Sous le casque de cuir: A dusty, honest look at old-school flight

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, only if you're the kind of person who enjoys tracking down obscure French aviation dramas from 1932. If you want high-octane thrills, look elsewhere. But if you like watching people stare longingly at prop planes, you’ll be fine.

It’s definitely not for folks who get bored when people talk for five minutes straight. You really have to settle into the rhythm of this one.

Gina Manès is in this, and she carries a certain weight that makes the whole thing feel less like a stuffy museum piece. There’s a specific way she holds her head during the dialogue scenes that tells you more than the actual script ever does. She’s great.

The flying sequences are obviously primitive by today's standards. Sometimes it feels like they’re just shaking the camera to suggest turbulence. It’s charming, in a weird way. Like someone trying to convince you they’re in a storm while sitting in a kitchen chair.

Some random notes

• The leather helmets are everywhere. They are the true stars of the show.
• The sound design is… well, it’s very 1932. Don’t expect to hear much over the hum of the engines.
• I found myself thinking about The Water Lily halfway through, mostly because I needed something a bit more colorful to cleanse my brain.

The dialogue is thick with that old-fashioned, stiff sincerity. It’s easy to giggle at it if you’re cynical, but it’s actually kind of sweet once you get past the initial shock of how different people talked back then. They really meant every single word, even when it sounded a bit silly.

There is this one moment where a character just stands by the hangar looking at the horizon for an eternity. The director clearly wanted us to feel the isolation of the pilot. Instead, I just started wondering if they forgot to yell 'cut' on time. It’s almost hypnotic.

It’s not a masterpiece. It’s barely even a 'good' movie by modern metrics. But it exists, and it has this strange, melancholic pulse that’s hard to shake off once the screen goes black. It doesn't try to be Tess of the Storm Country, and thank god for that. It just wants to fly, even if the wings are a bit frayed.

If you watch it, maybe grab a coffee. You’re going to need it.