Jacques R. Villa(1927-2002)

Jacques R. Villa's first film Les petits chats (1960), a dark tale involving four little girls, may have been ahead of its time. Whatever the case my be, the censors disliked the idea of three "innocent" lasses trying to drown a fourth one. As a result, the movie was purely and simply banned just after being released in 1959. When it was finally authorized five years after it was too late, it flopped at the box office. Nowadays it remains largely unseen and unjustly forgotten, despite featuring Catherine Deneuve in her first major role at age 16. Villa was born in 1927 in Soulac-sur-Mer to an army officer father. The place where he studied was a Jesuit college, reputed the severest in France. At 15, not putting up with the strict discipline of the place, he ran away to Paris, where he was hired as a jazz musician. But this was only an enchanted interlude as, after a time, he was brought back home by his family. At last an adult, he could finally fend for himself and started working for French television, first in Morocco, then in Paris where he became the assistant of François Chalais, whose programs about cinema were very popular. It is during this period that Jacques Villa wrote a Christmas tale that would later be the basis of Les petits chats (1960).