Tintin and I
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Tintin et moi (English title Tintin and I) is a 2003 documentary by Anders Høgsbro Østergaard, about Belgian writer-artist Georges Remi, better known as Hergé, and his creation Tintin. The film is a co-production of Denmark, Belgium, France, and Switzerland.
The film is based around Numa Sadoul's revealing interviews with Hergé from the 1970s, and goes into detail about Hergé's life and how Tintin affected it.
The film is based strongly around Hergé's experiences and state of mental health leading up to the writing of Tintin in Tibet, often heralded as Hergé's most personal album. The history of Tintin is examined through Hergé's life and the way that he was affected by the growing popularity of his character.
The underlying theme of the film would appear to be the way that Hergé's, or rather Georges Remi's, private life affected his work; for example, Bianca Castafiore is an unconscious (or perhaps conscious) reflection of Georges' first wife, Germaine, and the way that Captain Haddock responds to her reflects the way Georges often felt towards his wife. Specifically, the mothering instinct that Germaine had toward him is shown most explicitly in The Castafiore Emerald. The subject of religion is also discussed, including Georges' gradual disillusioned view of the Catholic church, and the opposition he came up against due to Wolff's sacrifice in Explorers on the Moon. The influence of Chang on Georges' work is also highlighted, using reconstructed footage and actual archive footage of their meeting in 1981.
Technically, the film employed an interesting choice of graphic effects to "re-animate" video footage of Hergé speaking, to match up with the audio being played (from the interviews conducted with Sadoul). Panels from the albums were also animated to allow movement through them, the plane crash from Tintin in Tibet and the Shanghai street scene from The Blue Lotus both being used in such a manner. Interviews are reconstructed using actors, but the viewer never sees their faces; hands and arms are used, holding the albums, flicking through them, drinking tea and the like.
