Marcel Allain

Biography

A crisp September morning in Paris—15 September 1885—marked the arrival of Marcel Allain, the storyteller who would one day set all of France breathlessly chasing the phantom face of crime. With pen as his scalpel, he sliced open the underbelly of the Belle Époque and let Fantômas leap, fully formed, onto the page—a gentleman murderer whose shadow soon stretched across silent serials, radio waves, and two later screen incarnations: the 1949 duel of wits Fantômas contre Fantômas and the swinging 1964 remake simply titled Fantômas. Allain kept writing, plotting, and inventing until 25 August 1969, when he closed his final chapter in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Yvelines, leaving the mask, the gloves, and the echoing laugh for generations still to come.