Uderzo, itinerary of a spoiled designer

The first broadcast on Canal+ and myCANAL ofAsterix and Obelix: the Middle Kingdomthe fifth film based on the comic strip, directed by Guillaume Canet, offers the encrypted channel the opportunity to make a very beautiful and touching documentary on Albert Uderzo, who died in March 2020 at the age of 92.

Read alsoGilles Lellouche: “The violence of the reception that Asterix and Obelix received seemed incredible to me”

If the life of René Goscinny (1926-1977) is now known to the general public, that of the co-creator of Asterix and Obelix is ​​much less so. To paint his portrait, director Yannick Saillet pulled out all the stops. FromAlain Chabat to Alexandre Astier, via Guillaume Canet, Anne Goscinny, Sylvie Uderzo or Ada Uderzo, his wife, without forgetting Zep, the creator of Titeuf, or François Boucq, all speak with tremolos in the voice of this master of comics, as virtuoso and brilliant on paper as he was shy and reserved in life.

Born in Fismes in Oise on April 25, 1927, the son of Italian immigrants, Albert Uderzo was naturalized French seven years later. At birth, young Albert was already a phenomenon because he had twelve fingers, six on each hand, and would have surgery very quickly. Sylvie Uderzo fondly recalls that her father considered “these two little balls like his lucky charms”. This film, generous, documented, told by Antoine de Caunesretraces with precision and kindness the journey of this spoiled designer who left his graphic mark on the 20th century.

From his debut in France on Sunday, through Pilot to Parc Astérix, and five films accumulating tens of millions of admissions, we follow with pion the rise ofUderzowho retained until the end of his life a complex linked to his origins. “For some, we were Macaroni who came to eat the bread of the French”, he declared. And Anne Goscinny added:“On one side, an Ashkenazi Jew, half Polish, half Ukrainian, on the other, an Italian; it’s funny to think that these two men, who didn’t have a drop of French blood in their veins, created the best-known French myth of the 20th century. » What sometimes holds the magic of great works…