Of titanic to Taxithrough the recent Black Box, transport is often used as a backdrop or common thread in the cinema. Moreover, the very first film made by the Lumière brothers depicted a steam train arriving at La Ciotat station. The spectators were seized with a panic fear, thinking that the train was going to pierce the screen!
Even today, the train is given pride of place in the cinema: 400 film shoots per year use the SNCF, which has even provided a TGV for Impossible mission by Brian de Palma.
But behind the camera are also hidden actors, on the one hand with the significant logistical means necessary, and on the other hand, because the producers are looking for very specific material. Fortunately, collectors of land, sea and air machines come to their aid. For example, the Volant Salis museum in Essonne, which has 70 planes in flying condition.
And the scenarios are projected not only in the air, but also in space. To recreate scenes of weightlessness, instead of special effects, some use Zero G flights. Jean-François Clervoy, astronaut, in charge of weightlessness flights, explains:
“In films like ‘Apollo 13’ or ‘The Mummy’ with Tom Cruise, the weightless scenes are made in planes that perform parabolic flights, also called Zero G flights, during which real weightlessness is recreated. And then there were also scenes actually shot in space. This is the case with certain scenes from a Russian film which was shot last September on board the International Space Station.”
Mechanical enthusiasts are not the only ones to shine behind the screen. For films set from Antiquity to the 19th century, productions are mainly looking for equipment and animal carriages. With 600 films to his credit, Frédéric Hardy supplies the greatest film directors from his stable in the Yvelines, from Roman chariots to civilian, industrial or military carriages, including royal carriages.
“We have the whole panoply of what was pulled by horses or oxen, from Antiquity to the beginning of the 20th century”, says Frédéric Hardy, while showing the carriage used in La Folie des grandeurs with Yves Montand and Louis de Funès, but also those which appear in Les Rois maudits by Josée Dayan or Le Miracle des loups.
If digital takes precedence over mechanical transport (the last james bond fully modeled a Lancia and an Aston Martin DBS and the last Top Gun, maverickuses a lot of modern special effects), animal traction and horse-drawn transport still have a bright future ahead of them, and historical films maintain our heritage by using traditional methods!