Created by Air France in the 1950s, “Flight to Immortal Rome” was directed by the talented Andre de la Varre. The film features a flight to Rome on a Lockheed Constellation (seen at the 5:40 minute mark) and a tour of the ancient and modern city. Some of the sights include the Castle of St. Angelo, Roman Coliseum, Arch of Constantine, the Forum, St. Peter’s, the Vatican, Capitoline Hill, the Pantheon, and much more.
Air France (formally Société Air France, S.A.), stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the French flag carrier headquartered in Tremblay-en-France, (north of Paris). It is a subsidiary of the Air France-KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global airline alliance. As of 2013 Air France serves 36 destinations in France and operates worldwide scheduled passenger and cargo services to 168 destinations in 93 countries (including Overseas departments and territories of France) and also carried 59,513,000 passengers in 2011. The airline’s global hub is at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, with Paris Orly Airport, Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport, Marseille Provence Airport, Toulouse Blagnac Airport, and Nice Côte d’Azur Airport serving as secondary hubs. Air France’s corporate headquarters, previously in Montparnasse, Paris, are located on the grounds of Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, north of Paris.
Air France was formed on 7 October 1933 from a merger of Air Orient, Air Union, Compagnie Générale Aéropostale, Compagnie Internationale de Navigation Aérienne (CIDNA), and Société Générale de Transport Aérien (SGTA).
During the Cold War, from 1950 until 1990, Air France was one of the three main Allied scheduled airlines operating in Germany at West Berlin’s Tempelhof and Tegel airports.
André de la Varre (1904-1987) was a leading travelogue filmmaker who started as a 17-year old visiting Europe with a recently acquired movie camera at the end of World War I. By 1924, he was working with filmmaker Burton Holmes and eventually struck out on his own as an independent producer with a short film series called “Screen Traveler” in the thirties. Columbia Pictures commissioned him to provide material for a number of their own documentary shorts starting in 1939, recycling some footage he shot earlier in France as well as new material scouted mostly in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean on account of the war in Europe. He returned to Burton Holmes Inc. shortly before the founder’s passing in 1958 and was soon busy with lengthy features like 1965’s Grand Tour of London and Paris (by Day and by Night). Collaborating on many of these was his son André De La Varre Jr.
Despite financial problems with the Burton Holmes company and a shrinking market for travelogues, he still managed another well-received 90 minute feature These States for the Bicentennial Council in 1975. His later years were spent in Austria.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
