The author of seventy-three film scores — Les Tontons flingueurs, the Fantômas films — he lost the whole of his tapes in 1969 in a fire whose cause was never established, with no copies. He rebuilt the Château d'Hérouville and invented the residential studio there, through which Pink Floyd and Bowie passed.
The story
Born at Lisieux on 20 March 1930, Michel Magne wrote seventy-three film scores: Les Tontons flingueurs, Les Barbouzes, Mélodie en sous-sol, the Angélique films, the Fantômas films — the music of a popular cinema the whole of France knows by heart.
In 1962 he bought the Château d'Hérouville, north-west of Paris, and installed his studio there.
In 1969 a fire whose cause was never established destroyed the wing where he worked and, with it, every one of his master tapes: he had made no copies. Fifteen years of work vanished in a night.
He rebuilt, and invented something along the way: the residential studio, where musicians live and record in the same place. Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, the Bee Gees, David Bowie and Elton John would all pass through.
Bankruptcy forced him to give up the château, then to leave the country. He took his own life with barbiturates on 19 December 1984, in a hotel at Cergy-Pontoise. His ashes rest in the columbarium, niche 1,289.
The grave
A columbarium niche, number 1,289, in Division 87. No particular inscription is documented, no sculpture, nothing of the cinema or the Château d'Hérouville. The composer of seventy-three soundtracks and the inventor of the residential studio — the one where Pink Floyd, Bowie and Elton John recorded — occupies a few square decimetres of numbered plaque.
On site, do not miss
A numbered niche — 1,289 — for the man who wrote the music of Les Tontons flingueurs and put Pink Floyd up in a château. Nothing marks it: note the number before going in.
Visitors' questions
Where do Michel Magne's ashes rest?
In the columbarium of Père-Lachaise, niche 1,289, in Division 87. Note the number: nothing marks out the composer's niche in a columbarium that holds thousands of them across several levels. He took his own life in December 1984.
The crematorium and the columbariumWhat did Michel Magne compose?
Seventy-three film scores: Les Tontons flingueurs, Les Barbouzes, Mélodie en sous-sol, the Angélique films, the Fantômas films. It is the soundtrack of French popular cinema of the 1960s, which France knows by heart without knowing his name.
Max OphülsWhat is the château d'Hérouville?
The château north of Paris that he bought in 1962 and turned into a studio. After the fire of 1969 he invented the residential studio there: Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, the Bee Gees, Bowie and Elton John all recorded in it.
Richard WrightWhat did the fire of 1969 destroy?
All his tapes, without exception: he had made no copies. Fifteen years of film music gone in a single night, in a fire whose cause was never established. He rebuilt the studio, but bankruptcy forced him to give up the château.
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