Background
Michel Deville was born in Boulogne-sur-Seinetor on 13 April 1931.
Michel Deville was born in Boulogne-sur-Seinetor on 13 April 1931.
Very little of Deville s work has traveled far outside France. Benjamin is not the happiest representative of a director who, at his best, is a complex and tender comedian of the emotions. Nothing seems to have equaled the musical interplay of Ce Soir on Jamais and Adorable Menteuse, films about the resort to deception and masquerade among young lovers. With witty scripts by Deville himself and Nina Companeez, the use of such actresses as Anna Karina, Marina Vlady, Macha Meril, and Françoise Dorléac, and a camera style that delighted in filming soeial groups so that individuals or couples were never cut off from their context, Deville seemed a very promising director. It was mannered, literary comedy, harking back to the intrigue of Twelfth Night and classical French theatre. In fact, after working for several years as assistant to Henri Decoin, Deville had collaborated with Jean Meyer on the filming of two Comédie Française productions: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (58) and Le Mariage de Figaro (59). In the early 1960s, at least, he looked capable of taking up Renoirs pursuit of winged cupid in something like the house-party atmosphere of La Regie du feu. But neglect may have forced him to coarsen his sty le and broaden his material.
Péril and La Lectrice were successes beyond France:the latter had Miou-Miou as a professional reader who enters into her stories and her readers’ lives—a pretty idea, scripted by Deville and his wife.