Michel Drach begins at the time of the New Wave, but belongs to no current. He realizes romantic movies, very political films that scandal movies on very personal melancholy.

After studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, it is oriented towards the cinema by his cousin Jean-Pierre Melville, where he became the assistant. It begins with short films in a very personal invoice, which Soliloques the poor (1951) and Auditorium (1957) and then passes feature film is not buried on Sunday (1959) study on the existential loneliness of a "Black" in Paris, which earned him the Louis Delluc price announcement by the style of filming and production method, the New Wave.