Made by famed filmmaker Andre De La Varre, whose “Screen Traveler” series was popular in the USA and often shown in movie theaters, ANCIENT CITIES OF SOUTHERN FRANCE shows the Roman, Visigoth and other ancient structures of the South of France. These include castles made and fortified over many centuries in the Pyrenees, walled cities, the Pont Du Gard, Avignon, St-Remy-de-Provence, Arles, Nimes, Narbonne, Perpignan, Aigues Mortes, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Sommieres, Carcassonne, Collioure and more. The film also presents a terrific view of France in the pre-war period. At 9:45 the city of Marseilles is shown, including its incredible transporter bridge, or Transbordeur Bridge.
The Marseille transporter bridge, inaugurated in 1905 and destroyed in 1944, was a crossing of the Old Port of Marseille, designed by engineer Ferdinand Arnodin. The bridge of Marseille was built in nineteen months to connect the quays of the Port and the quays of Rive Neuve. It was inaugurated on 15 December 1905. In the 1930s, it served only as a decoration, due to the lack of means to maintain it.
On 22 August 1944, the German military blew up the bridge to block the port during the liberation of Marseille, but only the north tower fell into the water. The rest collapsed on 1 September 1945, following the firing of 400 kg of explosives.
Born in Washington D.C. in 1902, Andre de la Varre quit school at age 17, bought a motion picture camera, and went to Europe. He began making his own travel films and in 1924 became a cameraman for Burton Holmes, the dean of travel filmmakers. In the early 1930’s, de la Varre went out on his own as “The Screen Traveler” and made theatrical shorts for independent release as well as for many of the major Hollywood Studios. De la Varre continued traveling and making films for the next forty years and died in Vienna, Austria at the age of 87.
We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example like: “01:00:12:00 — President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference.”
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
