The Broken Ear: The influence of cinema

[Branched off from this thread

I've always liked The Broken Ear. It's one of the darkest albums because at this stage of the series Tintin hasn't got the comic foils around him which lighten the mood in the later work. Am I correct in reading somewhere that it was in part influenced by The Maltese Falcon?

Harrock n roll made the connection here.

I can see a loose connection: mystery surrounding an ancient figurine which is coveted by unscrupulous people. Too bad that Herge did not think of putting in a femme fatale for good mesure.

Should note that the film version with Bogart was released some six years after "Broken Ear", so if Herge was inspired then it would have been by the 1931 version starring Ricardo Cortez.

Or the book (1930)? As someone who dislikes adaptations so much, I'm surprised that you leapt to the assumption that Hergé would have had to have seen a film version to be inspired... ;-)

The other problem is that the 1931 version of the film was not highly regarded, being thought too violent and "lewd" - a problem which meant that it couldn't even be shown in America after the Code was introduced, stopping it being re-released there in 1936; it would have to be established that it was even released in Belgium, if it was seen as a contentious film.
A possible contender might be Satan Met a Lady, a 1936 rom-com remake of the same story, which starred Bette Davis. However it too was badly received, and Davis apparently described it as "junk".
I'm not certain that there is anything definitive to say whether or not Hergé was influenced by Hammett, but it's entirely posible as it has been a very popular and influential book since it first appeared.

I think it is more likely that if indeed Herge was inspired by The Maltese Falcon for The Broken Ear, it would probably have been from the highly praised and famous 1930 Dashiell Hammett rather than the 1931 film version.

As for the album itself, it has long been one of my favourites: the introduction of General Alcazar, the satire on the Gran Chaco War, the nefarious villains and a fine detective puzzle for Tintin all make this one of the adventures that I most look forward to rereading whenever I do my annual "read every Tintin book in chronological order alongside the relevant chapters in Michal Farr's Tintin: The Complete Companion".

Just because I dislike adaptations, I'm not naive enough to think that everyone else hates them.

Also, according to some sources, the novel "The Maltese Falcon" was not translated into French until 1936 when Herge started work on "Broken Ear". They say that he did not do much reading. If the novel was an influence then it's possible that he was inspired by what other people were saying about it rather than by reading it himself.

Hergé was an avid filmgoer, so if he was influenced by The Maltese Falcon - although I've not read anything myself that confirms this - it would seem more likely he saw the 1931 film than read the book. Certainly The Broken Ear shares a similarity in the concept of a figurine that hides a jewel, but that might be about it.

Charles Dierick, the curator of the Hergé Museum, has made an interesting study of the influence of films on Hergé's work and with regard to The Broken Ear he cites two films as a possible inspiration. Firstly, The Americano, a 1916 film starring Douglas Fairbanks (senior). I've not seen the film, but from what I've read it's set in the fictional Caribbean republic of 'Paragonia' (although shot in Mexico), and is about American mining interests, a deposed President and the unrest that ensues.

The second film is Viva Villa from 1934, a fictional account of the revolutionary Pancho Villa and the revolution in Mexico in the early twentieth century. I watched a short extract on the 'net and it looked a very brutal film (pre-code cinema). Apparently it was the highest grossing film of 1934. But it does have similarities with the look of The Broken Ear; sombreros, firing squads, and the scenes of the sweeping revolution.

I read in another article that Dierick thinks the actor Wallace Beery, who plays Pancho Villa in Viva Villa, was the model for Alcazar, but I can't see any resemblance myself. There are quite a few Pablos in the film though!