Books, Arts & Manners: Heroes on High

SOMETHING epochal may have happened in the history of cinema: Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Wings of Courage is the first dramatic film shot in IMAX 3D, and, to a considerable degree, it works. The plot of this 40-minute feature isn’t much, but it is based on a true story and it is gripping. The Compagnie Générale Aéropostale was, circa 1930, the first ever to fly mail between France and a number of South American cities. In light planes with a single pilot—to be able to carry that much more mail— lives were being risked regularly in flights across the high Andes, often in foul weather. Among these fliers were the great ace Jean Mermoz and the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. We see them recruiting another daring airman, Henri Guillaumet, to fly the Buenos Aires—Santiago de Chile route, while his young wife, Noëlle, patiently worries about him in their Buenos Aires hotel.

Almost the entire film concerns a flight in which storm and lightning bring down Henri’s plane in the Cordilleras. The local saying has it that this means curtains: “The Andes don’t give men back.” Against overwhelming—and in 3D even more overpowering—odds, Henri makes it back. After several days of trekking, he is found, half-dead, by some gauchos. Ten days later, frostbite and all, he is flying again. The real-life Guillaumet was, like Mermoz and Saint-Exupéry, to perish in a crash; but that was later— in the movie we see the human spirit triumphant. And also the power of love: it was the thought of Noëlle that was Henri’s compass, crampons, and rope.

JS

About the Author

John Simon

Featured Tags

SOMETHING epochal may have happened in the history of cinema: Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Wings of Courage is the first dramatic film shot in IMAX 3D, and, to a considerable degree, it works. The plot of this 40-minute feature isn’t much, but it is based on a true story and it is gripping. The Compagnie Générale Aéropostale was, circa 1930, the first ever to fly mail between France and a number of South American cities. In light planes with a single pilot—to be able to carry that much more mail— lives were being risked regularly in flights across the high Andes, often in foul weather. Among these fliers were the great ace Jean Mermoz and the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. We see them recruiting another daring airman, Henri Guillaumet, to fly the Buenos Aires—Santiago de Chile route, while his young wife, Noëlle, patiently worries about him in their Buenos Aires hotel.

Almost the entire film concerns a flight in which storm and lightning bring down Henri’s plane in the Cordilleras. The local saying has it that this means curtains: “The Andes don’t give men back.” Against overwhelming—and in 3D even more overpowering—odds, Henri makes it back. After several days of trekking, he is found, half-dead, by some gauchos. Ten days later, frostbite and all, he is flying again. The real-life Guillaumet was, like Mermoz and Saint-Exupéry, to perish in a crash; but that was later— in the movie we see the human spirit triumphant. And also the power of love: it was the thought of Noëlle that was Henri’s compass, crampons, and rope.