Michel Manini, director of “Good night the little ones”, is dead – Liberation

2023-08-15 10:58:00

Died Sunday August 13 at the age of 86, Michel Manini had produced several hundred episodes of the famous series for children.

He gave life to Nounours, Nicolas and Pimprenelle. Michel Manini, the historic director of the program Bonne nuit les petits, died on Sunday August 13 at the age of 86. Died in Arcachon (Gironde), Michel Manini had directed several hundred episodes of this series for children, created by Claude Laydu and his wife Christine in the early 1960s.

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. First in black and white then in color, Bonne nuit les petits was broadcast on 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. .

A program of Good night the little ones in 1965

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).

“We could only watch the scenes once the films had been developed”

In an interview in the newspaper Ouest-France in 2016, Michel Manini had described a complicated program to produce. “First, we had to record the actors’ voices. 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 consisted in filming avoiding framing their heads” .

“At that time, there was no control screen. We could only watch the scenes once the films had been developed, 48 hours after the shooting. I was doing about a show and a half a day. And a program lasted less than four minutes,” he added.