), Miss (1912), and Petite dactylo et autres textes de flagellation (1913). He said to Pascal Pia
Pascal Pia
Pascal Pia, born Pierre Durand , was a French writer, journalist, illustrator and scholar. He also used the pseudonyms Pascal Rose, Pascal Fely and others....
that he used the Dumarchey name to upset that uncle of his that made him carry on a hard life.
Influences and legacy
The French writer and political theorist Guy DebordGuy Debord
Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
, founder of the Situationist International was a constant reader of Mac Orlan's novels of urban adventure and "low life". The well-known photographer of New York in the 1930s Berenice Abbott
Berenice Abbott
Berenice Abbott , born Bernice Abbott, was an American photographer best known for her black-and-white photography of New York City architecture and urban design of the 1930s.-Youth:...
was highly influenced by Mac Orlan's writings on the "fantastique" and the "social fantastique". And the physicist Freeman Dyson
Freeman Dyson
Freeman John Dyson FRS is a British-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum field theory, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists...
, in his 2008 AMS
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...
Albert Einstein Lecture, interprets MacOrlan's song La Ville Morte ("The Dead City") as an example of the "empty city archetype", a Jungian archetype as described by mathematician Yuri I. Manin
Yuri I. Manin
Yuri Ivanovitch Manin is a Soviet/Russian/German mathematician, known for work in algebraic geometry and diophantine geometry, and many expository works ranging from mathematical logic to theoretical physics.-Biography:...
.