Over the last few weeks the UK TV channel ‘Talking Pictures TV’ has been showing French some cinema films to add to its long-term commitment to French TV’s Maigret archive. I managed to catch one of them, an unusual offering from Henri Decoin, best known perhaps for polars/noirs. The film’s title  is not very helpful in indicating its genre. The ‘Grand Balcon’ is a guest house where a small group of men in 1920s Toulouse are based in an attempt to start an airline business. They are all ex-members of the nascent French air force, the Aéronautique Militaire, from 1918 and they will attempt to attract more of their ex-colleagues as the airline grows. The film begins with a quasi documentary sequence and the whole narrative has a documentary feel in recounting the growth of the business. But it is a very dangerous business, piloting mostly bi-planes from 1914-18 over the Pyrenees and then down the coast of West Africa, so the narrative is not short of drama and conflict between the pilots and the ruthless airline boss.

Carbot (Pierre Fresnay, left), the boss and Fabien (Georges Marchal) as the ‘ace’ pilot

If you are interested in commercial aviation this film is a ‘must watch’. The airline begins as an attempt to challenge postal services, initially between Toulouse and Barcelona. In this sense it follows two well-known Hollywood films, John Ford’s Air Mail in 1932 and Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings from 1939. Unlike those two mainstream Hollywood films, however, Au Grand Balcon doesn’t feature a highlighted romance. Instead, the emotion of lost lives is expressed as feelings for comrades or, in the case of the two older women who run the guest house, for a young man who is the nephew of one of them and generally loved by the whole community. The other major difference is that while the American films are about the internal struggles of relatively small private operations, the French film narrative is based on the early days of a real French company, Aéropostale which had ambitions to link metropolitan France to each of its colonies in Africa and South America. This ‘imperial project’ underlies many aspects of this aviation film.

The other pilots with a pilot who has crashed
The landlady of the guesthouse with one of the airline managers

Au Grand Balcon tends to be described as an ‘adventure’ film but in many ways it is a psychological thriller and a male melodrama as well. The originator of the company which is referred to by its nickname, ‘the Line’, is ‘Carbot’ (Pierre Fresnay). He is the seemingly bloodless, insensitive manager who will send another plane and pilot if one crashes in bad weather killing its pilot. For him the mail must get through and the mailbags must be found at the crash site. The ‘inciting incident’ is the arrival at Carbot’s airfield of ‘Fabien’, a young flying ace from the last years of the war. Fabien is played by Georges Marchal, a handsome young actor in his late twenties who would become very popular over the next decade, vying with Jean Marais for leading roles. Carbot recognises Fabien is a a wonderful flyer but he constantly keeps Fabien in check, repeating that he wants ‘commercial flying’ – the mail must get through. There are several other interesting characters in the company but Carbot v. Fabien is the central drama.

The route to Tangier sketched out on a table cloth
This Berguet 14 was built as an ambulance but similar aircraft were built for air mail and two or three passengers

This is quite a long film at 123 minutes for the French version cut to 97 for its American release. The cast list is extensive but the main focus is on the two leads and on the aircraft, mainly the Breguet 14, one of the aircraft built in thousands during the war and well into the 1920s. Versions of the bi-plane, originally a bomber or reconnaissance type were built specifically for air mail services. The location footage is generally very good, though whether there were ant sequences actually shot in the Pyrenees or the edge of the Sahara is not easy to determine. In 1949 the French film industry was barely four years into its post-war recovery and I think this is an impressive production. The story was part written by Joseph Kessel who was himself a flyer in the Great War and in the 1939-45 War. He would later become known for the stories of major French films such as Belle du jour (1967) and Army of the Shadows (1969).

Carbot with his secretary Maryse (Janine Crispin) who is in love with Fabien (but he doesn’t know)

Talking Pictures TV has a catch-up streaming service in the UK. Au Grand Balcon isn’t streaming at the moment but there is the Jacques Deray film Flic Story (France 1975) still available for the next 4 days.