Michel Manini, the historical director of Bonne nuit les petits, one of the best-known children’s programs on French television, died on Sunday August 13 in Arcachon (Gironde) at the age of 86, his family announced on Monday. August 14.
He had directed several hundred episodes of this series, created by Claude Laydu and his wife, Christine, in the early 1960s. The 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 latest version. , from 1995 to 1997.
Concluding with famous pipe notes, each episode features the puppet characters of the Sandman and his assistant, Nounours, who, every evening before bedtime, descends from his cloud to visit the children Nicolas and Pimprenelle.
“We were shooting with the soundtrack on playback”
Michel Manini had succeeded Jacques Samyn as director after a first season (in 1962-1963) 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, Michel Manini described a complicated program to produce: “First, we had to record the voices of the actors. Then we would shoot with the soundtrack in playback. The cameras were perched more than 1.70 meters 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, which was forty-eight hours after shooting. I was doing about a show and a half a day. And one program lasted less than four minutes. »
