Le ciel est à vous

"A ghost of the aviation/She was swallowed by the sky/or by the sea/like me she had a dream to fly." (Joni Mitchell,"Amelia" on the Hejira album)

This beautiful movie is dedicated to daring women,who were feminist ahead of their time :Hélène Boucher,Amelia Earhardt,Maryse Bastié and a lot of those pioneers who had to fight to make their way in a chauvinist male world.Thérèse (Madeleine Renaud) fulfills her greatest dream :becoming a pilot.This is a simple but moving story.

During the Occupation,the Petainist France set this movie up as an example of virtue and courage ,against the dirty Clouzot's "le corbeau ".After the Liberation,both movies were attacked,the former,for being too petainist,the latter for showing the darkest side of the occupied country.That demonstrates the stupidity of the censorship.

Today's audience will certainly favor "le corbeau" over "le ciel est à vous" :the film noir is more exciting that what I could call le film blanc.But it should appeal to women :in France too,they've come a long way.

Madeleine Renaud, husband Charles Vanel, their children and her mother move their home and mechanic's shop. Their land has been expropriated for an airfield. They move into town and, because they are hardworking and thrifty, start to do well. They can even replace their daughters piano, smashed in the move, even though they won't permit her to go the the conservatory to become a concert pianist. Far better she study to become a pharmacist! That's the sort of practical people they are.

But when the airport is opened, they attend. The stunt pilot have some mechanical issues that Vanel, who was an airplane mechanic during the war, fixes easily. It also reopens old dreams of flying. Soon he is in trouble with Mlle Renaud. That is, until she goes up and gets the fever herself. And she decides she wants to break the woman's flight record.

It's based very approximately on Andrée Dupeyron, who did just that with the aid of her mechanic husband. Jean Grémillon 's movie (co-scripted by Charles Spaak) hits all the usual notes in such a film. There's real chemistry between the leads here, and a nice little speech for Vanel. Mostly, though, it's impressive how Mlle Renaud remains a small-town, hard-headed provincial woman while going all starry-eyed on flying.

The wife of a mechanic and former fighter pilot falls in love with the idea of flying herself. This soon becomes an obsession and she undertakes a lofty feat: the longest solo flight ever made by a woman.

What I find strange about this film is how it starts by saying it is about real people. Yet, I am unable to determine which real people it concerns. As an American, when I hear longest solo flight, I think Amelia Earhart. Because I have this bias, am I not aware of a similar French aviator? (Or aviatrix?) The film is a good one, but that one detail nags at me because I would love to compare the film to a real-life counterpart, and as far as I can tell, it does not exist. A shame.

Charles Spaak is one of those French scenarists - along with Henri Jeanson, Pierre Bost and Jean Aurenche - who tended to be overshadowed by the mighty Jacques Prevert. Any writer who can list La Kermesse heroique, La Belle Equipe and La Grande Illusion on his cv - and those were just a few of his PRIOR credits, post-Ciel they include Remorques and Le Corporal Epingle - would be almost certain to land a job on 'The World Turns' were he alive today. Spaak has delivered a quiet charmer here albeit propaganda fodder for Vichy. Charles Vanel acts out of his skin as Pierre Gauthier (what, one wonders, inspired this choice of name - with its overtones of Theophile Gauthier - for the two lead protagonists) mostly by NOT acting, or not SEEMING to. He is well matched by Madeleine Renaud as Therese, his wife, who, given the somewhat thankless role of role MODEL to French women everywhere, succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of Petain in creating a flesh-and-blood PERSON. Sterling support by Ann Vandene as an amalgam of those early pioneering female pilots and Raymonde Vernay as the mother-in-law from outer Hell make this a film to cherish. It's strength lies in the accumulation of detail and the warmth of the relationships. With a less surer touch than that of Gremillon the subplot involving the daughter, a would-be musical prodigy, could be seen as over-egging the feminist pudding but here it takes its unobtrusive place in the main story of Renaud realizing her potential as a aviatrix. 8/10

After the German conquest of France in 1940, Hitler decided to create a 'Hollywood' style Nazi film industry to entertain the enslaved populations of Europe. ReichsMinister of Propaganda Goebbels formed & financed the Continental Film Co. of Germany, and it signed up a bunch of collaborating French actors based in the Occupied Zone in Paris where the film was produced. Vichy was mentioned in the film, but there was no film industry in the Unoccupied zone, it was just shown there. To the extent that this successful film fulfilled the aims of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda, French efforts in the film were collaboration. Or,if you wish, French efforts were Resistance in order to preserve what was left of French culture.

The point of view just depended on who held the knife at your throat when the question arose.