Tintin et moi

Tintin and I recently aired as an episode of PBS's P.O.V. series. It's based on a taped interview of Georges Remi a.k.a. Herge, Tintin's creator, from 1971 in which in discusses his various experiences publishing his popular character, first in a Catholic newspaper, then in his own series of comic books. Awesome sweeping views of various comic pages and surreal images of Herge's dreams. I first encountered Tintin in the pages of Children's Digest at my local elementary school library reading The Secrets of the Unicorn. My mom later got a subscription to CD and I read the entire Red Rackham's Treasure every month in 1978. I remember seeing some Tintin comic books in a local book store after that but for some reason I didn't get any probably because I was 12 and I thought I was outgrowing them. I do have Breaking Free, a book written and drawn by J. Daniels, published in 1989, six years after Herge's death. Haven't read it yet. This film also covers the artist's personal life as when he left his first wife after his affair with a colorist in his employ (whom he later married). Her name is Fanny and she is interviewed here. If you love Tintin and his creator, this film is definitely worth a look. Update: 9/4/07-I've now read Breaking Free. Tintin and The Captain are the only regular characters that appear here and they are tailored to the anti-capitalist views of Mr. Daniels with Tintin portrayed as a rabble rouser with a chip on his shoulder who nevertheless cares for The Captain who he's staying with. The Captain here is just trying to make ends meet with a wife and daughter that he loves dearly. They and other construction workers vow to strike after a fellow employee dies from a faulty equipment accident. The whole thing takes place in England with working-class cockney accents intact. Not the kind of thing Herge would approve of but an interesting read nonetheless. Oh, yes, dog Snowy only appears in the top left corner of the cover (which has Tintin running over the police!) and the dedication page.

"Tintin and I" first of all struck me as a masterpiece documentary. The photography and the editing are truly breath-taking (almost anti-Dogma).

We follow the life of Tintin drawer Hergé through an open-hearted interview from 1971. The Tintin series was drawn on the background of the great ideological fights of the twentieth century. In the midst of these Hergé has his own demons to fight with, and much of his drawing activity seems like an attempt to tame these and to escape into a world of perfection.

Even though there are spectacular photographic panoramas of drawings from Tintin albums and also some reconstructions and reading of passages from the albums, the story of Hergé is told entirely through interviews and archive material, and never through reconstructions.

Hergé lived the turbulent life of a true, suffering artist. But the fantastic world that came of his imagination will continue to amaze readers again and again.

Some thirty years ago, Author Numa Sadoul published a book length interview with the Belgian comic book artist Georges Remi (better known as Herge, the creator of Tintin). This movie catches up with Sadoul today as he recalls the interview, while we listen to the cassettes (Herge died in 1983) and see some old photos and footage of the man himself. Some parts of the interview were not published in the book at the request of Herge, and we now know these dealt with his separation from his wife, after he had an affair with one of his collaborators (who years later would become his second wife). An interesting thing the movie does not address well is the shift in the Tintin books from the early rightist and imperialist books (Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in the lands of the Soviets) to fairly anti-imperialist books just a few years later (The Blue Lotus). On the whole, I come out of this movie knowing a few more things about Herge and seeing him as a bit more unlikable than when I come in to the theater.

After I first heard about this on the internet, I immediately looked high and low for this documentary. When I finally found it, I was all set in watching the whole TV special.

This documentary is about Herge and his life's work on the Tintin series. The whole thing is presented by a man who had a tape recorded interview with Herge back in 1972. Preserved all those decades and used for this TV documentary with the usage of visual reenactments and archive footage of Herge to give the documentary a spiritual/immortal feeling to it. A lot of the archive footage of Herge was redone in a pencil like format to make his appearance look like that of his own drawing styles. As well as a collection of screen-shots of various Tintin books combine with sound of fixes to give them a living effect to them. There's also a few interviews with people who knew Herge as a friend or as a relative who express their feelings about him.

The great thing about this documentary is it gives you the idea of what Herge was like when he was still living. And it has almost all of the important facts of his life. If you're a fan of the books, then you'll enjoy this documentary a lot. If it ever becomes available on Region 1 DVD, then I would definitely buy it.

Imagine that I was about to miss this great cultural event on Swedish TV last night, and it was only because my girlfriend insisted on keeping the TV on (to make it easier for her to fall asleep!) that I came across it (yes I had seen an advert for it previously but of course forgotten about it and looked forward to an 'early night'...).

Anyway - this must surely be a rather unusual idea - to base a film documentary on an interview made with sound only more than 30 years ago. But with animated and other documentary film material it adds up to a really good and insightful portrait of one of the 20th centuries' most appreciated literary artists - Georges Remy a.k.a Hergé.

I for sure will read my Tintin albums with a different eye after having seen this film, which makes it easier to connect the variations in style as well as content with the different periods in Hergé's life (and I can tell you that I will a.s.a.p get the few that I don't have). Of course my perception of the albums has changed over the more than 25 years that I have already been reading them, as has my view about what albums are my favourites, but this adds (at least) one more dimension to them.