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September 4, 1989 disappeared the great Belgian writer Georges Simenon, at the age of 86 years. Author of a monumental work, composed of more than 350 books, partly under his name, partly under various pseudonyms, he remains the creator of one of the most famous fictional characters in the world: Commissioner Maigret.
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Simenon's death, all of his investigations are brought together in ten new volumes published by Omnibus editions, with the unique prefaces of ten personalities.
From his first appearance in Pietr-le-Letton in 1931, to his last in Maigret et Monsieur Charles in 1972, the curator Maigret is the hero of 75 novels and 28 short stories by Georges Simenon.
An emblematic character with his pipe, his hat and an unusual flair, a fictitious policeman but very inspired by reality and a very new profile in the inter-war literature, as confirmed by Georges Simenon in an archive:
“ In France, he says, at that time, the hero of a detective story was necessarily either the burglar, or the assassin, or then an amateur like the journalist Rouletabille. The policeman always had to be the fool and the unfriendly character. As I had frequented the police a lot, I said to myself : why not make a real police officer as they are in life ? And I did Maigret. "
A timeless hero
Jules Maigret, who will make the fame of Georges Simenon, with to date more than 600 million books sold worldwide, where he is considered as an exceptional author, even today, by many admirers.
At the head, Bertrand Tavernier, the filmmaker, who signs one of the prefaces of the 10 volumes. And this for two reasons: first, because his first film, L'Horloger de Saint-Paul, in 1974 with Philippe Noiret and Jean Rochefort, is an adaptation of a novel by Simenon.
And then, because since his childhood, he has been a compulsive reader of the whole work both for the stories but especially for the style of the writer that Bertrand Tavernier describes as " stripped down, dense and very elliptical ". And " through rascal characters, rancid atmospheres, there is an immense human truth ", he concludes.
The universe in which Maigret evolves is also a whole era, before and after the Second World War; a certain France with the Paris of thugs, the bourgeois province, the police before the scientific police. In short, a character so anchored in a given time that one can wonder if it would not become old-fashioned for young readers.
But for Pierre Simenon, the son of Georges Simenon, who is also a novelist, this is not the case. According to him, " it is not the police method that matters. Maigret is an introspective ”who, like his father, he says,“ absorbs the human like a sponge and, out of empathy, succeeds in putting himself in the place of the guilty and the innocent to untie the thread of the plot. And this method has no age. "
A success also in the cinema
It is true that over the years, the character of Maigret has lost none of his charisma. Witness the 70 films and 400 television films adapted from the 103 surveys.
International influence as far as Japan, the United States, Germany, Italy, Great Britain very recently, and of course in France with two television series and several films where great actors have succeeded each other, the most convincing being certainly Jean Gabin, who has interpreted Jules Maigret three times.
In this regard, Bertrand Tavernier remembers that he also considered putting images of a Maigret investigation in turn, on the condition that the author himself interpreted his character, but Georges Simenon never followed up on the director's request.
As for Patrice Leconte, who has already adapted Monsieur Hire from the Belgian writer, he announced that he will start shooting this fall a film inspired by Maigret and the young dead , with Daniel Auteuil in the main role of the curator.
In the meantime, read or re-read: the ten volumes of Tout Maigret with original covers by Loustal and new prefaces.
To find out more, two books have also just been published, Maigret, Traversées de Paris by Michel Carly, as well as Mémoires intimes by Georges Simenon, published by Omnibus.