By Robert St. Martin
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 11/4/24 – A suspenseful and charming finale to the American French Film Festival in Los Angeles on Sunday, November 2, is a new film Saint-Ex, directed by Pablo Agüero. The film chronicles a segment of the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the famous French writer, poet, illustrator, journalist and aviator. He received several prestigious literary awards for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and for his lyrical aviation writings, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight (Vole de nuit). His works have been translated into many languages. Saint-Exupéry was a successful commercial pilot before World War II, working airmail routes in Europe, Africa, and South America. The new film Saint-Ex recounts Saint-Exupéry’s life in1929, when was an aviator in Argentina and appointed director of the Aeroposta Argentina airline.
Saint-Exupéry became one of the pioneers of international postal flight, in the days when aircraft had few instruments. Later, he complained that those who flew the more advanced aircraft had become more like accountants than pilots. He worked for Aéropostale between Toulouse and Dakar, and then also became the airline stopover manager for the Cape Juby airfield in the Spanish zone of South Morocco, in the Sahara. His duties included negotiating the safe release of downed fliers taken hostage by Saharan tribes, a perilous task that earned him his first Légion from the French Government in 1939.
The film Saint-Ex focuses on Saint-Exupéry’s time as an Airmail pilot in Argentina in 1929 to 1930. When his best friend who happens to be Airmail’s best pilot Henri Guillaumet disappears in the Andes, Saint-Ex decides to set out in search of him, against all odds. This impossible quest forces him to push beyond his limits, turning his capacity to dream into his greatest strength. In those days, the maximum height single-propeller planes could fly was 4,000 meters. The challenge with flying over the Cordillera Blanca of the Andes between Argentina and Chile is the sheer height of these perilous snow-capped mountains peaks which rise higher than 6000m (19,685 ft), and many dozens of snowy peaks higher than 5700m (18,701ft).
During his time working with Aeroposta Argentina, Saint-Exupéry surveyed new air routes across South America, negotiated agreements, and occasionally flew the airmail as well as search missions looking for downed fliers. This period of his life is briefly explored in Wings of Courage (1995), an IMAX film by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud. In this new film, Saint-Exupéry uses his practical knowledge of wind patterns to figure out from condors how the warm winds of the deserts near Salta can lift an airplane higher than 4,000 meters and up over the peaks of the Cordillera Blanca.
The emotional center of the film is Saint-Exupéry’s great friendship with a fellow airman Henri Guillaumet who also flies the mail route from Salta to Santiago de Chile. At the start of the film Guillaumet rescues Saint-Exupéry from his downed plane in the Pacific near Bird Island. When his best friend Guillaumet who happens to be Airmail’s best pilot Henri Guillaumet disappears in the Andes, Saint-Ex decides to set out in search of him, against all odds. This impossible quest forces him to push beyond his limits, turning his capacity to dream into his greatest strength. He retraces Guillaumet’s secret landing stops along the mail route – knowing that in those days one could only try during the day with sunlight.
The story partially told in flashbacks reveals Saint-Exupéry’s personal grief about the death of his 15-year-old brother and how his close childhood friend with Gillaumet developed as a kind of brotherly bond. The two aviators later worked for the same postal service between Argentina and Chile. They are childhood friends and same age. Excellent as he is as an actor, it is bit strange that Vicente Cassal (age 57) was cast to play Guillaumet when Saint-Exupéry is supposed to about 30 and played by actor Louis Garrel who is 40. Diane Krueger plays Noëlle Guillaumet, the dedicated wife of the aviator in the film. Aside from those casting issues, the film is suspenseful, and we do get an amazing view of the stunning landscapes of the Cordellerias and the challenge of flying those single-prop planes almost 100 years ago.
Not in the film but mentioned in the closing captions of the film is the fact that Saint-Exupéry joined the French Air Force at the start of World War II flying reconnaissance missions until France’s armistrice with Germany in 1940. After being demobilized by the French Air Force, he travelled to the United States to help persuade its government to enter the war against Nazi Germany. Saint-Exupéry spent 28 months in the United State of America, during which he wrote three of his most important literary works.
Then joined the Free French Air Force in North Africa, even though he was far past the maximum age for such pilots and in declining health. He disappeared and is believed to have died while on a reconnaissance mission from the French island of Corsica over the Mediterranean on 31 July 1944. Although the wreckage of his plane was discovered off the coast of Marseille in 2000, the ultimate cause of the crash remains unknown.
