Nounours is in pain: Michel Manini, the historic director of “Bonne nuit les petits”, one of the best-known children’s shows on French TV, died on Sunday at the age of 86, his family announced to AFP on Monday. Died in Arcachon, Mr. Manini had directed several hundred episodes of this series, created by Claude Laydu and his wife Christine in the early 1960s.
This show marked several generations of viewers and entered popular culture. First in black and white then in color, “Bonne nuit les petits” was broadcast on the ORTF from 1962 to 1973, then on TF1 in a new version in 1976, and finally on France 2 in its last version in 1995 to 1997. Concluding with famous pipe notes, each episode features the puppet characters of the Sandman and his assistant Teddy Bear who, every evening before bedtime, descends from his cloud to visit the children Nicolas and Pimprenelle.
Michel Manini had succeeded Jacques Samyn as director after a first season (in 1962-63) during which the characters were not yet those who passed on to posterity (the children were called Petit Louis and Mirabelle). In an interview with the Ouest-France newspaper in 2016, Mr. Manini had described a complicated program to produce.
“First, we had to record the voices of the actors. Then we would shoot with the soundtrack on playback. The cameras were perched more than 1.70 m high, because the puppeteers were standing, holding the characters at arm’s length,” he said, explaining that “the great difficulty was to film without framing their heads ” . “At that time, there was no control screen. The scenes could only be viewed once the films had been developed, 48 hours after shooting. I was doing about a show and a half a day. And a show was less than four minutes,” he added.
