Tintin et le mystère de la Toison d’Or (1961) - film review

When Captain Haddock inherits a ship named The Golden Fleece from an old acquaintance, he and his trusty friend Tintin set off to Turkey to collect what they believe to be a priceless treasure.  To their disappointment, the ship turns out to be nothing more than a clapped-out merchant ship.  Then a mysterious stranger offers to buy the boat for a small fortune.  Tintin wonders whether his friend’s inheritance is quite as worthless as it appears...

It was presumably the phenomenal success of Les Aventures de Tintin animated television series (first broadcast in France between 1957 and 1959, but repeated on a regular basis ever since) which led to this first live-action adaptation of Hergé’s world popular comic books.   Hergé himself gave his blessing to the production and was reputedly pleased with the end result, as well he might.   Tintin et le mystère de la Toison d’Or is such a perfect evocation of the world of Tintin that anyone who grew up learning to read through the exploits of Tintin and his friends can hardly escape being swept away on a tide of nostalgia whilst watching it.   The film’s popularity resulted in a sequel Tintin et les oranges bleues (1964) which, whilst good entertainment for the younger ones, doesn’t quite have the magic and broad appeal of this first wonderful offering.

All of the familiar cartoon characters are instantly recognisable in human (and canine) form, particularly Jean-Pierre Talbot as the oddly quiffed androgynous reporter Tintin, who looks as if he might well have been the model for the original Hergé creation.  Georges Wilson, a distinguished French character actor, is hilarious as the lugubrious, whisky-swigging Captain Haddock, renowned as much for his comically irate spleen-venting (Mille sabords! / Blistering Barnacles!) as for his propensity for getting himself into trouble.  Professeur Tournesol (a.k.a. Professor Calculus) is there, looking so like his strip cartoon equivalent that you wonder whether he is played by a real actor, along with Tintin’s faithful pooch Milou / Snowy.  It’s really quite uncanny how close all of the characters in this film are to the ones in the original comic books.

Tintin et le mystère de la Toison d’Or is not only a well-made production, beautifully filmed in Turkey on what appears to be quite a substantial budget, it has a strong storyline which more than does justice to Hergé’s original stories, and holds up pretty well against more adult-oriented action thrillers of the era.  The film is well-paced, stylish, funny and appeals just as much to adults as it does to children, particularly adults who have many happy memories of time spent following the exploits of Tintin and his colourful entourage as they take on the world’s great criminal masterminds with cunning instead of the obligatory firearms.  It may lack the sophisticated special effects and modern cinematic gimmickry that Steven Spielberg employed on his The Adventures of Tintin (2011), made exactly half a century later, but this first live-action outing for Hergé’s happy crime-fighting ensemble is closer in spirit to the original Tintin stories and is simply a magical piece of escapist cinema, whether you are 5 or 105.

© James Travers 2000-2011

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