PARIS: A beaten kid, moved to Paris, his sketches under his arm, and an exile whose family has been bruised by anti-Semitism: for René Goscinny as for Sempé, who died on Thursday, creating “Little Nicolas” was a way of heal the wounds of a dented childhood.
Chance of the calendar, the creative process at the origin of the most famous of the little schoolchildren, essential hero of children’s literature, and now doubly orphan, after the death Thursday of Sempé, is at the heart of an animated film which must be released in theaters October 12.
“Le Petit Nicolas, what are we waiting for to be happy?”, for which directors Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre met Sempé before his death, won the Cristal d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in June. entertainment in Annecy.
Far from the idealized France of the 1950s traced in their joint works, it shows how the two men drew inspiration from their intimate wounds to create the mischievous little boy, best friend for generations of readers and sold 15 million copies. .
When he met Sempé in the Paris of the 1950s, Goscinny was a young man who had already rolled over his head: he left as a child at the end of the 1920s in Argentina with his parents when anti-Semitism was rising in Europe, he then backpacked between the United States where he dreams of working with Walt Disney, and notably meets Morris, the creator of Lucky Luke, and France.
Sempé, he is a kid from a working-class family in Bordeaux, beaten by his stepfather and goes to Paris, drawing board under his arm, to try his luck. The love of drawing is therefore not the only thing that connects the two young men.
The creation of “Little Nicolas”, “is a story of resilience, of two guys who had their childhood stolen, one by the Shoah and the other by an abusive stepfather, and who will create this childhood dream of Little Nicolas”, explained to AFP Benjamin Massoubre, one of the co-directors, during the Annecy Festival.
“Hard to do Sempé”
The opportunity to show these two accomplices in a different way, pencil in hand, sometimes at home, sometimes on the terrace of a café: “Goscinny, very far from his image of a franchouillard in slippers, is a globetrotter”, Sempé in love with jazz and music.
The first sketches, the choice of the first name, almost at random, thanks to an advertisement for the wine merchant “Nicolas”… The film traces the genesis of what will become one of the most read works of French heritage.
The directors, who worked hand in hand with René Goscinny’s daughter, Anne, were able to use the artists’ archives. And faithfully recreating the elegant line of Jean-Jacques Sempé, which had to be adapted to the screen, a challenge.
“To be faithful to his universe, we started from his drawings and we made files: restaurants, bars, parks, trees”, to constitute a database from which the designers drew, explains Amandine Fredon, the other director.
“It’s very hard to do Sempé,” admits the filmmaker. But the bet is successful: the film, now in the form of a farewell, will allow spectators to sit down as if they were there at the table where Jean-Jacques Sempé, pencil in hand, created this little boy who spoke so much to the unhappy child he had been.
Sempé and Goscinny, the wounds of the dads of “Little Nicolas”