If you are tired of waiting for The Secret of the Unicorn to finally hit your local multiplex this weekend, or if you prefer the quaint, rather old-fashioned Tintin to the Indiana Jones in Plus-fours that Spielberg seems to have turned him into, this might be something for you.
In 1947, a long time before the animated series that was broadcasted on TV stations across the globe, and a long time even before the very camp and very funny Tintin films starring Jean-Pierre Talbot, a first attempt was made at translating the Tintin stories to the silver screen. La Crab Aux Pinces D’Or (The Crab With The Golden Claws) was made by the Productions Cinématographiques Wilfried Bouchery et Compagnie from Keerbergen, Belgium, and is a very charming and endearing example of what you can do with just a bunch of puppets, a number of cardboard sets and all the inventiveness that stop-motion animation brings along.
Digital copies of the film had been doing the rounds for a while now, but the Spanish comics blog, La Carcel de Papel, also discovered a copy on YouTube, in four parts. They are in French, and sometimes quite hard to understand, but very enjoyable nevertheless. More info here.
October 28th, 2011 at 11:35 am
To be fair, digital copies are “doing the rounds” because it has been released commercially on DVD and someone has naughtily ripped it!
But yes, it is very charming, and inventive, and ambitious in taking on the desert trek, etc.
Also of note, listen out for British sea-shanties such as “Hearts of Oak” playing on the soundtrack when Haddock comes on screen – could this be a subtle confirmation that the good Captain is, as has been hypothesized, from the U.K? Or does it just mean that M. Bouchery had a library disk of stock tracks labled “Music for Sea Captains”?