Claude Miller - biography

1942-2012

Biography

A disciple of the French New Wave, Claude Miller learned his trade under the guiding hand of some of the movement’s leading lights before forging his own identity and acquiring a reputation as one of France’s most distinguished filmmakers. Although he made only sixteen full-length films, in a career that spanned 40 years, Miller is highly thought of and epitomises the auteur filmmaker, very much in the mould of his mentor François Truffaut. Although Miller’s work is often compared with that of Truffaut (both men were drawn to the same subjects - problems of adolescence, American B-movie thrillers, etc.), his films are invariably of a much darker hue and lack the warmth and optimism that characterises Truffaut’s oeuvre. Like Truffaut, Miller was well-regarded by critics and audiences alike, and he won several prestigious awards, notably the Cannes Jury Prize for La Class de neige in 1988.

Claude Miller was born in Paris on 20th February 1942 and grew up in the Montreuil district of the capital. His family were secular Jews who managed to escape deportation during the Occupation through his father’s refusal to wear the infamous yellow star. Miller developed a keen interest in cinema in his youth and studied filmmaking at the IDHEC, France’s best-known film school. His first practical experience was as a trainee assistant on Marcel Carné’s Trois chambres à Manhattan (1965). During his military service, he was able to continue his filmmaking apprenticeship in the cinématographique des armées. He subsequently worked as an assistant on Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar (1966), Jacques Demy’s Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Week-end (1967).

From 1968 to 1975, Claude Miller was employed by François Truffaut as a production manager, and this association would impact greatly on the films that Miller would later make, inviting comparisons between the work of the two film directors. Miller was very much Truffaut’s filmmaking protégé. During this period, he made a number of short films, including Camille ou la comédie catastrophique (1971), which first brought him to the attention of the critics. In 1976, Miller made an auspicious feature debut with La Meilleure façon de marcher. A cruel exploration of sexual identity in a children’s summer camp, the film’s success was assured by the casting of Patrick Dewaere in the lead role and its unmistakable anti-authority tone, which caught the Zeitgeist of the period.

Dites lui que je l’aime (1977), Miller’s next film was an adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel with a prestigious cast, but it proved to be a massive flop. After this failure, Miller gave up filmmaking for four years, only to return with one of his most highly regarded films, Garde à vue (1981), a minimalist thriller starring Romy Schneider and Michel Serrault. The film was not only a box office hit, it also took four Césars, including the awards for Best Actor and Best Screenplay. Miller followed this success with another popular film policier, Mortelle randonnée (1983), one of his darkest films (but one with a whiff of self-parody), distinguished by strong performances from Michel Serrault and Isabelle Adjani.

Claude Miller’s next film, L’Effrontée (1985), was to be one of his most commercially successful and his best-known, an affectionate portrait of childhood rebellion that has echoes of Truffaut’s Les 400 coups (1959). The film attracted an audience of almost three million in France and won Miller the Prix Louis Delluc, as well as launching the acting career of 13-year-old Charlotte Gainsbourg. Miller stayed with the subject of adolescence for his next two films, La Petite voleuse (1988), developed from a screen treatment which Truffaut worked on shortly before his death, and L’Accompagnatrice (1992), Miller’s first historical drama. The precarious nature of childhood features prominently in the director’s subsequent La Classe de neige (1998), a deeply unsettling psychological thriller which more than made up for the failure of Miller’s previous film, the erotic comedy Le Sourire (1994).

La Chambre des magiciennes (2000) is, thematically and stylistically, Miller’s most experimental film, a strange melange of dreamlike fantasy and documentary-framed reality. After this radical digression, Miller returned to safer ground with Betty Fisher et autres histoires (2001), an intricate thriller based on a Ruth Rendell novel with a stellar cast. This was followed by La Petite Lili (2003), an updated version of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull which pays homage to Truffaut’s La Nuit américaine (1975). In Un secret (2007), Miller draws on his family recollections of the Nazi Occupation, the main character being based on his own father. Health problems compelled Miller to work with his son Nathan on his next film, Je suis heureux que ma mère soit vivante (2009), another poignant account of a search for identity, followed by Voyez comme il danse (2011), a daring (but not entirely successful) attempt to deconstruct the tacky American-style love film. In the summer of 2011, Miller was able to complete his final film, Thérèse Desqueyroux (2012), starring Audrey Tautou et Gilles Lellouche, just before his declining health took its toll. After suffering from a long illness, Claude Miller died in the evening of Wednesday 4th April 2012, aged 70. The warm words that came upon news of his death testify to the high esteem with which his work is held, both in France and around the world. He was both an inspired and an inspirational film auteur.

© filmsdefrance.com 2012

Claude Miller is best-known for the following films: