
Cédric Pérolini calls 1964’s That Man from Rio (L’Homme de Rio) the “missing link” between the Tintin comics and Indiana Jones. Our main character neither exclaims “Great snakes, she’s been hypnotized!” nor cracks a whip, but neither would be out of place. Jean-Paul Belmondo loved the Tintin comics and the whole story runs on Tintin logic. Notwithstanding an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, several plot points are drawn from the two-hander The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun. Director Philippe de Broca claims Steven Spielberg saw That Man from Rio nine times, and several set pieces in the Jones films obviously take inspiration from scenes in the earlier film.
Spoilers toward the end.
The elevator pitch for That Man from Rio is that a group of Amazon tribesmen seek three statues. The statues were held by three men who led an expedition and removed them from the Amazon. Of the men; one is dead, one is in France (Professor Catalan, played by Jean Servais, the organizer of the heist in Rififi), and one is in Brazil (financier Mário de Castro, played by Adolfo Celi). Our protagonist is Adrien Dufourquet (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a private in the French Air Force on a week’s leave visiting Agnès Villermosa (Françoise Dorleac) in Paris. Agnès’ father was the third (dead) member of the expedition. Our plot is set in motion when the tribesmen steal Catalan’s statue from a museum in Paris and kidnap him and Agnès.