Pierre Richard-Willm is a pilot on the North African mail run. On leave he returns home to discover his cousin Jany Holt is upset with her marriage to diplomat Charles Vanel. He's selling off her family home because he can't afford the establishment. So she runs off with Richard-Willm. Her family is all about her duty and life is real, except for an elderly aunt who hels her escape.... to a worse fate. Meanwhile, Richard-Willm is flying off to Dakar, and further when a pilot goes missing.
The attraction for me was Vanel, but for most, it's because it's from a novel (and co-written script) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in a "men must work and women must weep" plot. There's lots of nice location shooting in which looks like North Africa, with the shadow of the planes on the sand dunes, and Richard-Willm is very dashing and high-minded, when he isn't stealing other men's wive... and Vanel turns out not to be such a heel in this one. Over all it's pretty good, if more a boy's adventure sort of movie than anything deep.
The attraction for me was Vanel, but for most, it's because it's from a novel (and co-written script) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in a "men must work and women must weep" plot. There's lots of nice location shooting in which looks like North Africa, with the shadow of the planes on the sand dunes, and Richard-Willm is very dashing and high-minded, when he isn't stealing other men's wive... and Vanel turns out not to be such a heel in this one. Over all it's pretty good, if more a boy's adventure sort of movie than anything deep.