New Delhi, May 17 -- It began with Tintin. Herge's comic books about a globe-trotting journalist who keeps getting into scrapes was irresistible source material at a time when cinema's latest attraction was splashy travelogue adventures. But Tintin was a big enough deal that Francophone filmmakers were wary of not doing it justice. Alain Resnais was attached to an adaptation; it's fascinating to think what the director of Last Year at Marienbad (and a huge comics fan) would've done. But it never came to pass, and the project was offered to director Philippe de Broca, who decided against a straight adaptation and set out instead to make a film suffused with the spirit of Tintin.

Everything came together loosely and fortuitously. De Broca'...