Claude Miller

Charlotte O'Sullivan writes that Claude Miller has given a whole career to combining psychological subtlety with macabre suspense, but that on Class Trip his lack of faith in the audience proves fatal. The same piece describes a trap of his: when the boy finally wets his bed nothing happens, nobody hears, nobody mocks, and what gets exposed is the audience's own fear. O'Sullivan adds that bold, defiant children are easier to hold, as Miller's own L'Effrontee shows. Philip Kemp counts him among the French directors working the tradition of the American noir novel. The screenplay of Garde a vue won the academy's category for screenplay, dialogue or adaptation, an award given in 1982 and split three ways with Michel Audiard and Jean Herman. L'Effrontee, which he directed himself, came back from the academy with two awards as well, Bernadette Lafont taking supporting actress and Charlotte Gainsbourg most promising young actress at the 1986 ceremony, both for that one film.