"Not to climb very high, but all alone"
, said Michel Deville quoting Cyrano de Bergerac.
Born on April 13, 1931 in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), where he still resided, the director died on February 16 at the age of 91.
"I've always had fun
," he repeated.
He leaves about thirty films, often adaptations of books, and in various registers.
"The charm of this profession is to have no rules"
, affirmed this classical music lover who wished never to "start again" what he had already done.
Always attentive to what was happening around him.
Considering that it was necessary to give, even
“sacrifice a little”
to the cinema.
Whoever presented himself as stubborn, stubborn and courageous in the field of the seventh art has indeed
“sacrificed”
a lot .
The son of a father who made flower pots, the young Michel Deville stumbled upon the forest setting that Alexandre Trauner imagined for
Juliette ou la Clé des songes
, by Marcel Carné.
Amazed, the boy rushes to the Cinémathèque, devours hundreds of films, before becoming the first assistant of a benevolent Henri Decoin.
In seven years, they will co-sign thirteen films including
Razzia sur la chnouf
(1954),
Folies-Bergère
(1956) and
La Chatte
, with Françoise Arnoul as a resistance fighter during the Second World War in 1958.
“Take a naked man and woman in a room for a whole night, and there will be eroticism there.
»
Rosalind Deville
That year, Michel Deville embarked on the production of a first feature film with Charles Gérard (the future friend of Jean-Paul Belmondo), a thriller, A bullet in the barrel.
Then, works with Nina Companeez, the daughter of screenwriter Jacques Companeez who will co-write his screenplays for ten years.
In 1960, he directed
This evening or never alone
, inspired by Marivaux.
To finance it, Michel Deville created his own production company (Éléfilm, because he loved… elephants).
The two accomplices will collaborate until 1971, often for fanciful and removed sentimental comedies:
Adorable menteuse, Benjamin or the Memoirs of a virgin
, with Catherine Deneuve and Michèle Morgan, or
The Bear and the Doll
, one of Brigitte Bardot's last roles,
Because of a Woman
.
Raphaël ou le Débauché
, in which Françoise Fabian and Maurice Ronet are passionately in love with each other, is the duo's latest film (Jean Vilar is also part of the cast).
Michel Deville enjoyed the company of women.
Starting with his own, Rosalinde Deville, an extraordinary dialogue writer, who wrote about ten films with him.
After Nina Companeez, the director digs into a darker vein, films a suicide in
La Femme en bleu
(1973), another in
Le Mouton enrage
, taken from a novel by Roger Blondel, where Jean-Louis Trintignant becomes Jean's puppet -Pierre Cassel (1974).
Darker still is
Le Dossier 51
, a thriller based on the novel – “a dossier”, corrected Deville – by Gilles Perrault, with François Marthouret and Didier Sauvegrain, shot with a subjective camera.
An individual is crushed there by an implacable politico-bureaucratic machine (César for best screenplay, dialogues and adaptation 1978).
An attentive observer of human relations, the director expresses the difficulty of feelings through ambiguous and perverse characters.
Isabelle Huppert and again Jean-Louis Trintignant play a dangerous game in
Deep Waters
, based on Patricia Highsmith (1981).
The art of lying and manipulation, sometimes a scent of scandal underlie
Le Paltoquet (1986) - his
"most personal"
film
, he assured -,
La Lectrice
, which sees Miou-Miou read Prévert and Sade ( 1988), or the famous
Peril in the home
(César for best director 1986).
For this latest adaptation of
On Earth as in Heaven
, René Belleto's book, Michel Deville explained that after the failure of
Voyage en Douce
(1980) he wanted to return to eroticism.
The performance of a naked Nicole Garcia is remembered.
Rosalinde had advised him:
"Take a naked man and woman in a room for a whole night, and there will be eroticism there."
Thus
was born
Nuit d'été en ville
, with Marie Trintignant and Jean-Hugues Anglade as lovers of fusion (1990).
“All my films, comedies like others more serious, even serious, have been games for me, with rules.
And I often had fun making these rules as complex as possible, not to say the most restrictive, where else is the fun?
Could this be my “perverse” side, a word that I have read a few times in the press?
»
Michael Deville
Demanding and precise, the filmmaker varied forms and registers, playing with cinematographic conventions.
In
La Maladie de Sachs
, adapted from the book by Martin Winckler, with Albert Dupontel as a doctor, he tackles madness (best director and best screenplay at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in 1999).
That year, Michel Deville chose to stop the cinema, but in 2005, convinced by Emmanuelle Béart, he could not help but return with a vaudeville, Un fil à la patte
,
by Feydeau.
In a note of intent on the box of his films released on DVD in 2008, the director mischievously confided:
"All my films, comedies like others more serious, even serious, have been games for me, with rules (…).
And I often had fun making these rules as complex as possible, not to say the most restrictive, where else is the fun?
Could this be my “perverse” side, a word that I have read a few times in the press?
»
Michel Deville had been writing poems since the age of 9, he had published several collections which he embellished with titles of his own:
Poèmes zinopinés, Poèmes zimpromptus, Mots en l'air
, up to the very direct
Prends-moi
(Le Looking for noon, 2014).
He defined himself as a
“tinkerer of images and words”
.
“Poetry is a serious thing!
said this man with the rebellious lock who was perhaps not a poet, but a true lover, both of images and of words
.