20th-century French male writers

Guy Gilbert (born 12 September 1935) is a French Roman Catholic priest and educator.

Gérard Blain (23 October 1930 – 17 December 2000) was a French actor and film director.

Emmanuel Berl (2 August 1892 – 21 September 1976) was a French journalist, historian and essayist. He was born at Le Vésinet in the modern département of Yvelines, and is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris. In 1937 he married the singer, composer and film actress Mireille Hartuch; she had nicknamed him "Théodore" (which is what appears on their tomb). Berl was the cousin of Lisette de Brinon.

Pierre Grimal (November 21, 1912, in Paris – November 2, 1996, in Paris) was a French historian, classicist and Latinist. Fascinated by the Greek and Roman civilizations, he did much to promote the cultural inheritance of the classical world, both among specialists and the general public.

François Chalais (French: [ʃalɛ]; December 15, 1919 – May 1, 1996) was a prominent French reporter, journalist, writer and film historian. The François Chalais Prize at the annual Cannes Film Festival is named after him.

Hervé Bazin (French: [bazɛ̃]; 17 April 1911 – 17 February 1996) was a French writer, whose best-known novels covered semi-autobiographical topics of teenage rebellion and dysfunctional families.

Jacques Ertaud (18 November 1924 – 18 November 1995) was a French film director and screenwriter. Along with Marcel Ichac, he co-directed the film Stars at Noon, which entered into the 9th Berlin International Film Festival.

Jean-Patrick Manchette (19 December 1942, Marseille – 3 June 1995, Paris) was a French crime novelist credited with reinventing and reinvigorating the genre. He wrote ten short novels in the seventies and early eighties, and is widely recognized as the foremost French crime fiction author of that period. His stories are violent explorations of the human condition and French society. Manchette was politically to the left and his writing reflects this through his analysis of social positions and culture.
Eight of his eleven novels have been translated into English. Two were published by San Francisco publisher City Lights Books—3 To Kill (from the French Le petit bleu de la côte ouest) and The Prone Gunman (from the French La Position du tireur couché). Five other novels, Fatale, The Mad and the Bad (from the French O dingos, O chateaux!), Ivory Pearl (from the French La Princesse du Sang), Nada, and No Room at the Morgue were released by New York Review Books Classics in 2011, 2014, 2018, 2019, and 2020 respectively. In 2009, Fantagraphics Books released an English-language version of French cartoonist Jacques Tardi's adaptation of Le petit bleu de la côte ouest, under the new English title West Coast Blues. Fantagraphics released a second Tardi adaptation, of "La Position du tireur couché" (under the title "Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot" ) in 2011, and a third one, of "Ô Dingos! Ô Châteaux!" (under the title "Run Like Crazy Run Like Hell") in 2015. Manchette was a fan of comics, and his praised translation of Alan Moore's Watchmen into French remains in print.

Paul Louis Marius Ricard (French pronunciation: [pɔl lwi maʁjys ʁikaʁ]; July 9, 1909 – November 7, 1997) was a French industrialist and creator of an eponymous pastis brand which merged in 1975 with its competitor Pernod to create Pernod Ricard. Ricard was also an environmentalist and the developer of two Mediterranean islands, as well as the builder of the Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet.

François-Henri de Virieu, marquis de Virieu (18 December 1931 – 27 October 1997) was a French journalist and television presenter.