Michel Deville (13 April 1931 – 16 February 2023) was a French film director and screenwriter.

Deville began directing during the emergence of the French New Wave and was a contemporary of filmmakers such as Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, although he was not part of the movement. His early films nevertheless attracted favourable attention from critics at Cahiers du Cinéma, Positif and Présence du cinéma.^[1]

One of Deville's comedies, La Lectrice (The Reader) was probably his biggest success with international audiences. La Lectrice is about a woman (played by Miou-Miou), who finds work reading novels for the blind but gradually finds herself unwittingly attracting a clientele of fetishists who enjoyed being read to. At one time his films were difficult to find in North America but presently (2007) seven of his films are available in DVD in the U.S.

His 1980 film Le Voyage en douce was entered into the 30th Berlin International Film Festival.^[2] Five years later, his film Death in a French Garden was entered into the 35th Berlin International Film Festival.^[3]

A clip from his 1968 film Benjamin is included in Robert Bresson's Une Femme Douce (1969).

Deville died on 16 February 2023, at the age of 91.^[4]

Filmography

References

External links

• Michel Deville at IMDb