Claude Miller (Writer/Director)

Claude Miller attends the Soiree-Gala party. (Photo: Franco Origlia / Getty Images)

Claude Miller began his film career supporting the leading lights of the "Nouvelle Vague" (New Wave): he acted in the Jean-Luc Godard classic "Two or Three Things I Know About Her" (1967), served as the assistant director on "Weekend" (1967) and in the late 196Os and early 70s worked as production manager on a string of Francois Truffaut-directed works, starting with "Stolen Kisses" (1968) and including "La Nuit Americaine/Day for Night" (1973) and "L'Historie d'Adele H./The Story of Adele H." (1975). In the meantime, Miller was directing his first full-length fiction film "La Meilleure facon de marcher/The Best Way to Walk" (1975). In the years following, Miller scripted several films, two directed by Luc Berand, and continued to write and direct his own dialogue-driven works. These include "Dites-lui que je l'aime" (1977), about a man who builds a dream house for a married woman he cannot have while being pursued by a woman he does not want, "Garde a vue/The Inquisitor" (1981), a nuanced thriller adapted from an English mystery novel, and "L'Effrontee/An Impudent Girl" (1985), a plumbing of the irascibility and jealousies of adolescence. The film featured music, the pangs of pre-adulthood and a very young Charlotte Gainsbourg, an actress he would direct again in "La Petite voleuse/The Little Thief" (1988). Both films seem impacted by Francois Truffaut in their fascination with erupting youth and the constant use of close-ups, underlining formally the importance of dialogue and individual performance in Miller's work. "The Little Thief" stems from an unfulfilled Truffaut project and like 1992's "The Accompanist", circulates around the theme of thwarted youth yet again. In "The Accompanist", Romaine Bohringer was cast as a meek pianist whose initial ecstasy at playing for an famed singer ends up exploding into an intense envy. More recently, Miller has co-written and directed "The Smile" (1993) and was among the directors contributing to "Les Enfants de lumiere/The Children of Light" and "Lumiere & Company" (both 1995) before writing and directing "La Classe niege/The School Trip" which shared the 1998 Cannes Jury Prize.