He was born in Thumeries, near Lille, on October 30, 1932 and died in Beverly Hills on November 23, 1995. Noble and wealthy family, upper middle class. He begins to get passionate about cinema using his father's 8mm camera. The parents try in vain tried to make him give up. He studied at the IDEHC later, after the school in Fontainebleu during the war and his father's deportation to the Mauthausen concentration camp. He collaborates with the documentarist Jacques Cousteau with whom he directs The World of Silence, which wins an Academy Award for best documentary and the Golden Palm in Cannes. His debut in fiction is precisely with Elevator to the Gallows, followed by the famous ones, The lovers, Zazie in the Metro, The Fire Within’ In the seventies other movies to report Murmur of the Heart with Lea Massari and Lacombe, Lucien. After the experimental Black Moon he began making films in the United States, gaining many acclaim with Pretty Baby with a scandalous young Brooke Shields and Atlantic City with the great Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon. In 1980 he celebrates his third marriage, as a third wife he chooses Candice Bergen the American actress with whom he will spend the rest of his life. In the late eighties he returns to shoot in France with critically acclaimed films, Au Revoir les Enfants, May Fools and Damage. The last film instead was shooting in New York, Vanya on 42nd street.
