Super Policier

US pop culture, particularly that connected with crime, has long been a source of fascination in France, probably as a result of World War Two and the role played by US troops in liberating the country from Nazi occupation.  So, it is no surprise that during the fifties there were French pulp magazines reprinting translations of crime stories from US pulps.  This is the cover of the February 1954 edition of Super Policier Magazine, which ran for six issues, drawings its stories and cover paintings from Popular Publications' crime magazines.  'Policier', of course, is the general term used in France to describe crime fiction in any media, whether it involves the police or not.  The influence of US crime fiction on French popular culture was long lived, with much of the look of many classic French crime movies (or 'Policiers') adhering to the tropes established in their US antecedents, with criminals inevitably sporting fedoras and raincoats and driving American cars.

In addition to the genuine US article, UK imitations of American hard-boiled crime literature were also hugely popular in France, the works of James Hadley Chase and Peter Cheyney being particularly popular in translation.  Indeed, numerous film adaptations of such novels were made in France, with Eddie Constantine becoming an international star playing Cheyney's Lemmy Caution character in a long series of movies (including being co-opted into Jean-Luc Goddard's Alphaville).  (The character, to date, has never featured in an English language film).  There have also been French film adaptations of one of Cheyney's other series characters, Slim Callahan.  So, there you have it - lurid pulps weren't entirely the province of the English-speaking world - sleaze can cut across all cultural barriers.