Documentary

(Synopsis)

Towards the middle of September 1929, a ship leaves the docks of Bordeaux, France with course to South America, in its stop in Dakar, Senegal a passenger opens a letter from his thoughtful mother; he hurriedly replied by the same Aeropostale mail-plane which had carried it down. The heavy, pasty air brought back familiar memories, and it took the sharks and the flying fish, leaping athletically around the ship, to make him feel that he was really leaving France. This passenger was a pilot and also a writer named Antoine de Saint Exupery being transferred from Cape Juby in Western Shara to South America, thinking he would be piloting the mail in this new land, later he will discover he will be Traffic Chief of Aeroposta Argentina opening the new aerial routes of Patagonia and handling the flights of airmail with Chile, Brazil and Paraguay.

In the afternoon of October 12,1929 three pilots are waiting for their friend Antoine at the northern dock of Buenos Aires harbor in Argentina. At his arrival Antoine is welcomed like a prodigal son by a broad shouldered Jean Mermoz, with his flying hair and windy red scarf; his dear friend Henri Guillaumet, with his blue eyes and boyish grin and Marcel Reine.

In this new land Antoine will face the most unusual and dramatic situations and some of them like a fairy tail, that will be perpetuated for the rest of his life, his experiences, adventures, the people and the scenery will be the inspiration to write Night Flight and the foundation of his most important book, The Little Prince.

Two days after his arrival in Buenos Aires Saint Exupery traveled 400 miles south to Bahia Blanca, the first stop on a proposed Patagonian line as the passenger of Paul Vachet, then operations manager of the Argentine company. The two man continued on, over 800 miles of desolate coastline, to Comodoro Rivadavia, a frontier town that looked to Saint Exupery like a set for Charlie Chaplins movie Gold Rush.

He no longer had to battle Moors and sandstorms in Cape Juby,Western Sahara but had exchanged them for wind and night, for airfields that were dusty in fine weather and swampy most of the time, overrun, as was at Bahia Blanca, by snakes or scorpions, illuminated at night only by storm lamps and faint triangles of gasoline flares.

During this heroic period of the new Aeropostale, the chief concerns were developing the network of routes on the continent and achieving complete air transport of mail from France to South America. As director of Aeroposta Argentina, Saint Exupery established a string of new airfields toward the Patagonia in small towns which would become famous through his book Night Flight, like Bahia Blanca, Comodoro Rivadavia, Trelew, San Julian. He then flew all the way down to Rio Gallegos in Tierra del fuego, where he established the southernmost airfield. He wanted to extend the Line to Punta Arenas, one of the southernmost towns in the world, but the Chilean authorities would not allow this extension.

Saint Exupery did fly to Punta Arenas himself and, even if he could not build an airfield there, he did bring back rich material for his writing. After flying over bare volcanic land, he was struck by the sudden miracle of life springing from the layer of good earth covering the lava flows - green grass, animals, then a town...In his book Wind, Sand and Stars he write:

But, further on, older volcanoes are already covered by a golden turf ... life has taken possession of a new planet, where the good loam of the earth has at last been deposited on the globe... So close to the black flows, how well one feels the miracle of man.

Patagonia was called the country where the stones fly where sometimes the winds exceeded 135 miles per hour and flying the fragile airplanes was a dangerous task. Flying from Trelew to Comodoro Rivadavia, Saint Exupery was blown out to sea by a cyclone, and he describes his experience in a chapter added to the English edition of Wind, Sand and Stars, under the heading The Elements. The description of his battle with the storm has been compared by the critics with Typhoon by Joseph Conrad, Saint Exupery felt that the experience of a physical drama cannot be communicated unless a spiritual significance has been found within it.

Probably the most poignant memory of Saint Exupery experiences in South America was the heroic adventure of his friend and fellow pilot, Guillaumet, which Saint Exupery recounts in the chapter The Men of Wind, Sand and Stars. Guillaumet had taken off from Santiago on June Friday 13th, 1929 (the Chilean winter) to cross the Andes mountains carrying the mail to Mendoza in Argentina. Caught in a violent snow storm over the mountain range, but when his fuel was exhausted he had to bring his plane down among the mountains summits. For five days Saint Exupery flew desperately over the range, trying to find their lost comrade. Finally the Chilean authorities advised them to give up the search, insisting that no man could survive the fatal cold of a winter night in those mountains. The smugglers in those times used to proclaim The Andes never give up a man in winter. Yet a week after Guillaumets disappearance, Saint Exupery receive the unbelievable news that his friend was safe. Leaping into his plane, he flew off to meet his brother pilot and bring him home. Saint Exupery landed beside the road near the car which was carrying Guillaumet, to welcome his friend. In telling his accident, Guillaumets first remark was What I have done, I swear that no animal would have done. Resisting his bodys desire to surrender, he walked on past exhaustion and despair, just as later in 1935 Saint Exupery would do in the desert, and he finally reached a valley where a peasant couple succored him. In Guillaumets heroic adventure Saint Exupery recognized that essential quality of responsibility, which will become one of the key themes of his philosophy.

It was during Saint Exuperys constant flights to develop his Aeroposta Argentina, that he had a curious accident on the air route to Asuncion del Paraguay.  A chance to visit an old house in Concordia, a visit which becomes an enchanted step into another world in the chapter Oasis of Wind, Sand and Stars. The oasis is not in the desert, but is a spiritual one into which he was privileged to enter. After an emergency landing, Saint Exupery was welcomed into the home of Mr Fuchs, a French immigrant, who lived in an old, baroque mansion near the city. Saint Exupery did not know he was going to live a fairy tail but, as he came in sight of the house, Saint Exupery saw a castle of legend which, as soon as the porsche was passed, offered a shelter, as peaceful, as secure and as protected as a monastery. It is all beautifully dilapidated, yet cared for like an old tree covered with moss, with a polished decrepitude which reveled only extraordinary respect. In this home Saint Exupery is introduced to two young daughters, Suzanne and Edda who gaze at him like two judges placed on the threshold of a forbidden kingdom, then disappear in the rumbling house. While he was being judged by the two girls, it is then he passed the test of valor, smiling contentedly at the announcement of the vipers under the table. After the charm of this visit Saint Exupery would call the two girls as princesses dArgentine and would be a significant step in the characterology of his most popular character, The Little Prince.

Even though, the dangers in the new land to open the aerial routes, to all the pilots of Aeropostale, those were glorious days, the fruit and apogee of years of unrelenting effort and for Saint Exupery an experience that would change his life and his literature. He writes Night Flight in Buenos Aires, where he tells about this brave men who pilot night mail in the early days of aviation, and the characters are revealed through the dramatic events of a single night.

But what he mostly treasured and what he preserved for himself from his arduous exploration of the Patagonian route were the odd encounters in the primitive landscape, and the inspiration for the drawings in The Little Prince such as the volcanoes in Punta Arenas that becomes the volcanoes of the asteroid B612, in Isla de los Pajaros close to Trelew, we can see the silhouette of a hat or a boa eating an elephant that opens the story of The Little Prince, the valleys and the picks in the Andes mountains, are magical places on the planet earth, the sheep in the box is inspired by the sheeps of southern patagonia, and two curious girls in a castle of Concordia inspire the Little Princes character and the vipers under the table, the serpent that talks with the Little Prince.

On the morning of February 1st 1931, Saint Exupery boarded the ship Alsina bound to France, in April he married Consuelo Suncin which he met in Buenos Aires and was the widow from writer Gomez Carillo, now both reside in Paris. In shadows of a political financial scandal Aeropostal Argentina declares bankruptcy and Saint Exupery dont return to Argentina. Throughout this years till 1935 Saint Exupery start flying mail between Casablanca and Port-Etienne. Meanwhile his book Night Flight wins the prize Femina. Now he start flying between Marseille and Algeria plus the old route to Dakar. In April 1935 he fly to Moscow to write a series of articles for the paper Paris Soir, in November he travel all over the Mediterranean representing the new air company Air France...but in the chill morning of December 29, 1935 at 7:01am Saint Exupery takes off from the airfield Le Bourget near Paris with his own plane trying to break a record of 99 hours between Paris - Saigon.

After so many flights and the experiences of been in the desert before he had no notion that the sands were preparing for him their ultimate and culminating ordeal.

On December 30, at 2:45am over the Egyptian desert searching for the lights of Cairo in a night without moon the plane ploughed into a sand dune at a speed of 170 miles per hour. After a tremendous impact the pilot and his mechanic still cant believe they are alive and wait for dawn. With no many resources for surviving they try to find help. Walking for days without water and no signs of life in the area the constant changes of the desert and the harsh sun push the man to the limit of his mind and start been haunted by visions.

Visions of the Andes mountains, the Patagonia and its breathtaking open places, Concordia where... in a night full of stars he landed in a magical place, the days in Cape Juby in Western Sahara that were he wrote his first book Southern Mail, the stars, a rose, a snake, and the relationship he have with a little Fox during his agony in the desert.

After four days when everybody thought that they were lost or dead in the desert Saint Exupery and his mechanic are rescued by a group of Bedouins. This odyssey will be narrated in the chapter Prisoner of the Sand in Wind, Sand and Stars.

In the following years after his accident comes a period of writing and travelling all over Europe with a variety of experiences not only in his flights but also as a journalist in the civil war of Spain. In Germany he will face the imminent growth of the second European war. 

During this period of changes in 1938, Saint Exupery will try to open the aerial route from New York to Patagonia, but in Guatemala the plane crash at the end of the airfield and he is seriously wounded.

During his recovery the publication of his book Wind, Sand and Stars is a total success in Europe and in United States is a best seller. Wind, Sand and Stars capture the grandeur, danger and isolation of flying in different parts of Argentina, the Pyrenees and the Sahara , combined with lyrical prose and the soaring spirit of a philosopher.

Saint Exupery is recognized as one of the best contemporaneous French writers.

Europe is in war, in September 1939 Saint Exupery reported to the Toulouse-Francazal airfield as captain, few months later he is assigned to a reconnaissance group, the 2/33 until July 1940 and later from April 1943 to his last mission on July 31, 1944 where he disappear. His book Flight to Arras edited in United States 1942 is based in one of his most dangerous missions over the burning city of Arras. He transcends the gripping experience of the flight itself to reflect on why men fight and how they feel in the presence of death.

In 1941 Saint Exupery exiles to United States and resides in Manhattan, New York. During the fall and winter of 1942 lives in a white Victorian house with twenty two rooms called the Bevin house at the end of Bevin road in Asharoken close to Northport in Long Island. In this house Saint Exupery in a estate of deep loneliness due to the exile from his land, a very unstable relationship with his wife, sick due to many flights accidents, would write in long, late-nights burst of energy fueled by coffee, Coca Cola, and cigarettes, generous traces of which show up on the manuscript, his most popular book in longhand and different kind of paper, The Little Prince, a childs fable for adults, in which the principal themes of Saint Exuperys thoughts are transfigure into the most delicate poetry with a gentle and grave reminder that the best things in life are still the simplest ones and that real wealth is giving to others. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; the fox tells The Little Prince What is essential is invisible to the eye...

On the first days of April Saint Exupery leaves New York for North Africa. Almost simultaneously with his sailing, came the publication of The Little Prince on April 6. He returns to his unit, the reconnaissance group 2/33 located in La Marsa, close to Tunis. On July 17th the group 2/33 moves its location to Borgo north of Corsica Island. On July 29th French General Chassin tells Saint Exupery he is 44 and dont need to fly anymore, he himself made more successful missions over France that many of the younger pilots in the unit in a year ...impossible Sir, I will stay with my comrades until the end...

In the morning of July 31st, 1944 the pilot is getting ready for his mission east of Lyon in a P38 Lightning, one of the fastest airplanes in the war provided by the allies. At 8:45am he takes off...

the radar at Cape Corce tracked Saint Exupery crossing into southern France., he was due back at 12:30pm but was no heard from him again.

What happened between the time Saint Exupery took off from Bastia and the time he would run out of fuel six hours later, still remains a mystery. Maybe he was shot down by an enemy plane, maybe crashed on the sea... Now he is the mystery of a legend.

But for many others he is with his little friend traveling among the stars pulled by a flock of birds.

Writer/Producer/Director

Hannibal Brown