Claude Miller
A celebrated figure in both French and international cinema and a regular visitor to these shores as guest of the French Film Festival UK, Claude Miller died on Wednesday, April 4, in Paris. The 70-year-old film director and producer was selected twice for the Competition in Cannes, in 1998 with Class Trip (for which he received the Jury Prize from Martin Scorsese) and in 2003 with Little Lili.
Both films were presented in their respective years and in his presence at the French Film Festival UK. Nominated four times for the César for Best Film (in 1977 for The Best Way to Walk, in 1982 for Garde à vue/The Grilling, in 1986 for The Hussy, and in 2008 for A Secret), Claude Miller was also short-listed seven times for the César for Best Director (for the four same films and for This Sweet Sickness in 1978, The Little Thief in 1989, and Little Lili in 2004), and won the César for Best Screenplay for The Grilling.
This appreciation has been contributed by Richard Mowe, director of the French Film Festival UK.
The world of Claude Miller was full of twists, turns, contradictory desires, troubled psyches, difticult personal relationships and sudden surprises. He established a reputation as a formidable director of actors, not just his principal cast but right down to the smallest cameo.
Miller, born in Paris in 1942. He drew on his personal family history for A Secret, the story of a Jewish couple’s survival in Paris during the Holocaust. Miller credited his father’s refusing to wear the star of David during the Second World War for saving the family from deportation. He spent his formative years as a production assistant to François Truffaut to whom he acknowledges considerable debts, and also Marcel Carné, Robert Bresson, Jacques Demy and Jean-Luc Godard. At film school he graduated top of his year in 1965. He made three shorts, then worked in television before his first two features La meilleure façon de marcher/The Best Way to Walk in 1975 and Dites-lui que je l’aime/This Sweet Sickness in 1977) marked him out as a singular craftsman.
The examination of psychological elements form a fundamental part of his preoccupations through such tormented characters as Patrick Bouchitey in La meilleure façon de marcher, Gérard Depardieu in Dites-lui que je l’aime, and Michel Serrault as the prime suspect in Garde à vue/The lnquisitor and as the obsessive private eye in Mortelle randonnée/Deadly Run.
He turned a particularly sensitive eye on the world of youth and childhood, especially in La meilleure façon de marcher and L’Effrontée which easily can be considered as one of the screen’s best evocations of youthful yearning and confusion.
He returned to that very world in La classe de neige/Class Trip. Adapted from Emmanuel Carrère’s best-selling novel, the film followed in the Miller tradition of literary adaptations. Dîtes-lui que je l’aime came from Patricia Highsmith’s This Sweet Sickness, Garde à vue from John Wainwright’s Brainwash, and Mortelle randonnée from Marc Behm’s The Eye Of The Beholder.
Garde à vue got a Hollywood makeover in 2000 film Under Suspicion starring Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman. In addition to Gainsbourg, Miller worked with several top Gallic talents including Isabelle Adjani, Michel Serrault and Gerard Depardieu.
Miller explained during a question and answer session in Edinburgh in 1998, part of a retrospective of his work: “I like Anglo Saxon type storytelling which is always very cinematic. La class de neige is a psychological thriller. It is the story of a teenage boy faced with a chilling secret, a life-threatening situation which he confronts successfully and gorws up in the process.”
The cast included no known names because Miller wanted there to be no distractions from the children who are the true heroes. “The youngster who plays the lead, Clement Van Den Bergh, 13, has been acting since he was eight. He is very professional, and he can express a great depth of feelng and an incredible intensity,” said Miller.
Some of the themes in La classe de neige shared common ground with La meilleure façon de marcher, L’effrontée and La petite voleuse. Miller’s obsession with childhood also has preoccupied his own thoughts recently. He suggested that childhood and the end of childhood represents “the most tormented, feverish, passionate period of my life.”
He added at the time: “I’ve also experienced torment and passion in my adult life, but they didn’t affect me as much as my childhood experiences. My parents were quite charming people. I didn’t have a difficult childhood like François (Truffaut). It’s just that my memories of childhood are of anguish, fear and various complexes. They weren’t halcyon days for me. I didn’t have to endure religious constraints - my parents didn’t raise me to live in fear of sin - but I knew about sin and my experiences were fraught with worry.”
Miller found that his characters who may well be considered bizarre, tortured, over the top, and angst-ridden are actually like everyone else... that is abnormal.
“We all have a side who show to others, and we all have our fantasies, our secret garden. My charactes act out their fantasies, because I’m a filmmaker. There has to be a certain amount of dramatic content, after all. And as nothing happens to happy people, I portray unhappy people. Either they act out their fantasies or their inner world takes a beating,” he once told me.
The director worked with his wife Annie as his producer and the pair together attended the French Film Festival UK. Their company, Les Films de la Boissiere produced not only his work but the work of other film-makers. The relationship is mutually supportive. "Working with Claude is different, that's for sure. I don't produce films by other directors in the some way. With Claude and especially with his films, I'm in a special position because I understand all his expectations and his fears. I know the difficulties that a subject like this poses for him. But it's my impression that La classe de neige is the end of a cycle and that it will be his last film on childhood," she said once.
Miller acted as an ambassador for the French and European cinema and travelled extensively. Class Trip was presented to considerable acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival where he was awarded a special jury prize by Martin Scorsese.
His last project was an adaptation of Francois Mauriac’s novel Thérèse Desqueyroux starring Audrey Tautou and Gilles Lellouche that will be released in France in the autumn and has been requested for this year's edition of the French Film Festival UK.
International recognition was only fitting for a director whose body of work is remarkable and arresting. In an age when the power of the moving image is taken for granted, Miller made his choices meticulously, and never insulted the intelligence of his audience. Miller is survived by his wife Annie and son Nathan, with whom he co-directed 2009 release I'm Glad that my Mother is Alive and which Nathan presented at the Glasgow Film Festival.
