Persepolis (2007): the film versus the comic strip

When the designer becomes a filmmaker and her black and white goes onto the screen without an intermediary, the question of fidelity changes in nature. Source-by-source decryption.

As in each article in this series, only verified information (creators, distribution, dates, publishers) is stated; the comparative analysis is ours, without reproducing dialogue or protected images.

Persepolis (2000): the autobiography that changed French comics

Persepolis was published in 2000 by L'Association, an independent house founded at the end of the 1990s by a collective of authors determined to publish an author's comic strip, in black and white, outside the dominant commercial formats. Marjane Satrapi tells her own story: born in Iran into a progressive and cultured family, she was eight years old when the 1979 revolution overthrew the shah, and saw a regime closing in on her country that constrained bodies, women and thought. The four volumes follow his childhood under the bombs of the war with Iraq, his departure for Austria as a teenager, the wandering and solitude of exile, then a return home which resolves nothing.

The line is radically simple: flat black areas, stylized silhouettes, no effect. This economy is not an ease but a bias - it allows Satrapi to tell terrible things without pathos, and to maintain the look of the child that she was, for whom the torturers and the school supervisors belong to the same absurd world. Humor, constant, does the rest: Persepolis is a funny book on subjects that are not. The success was worldwide, with translations into dozens of languages, and the work became one of the milestones that admitted comics to the shelves of general literature.

The author directs it herself: a unique case

This is what radically distinguishes this film from all the others in this series of articles. Elsewhere, an outside team interprets an author's work — sometimes with their blessing, sometimes against them. Here, Marjane Satrapi co-directs the film with Vincent Paronnaud, also a comic strip author. There is therefore no intermediary: the line on the screen is his own, animated from his own graphics, in black and white, without anyone having “adapted” it to cinematic conventions.

This configuration immediately eliminates the faults that we have documented elsewhere. No one “humanized” the main character, no one added romance, no one converted a question into a riddle. The film also does not have to betray a graphic style to make it filmable, since the style East the movie. Satrapi and Paronnaud chose traditional animation, drawn frame by frame, going against the tide of the digital wave of the 2000s — a decision consistent with the material. The result was immediately praised: Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Oscar nomination for best animated film, and a considerable international career for a French black and white film.

What to cut anyway

Graphic fidelity does not exempt from duration constraints. Four volumes do not fit into a feature film, and the film makes clear choices: entire episodes from childhood and especially from the Austrian period are excluded or compressed, several secondary characters disappear, and certain passages of the return to Iran are tightened. What is preserved forms a clear trajectory – childhood under the revolution, exile, return, definitive departure – at the cost of the digressions which are part of the book's charm.

The film also adds what the comic strip could not give. The movement, first of all: the sequences of crowds, demonstrations and bombings gain in scale what they lose in abstraction. The voice, then – Chiara Mastroianni for Marjane, Catherine Deneuve for her mother, Danielle Darrieux for the grandmother – which gives the characters a carnal presence absent from the silent drawing. Music, finally, absent by definition from the paper. Finally, the story is framed by sequences located in an airport, processed in color, which establish the rest like a memory. This device does not exist in the albums: it is a cinema invention, discreet but structuring, and one of the rare ones that the film allows itself.

The characters, from paper to screen

• Marjane— The author as a child then a teenager, faithful to the autobiography.
• The grandmother— Tutelary and moral figure of the story, central in both versions.
• The parents— Progressive couple whose film retains its place.
• Uncle Anouche— The political opponent, whose fate marks Marjane's childhood.
• Viennese figures— Largely compressed on screen.

The Association and the invention of an author's comic strip

Understanding Persepolis requires knowing its publisher. The Association, founded in 1990 by a group of authors including Jean-Christophe Menu and David B., was formed in reaction against the dominant formats of Franco-Belgian comics: hardcover album of forty-eight pages, color, series with recurring heroes. His answer: black and white books, often thick, in a format close to the novel, devoted to author's stories - autobiography, chronicle, experimentation. The collection in which Persepolis appears, recognizable by its sober model, has hosted several major works of the revival of French comics.

The success of Persepolis surpassed anything the house had known, and played a historic role: it demonstrated that an autobiographical black and white comic strip, published by an independent publisher, could reach a worldwide readership and be discussed in the general press like a book. It is a path comparable to that of American Splendor in the United States, but on a completely different scale of distribution. For the collector, the logic is that of the book and not of the booklet: the original editions of the four volumes at L'Association, in their original model, are the objects to look for - especially since the first prints, prior to success, were modest. The completes and reissues after the film are abundant and inexpensive.

Where to start reading

To discover the source,four volumes of Persepolis can be read in order, or in full. The film gives a tighter and very faithful version of it, but the albums contain a number of episodes missing on screen, particularly from the Viennese period. The read is fast, funny and moving - and one of the best entry points into author comics.

Timeline to know

• 1990— Foundation of the Association, publisher of author's comics.
• 2000-2003— The four volumes of Persepolis appear; global success.
• 2007— The film co-directed by Satrapi; Jury Prize at Cannes, nominated for an Oscar.

Collection side: what to aim for after the film

Persepolis obeys the logic of the book, not of the comic by numbers. THE original editions of the four volumes at L'Association are the pieces to target, in their original model - the first prints, prior to international success, being the most sought after. THE integrals and reissues after the film are very abundant and inexpensive. Early foreign editions are also of interest to some collectors, as the work has been translated into dozens of languages. It is a market for bibliophiles rather than speculators. As always, condition determines value; relying on real recent sales is strongly recommended.

Its place in the saga and for the collector

Persepolis will remain as the absolute counterexample to everything this series of articles documents. Where the adaptations betray, simplify or reinvent, this is directed by the author herself, with her own line, in her own graphic language. The only differences are those imposed by duration. For the collector, the work refers to bookstore heritage – the original editions of L'Association – and not to first appearances. For the reader, the conclusion is simple and rare in this body of work: the film and the albums tell the same thing, with the same voice. There is no betrayed version to rehabilitate, only a work to be discovered through one or the other door.

The verdict: the same work, two formats

• Loyalty: Satrapi's line transposed as is, black and white, a child's view of the revolution, the grandmother and the journey of exile - the author co-directs.
• Freedoms: four condensed volumes, episodes removed in particular in Vienna, a colored frame added, and the contribution of movement, voices and music.
• To collect: the original editions of the four volumes from L'Association.

Persepolis is the only film in this series co-directed by the author of the comic strip it adapts, with her own line and her own black and white. The deviations are limited to what the duration imposes. Jury prize at Cannes and nominated for an Oscar, with the albums it forms a diptych without betrayal – a rare enough case to be underlined.

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