Air France loves the cinema

Following its creation, Air France initiated a variety of high-profile partnerships and promotional strategies. The aviator and writer St Exupéry was hired as production consultant and press relations officer, and was behind films such as Weekend in Algiers and Atlantique Sud, aimed at promoting the new routes and the past and present greatness of postal aviation. Air France also participated in more than a dozen feature films from this period, which can be divided into two categories – those with an “aviation sequence”, often involving a plane taking off or landing as in Nemo’s Bank from 1934 (sequence shot at Le Bourget with a plane with a seahorse logo, borrowed from Air Orient) and “aviation films” in which Air France was more closely involved in a tangible way, such as Courrier Sud in 1936.

In 1941, the famous film "Casablanca" was one of the very few feature films to explicitly use the image of the airline during the Second World War, and a unique testimony to its control by the German authorities during the Occupation.

It is this special relationship that gave rise to "Air France loves the cinema", a series of four episodes recounting the major stages in the life of the airline. 
The first episode broadcast was entitled "1945-1958: rebirth".

1945: France emerged from the war battered and bruised, and had to recover, both economically and culturally. Air France, whose activity was reduced during this period, benefited from this reconstruction which led to the birth of modern commercial aviation.

The movie industry, which was booming, accompanied this development. Air France took advantage of this to associate its image with the production of successful films and to become a powerful symbol. "Aux yeux du souvenir", directed by Jean Delannoy in 1948, was the benchmark film, featuring new airport infrastructures, new aircraft, and values associated with the various professions (expertise of the pilot played by Jean Marais, professionalism of the stewardess played by Michèle Morgan).

A series of films followed, in which stars promoted air travel, conveying a sophisticated and modern image of the company with the "longest network in the world". Edith Piaf, Bourvil and Brigitte Bardot all took to the air! On screen as well as in their private lives.

Travel by proxy then started to give way to real travel!

This twenty-year period was marked by closer ties between Air France and the cinema, in a context of rapid and profound transformation of the air transport industry, affirming a form of national and industrial power.

The 1960s and 1970s marked a new era in the history of the airline and modern commercial aviation, which was inseparable from the political approach under the Gaullist era (1959-1969) and from major developments, such as the entry into the jet era (launch of the Caravelle and the Boeing 707 in 1959/1960) symbolised by giant and functional infrastructures, aiming to improve passenger traffic and establish France's place in a global world (Orly South terminal in 1961, Orly West in 1971 and Roissy CDG 1 in 1974), the internationalisation and democratisation of mass transport following the arrival of wide-bodied aircraft (Boeing 747 in 1970, Airbus A300 in 1972) and new travel options ("Vols Vacances" in 1979), and technological innovations linked to IT and supersonic flight (Paris-Rio by Concorde in 1976).

At the same time, there was an impressive increase in the number of films, both French and international, in which Air France has appeared, both in cinema d'auteur (Tati, Costa Gavras) and in popular cinema on a local and global scale (from comedies that have become classics, with Louis de Funès and Pierre Richard, to the cosmopolitan and exotic world of James Bond).