Tintin Forums

Moderator Note: This thread combines two old threads.

Just watched "The Reader". The boy was reading to Kate Winslet when he started repeating familiar swearwords. Took me a second, then I knew it was one of Captain Haddock's angry rants. They then showed what he was reading, and it was the English version of Seven Crystal Balls. Nice, though the events were taking place in 1958, while the English book came out on 1962 :-)

I've already wanted this to win the Oscar, now I want it even more for the sake of our whisky loving sailor ;-)

I haven't seen the film myself, but I'm told the scene is a flashback to before the second world war. So even if The Seven Crystal Balls had been in French (1948) it's still wrong. I'm not complaining though!

In the recently Oscar nominated film The Reader, a boy reads a passage from Tintin. The passage goes as follows:

‘Blistering Barnacles and a thundering typhoon. It is water.’
‘But what on earth did you expect it to be?’
Whisky.
Whisky! By thunder, whisky. ‘Whisky? Come now captain, you can’t be serious.

I was wondering if anyone knows what book this excerpt comes from?

It's a scene near the beginning of the The Seven Crystal Balls. Captain Haddock was attempting to emulate a conjuror he had seen, but failed miserably.

And when Tintin continues to be sceptical, he takes him along to the music hall ... thus kickstarting the entire adventure!

Great book. One of the darkest.