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French Film News

5 April 2012
Claude Miller, child of the Nouvelle Vague, dies at 70

A disciple of the French New Wave, the respected filmmaker Claude Miller died in the evening of Wednesday 4th April 2012, aged 70 after a long illness. Even though he made only 16 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. 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. Miller developed a keen interest in cinema in his youth and studied filmmaking at the IDHEC, France’s best-known film school. During his military service, he was able to continue his filmmaking apprenticeship in the cinématographique des armées. He subsequently worked as an assistant to Robert Bresson, Jacques Demy and Jean-Luc Godard.

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. In 1976, Miller made an auspicious feature debut with La Meilleure façon de marcher. Miller’s next film,Dites lui que je l’aime (1977), was a massive flop, despite its impressive cast. 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. Miller followed this success with another popular film policier, Mortelle randonnée (1983), one of his darkest films.

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), an unsettling psychological thriller.

After the experimental La Chambre des magiciennes, Miller returned to his thriller mainstay with Betty Fisher et autres histoires (2001). 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.

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 search-for-identity tale, followed by Voyez comme il danse (2011), a daring attempt to deconstruct the American-style love film. In the summer of 2011, Miller was able to complete his final film, Thérèse Desqueyroux (2012). 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.

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14 March 2012
Pierre Schoendoerffer, witness to the horrors of war, dies at 83

Pierre Schoendoerffer, one of France’s most respected filmmakers, passed away in the morning of the 14th March 2012, after an operation at a hospital at Clamart, Paris. Renowned the world over for his frank testimonies of the horrors and injustice of modern warfare, Schoendoerffer has won acclaim for his work as a film director, writer and journalist. It was when in he was in his early twenties that he became interested in forging a career as a filmmaker. This is what led him to join the cinematographic service of the French army, his first assignment being as a camera operator in the Indochina war. It was whilst he was filming the horrors of this protracted conflict that he was taken prisoner by the Viet Minh and he spent the next four months in a prison camp at Dien Bien Phu. After his release, he worked as a war correspondent in the region for Life magazine.

In 1958, Schoendoerffer met one of his personal heroes, the writer Joseph Kessel, and decided to adapt his novel La Passe du diable for the cinema. After this promising debut, Schoendoerffer went on to make several fictional films and documentaries which reflected his personal interests, be it the atrocities of modern warfare, the stoicism of soldiers on active service, or the drama of a life at sea. His two best-known films - La 317e Section (1965) and Le Crabe-Tambour (1977) - are adaptations of his own novels, both of which were major critical successes. La 317e Section is one of the earliest and very few French films to present an authentic account of the Indochina war and was both critically well-received and a surprising box office hit. Schoendoerffer’s subsequent documentary on the Vietnam War, La Section Anderson (1967) won him an Oscar. Two other notable films are: L’Honneur d’un capitaine (1982), a sobering reflection on the injustices of the Algerian War, and Dien Bien Phu (1992), a powerful meditation on the human cost of war.

As well as making an impact as a filmmaker, Pierre Schoendoerffer also pursued an active and very successful career as a writer and journalist, his talents recognised throughout the world. He had three children, one of whom, Frédéric Schoendoerffer, has also distinguished himself as a film director. He was a founder member of the Césars ceremony, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, and served as a vice-president of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. For his compassion for others and his uncompromising adherence to reporting the truth, Schoendoerffer is greatly respected, and he will be greatly missed.

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27 February 2012
The Artist takes FIVE Oscars

It had to happen... The Artist, the most talked about French film of 2012, has dominated the 84th Academy Awards Ceremony, and takes three of the top prizes - Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor (Jean Dujardin) - as well as awards for Costume Design and Art Direction. The Artist is the first silent film to win an Oscar since 1929 and has served to reawaken interest in silent cinema across the world. There is some truth in the saying: Silence is Golden.

25 February 2012
The Artist triumphs at the 37th Césars Ceremony

Surprise, surprise... The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius’s daring homage to the silent era of Hollywood, was the biggest winner at the 37th Césars Ceremony, held on 24th February 2012. It took six awards, including three of the top prizes (Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress), to the chagrin of the year’s other big successes at the French box office, Polisse and Intouchables.

The Artist may not have been the biggest box office hit of the year in France - its audience of 1.6 million seems paltry compared with the 19 million achieved by Intouchables - but it is the French film that has had the biggest impact across the globe, reviving a long overdue interest in silent cinema. A fortnight ago it took seven awards at the BAFTAs (including those for Best Director and Best Film) and it is expected to do well at the 2012 Academy Awards Ceremony, where it has been nominated for ten Oscars.

Jean Dujardin, the male lead of The Artist, lost out, as the Best Actor César went to Omar Sy, the star of Intouchables. (Ironically, his co-star Bérénice Bejo walked away with the Best Actress award... is her career about to overtake Dujardin’s?) The year’s other big hit, Polisse, garnered just two awards - for Best Editing and Most Promising Young Actress (for Naidra Ayadi). The politically themed drama L’Exercice de l’État notched up three wins, including the awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Michel Blanc).

2011 has been something of a vintage year for French cinema. Not only is the quality noticeably above average but there have been record attendance figures - over 215 million tickets were sold, the best result for over 42 years. French cinema appears to be on a roll... Vivement les Oscars!

Here are the awards in full:

Best film:
The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)

Best director:
Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist)

Best actor:
Omar Sy (Intouchables)

Best actress:
Bérénice Bejo (The Artist)

Best supporting actor:
Michel Blanc (L’Exercice de l’État)

Best supporting actress:
Carmen Maura (Les Femmes du 6ème étage)

Most promising young actor:
Grégory Gadebois (Angèle et Tony)

Most promising young actress:
Naidra Ayadi (Polisse)
Clotilde Hesme (Angèle et Tony)

Best original screenplay:
L’Exercice de l’État (Pierre Schöller )

Best adapted screenplay:
Carnage (Roman Polanski)

Best first film:
Le Cochon de Gaza (Sylvain Estibal )

Best music:
The Artist (Ludovic Bource )

Best cinematography:
The Artist (Guillaume Schiffman)

Best set design:
The Artist

Best costume design:
L’Apollonide (Souvenirs de la maison close)

Best sound:
L’Exercice de l’État

Best editing:
Polisse

Best animated feature:
Le Chat du rabbin (Antoine Delesvaux, Joann Sfar)

Best documentary:
Tous au Larzac (Christian Rouaud, Clémence Latour)

Best short film:
L’Accordeur (Olivier Treiner)

Best foreign film:
A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)

Honorary César:
Kate Winslet

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