Original subtitles

I always saw the aviator

as someone in despair

who arranged his accident in the desert

in search of meditation.

At that moment,

a flower of his spirit appeared,

and that's the little prince.

It's a meeting of the adult and the child.

He tries to create

the ideal of man's life,

which means that the child he was

and the man he now is hold hands.

The story begins when

these two lost souls find each other.

The entire book is built on a vision

of this little prince.

He asks questions that are rarely asked

by children that age.

Where is he from?

Where is he going?

The death of his father was the first step

in a painful and melancholic existence.

A life detached by the death of the father.

One could say that Saint-Exupery's life, symbolically,

is a permanent quest to return to childhood.

There is this power within adults,

myself included,

which wants to be done with childhood.

Because we want to be done with ignorance.

Done with uncertainty.

Done with doubt.

This asteroid has been seen only once by telescope,

in 1909,

by a Turkish astronomer.

He made a formal demonstration

of his discovery

at an International Astronomical Congress.

But no one had believed him

on account of how he was dressed.

Grown-ups are like that.

Fortunately for the reputation of Asteroid B-612,

a Turkish dictator ordered his people,

under threat of death,

to wear European clothes.

The astronomer repeated his demonstration

in 1920,

wearing a very elegant suit.

And this time, everyone believed him.

There were some terrible seeds

on the little prince's planet.

Baobab seeds.

The planet's soil was infested by them.

Now, if you attend to a baobab too late,

you can never get rid of it again.

It overgrows the whole planet.

Its roots pierce right through.

And if the planet is too small,

and if there are too many baobabs,

they make it burst into pieces.

This little boy already had huge responsibilities

by which the very survival of his planet

depended on him.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was "baptized"

in the air when he was just a young child.

He wasn't even 10 years old.

There was a small air field nearby.

He asked a pilot to take him up,

and the pilot agreed.

I imagine that first flight was magical for him.

The death of his brother, François,

he had a hard time accepting it.

He was 17 years old.

His brother was 15.

For him, it was an injustice.

L'Atecoere in Toulouse

invited him to participate in this

grand adventure called l'Aeropostale.

L'Aeropostale is a way to

rejoin and relink to humanity,

which he feels is detached

like him.

Tarfaya, Cap Juby, was the place where

they would exchange planes.

The mail that comes from the north

and the mail that comes from the south,

they meet here in Tarfaya,

then each plane returns to where it came from.

He didn't just stay in the fort

with the Spaniards.

He went out to visit the locals.

Saint-Exupery had a gift,

a sort of key that could open

people's hearts.

The moment when Guillaumet disappears

from radar,

and we assume that he's gone,

is a moment that will play a huge part

in Antoine's life.

It's a huge friendship.

Even love!

And so he goes out to find him.

Even taking personal risks to find him.

In the vast, unreadable void

he knows it is almost impossible.

But... he goes anyway.

The first time I met her

was when Saint-Exupery brought her here.

I was six years old, with my two sisters.

Consuelo spoke kindly to each of us,

as one does with young children.

She was a dreamer.

Saint-Exupery spends his time

denouncing the jobs

that have devoured individuals.

The king acting like a king,

the vain man being vain.

People believe they are consistent,

but in fact they are inconsistent,

because they have forgotten their humanity.

It's only once we multiply all these

ridiculous behaviours

that we ask ourselves,

"What world do we live in?"

"It's a terrible job I have.

"It used to be reasonable enough.

"I put the lamp out mornings

"and lit it after dark.

"I had the rest of the day to rest,

"and the night to sleep.

"Now that the planet

"revolves once per minute,

"I don't have an instant's rest.

"I light and extinguish once per minute."

"That's funny!

"Your days here are one minute long."

"It's not funny at all," the lamplighter said.

"You and I have already been talking

"for a month."

The theme of impermanence in the universe,

contrary to the Geographer

who speaks of things as eternal,

but eternity doesn't exist.

Everything changes, evolves, moves.

Saint-Exupery presents a world

that is inconceivable.

We'll call it magical realism.

In French literature,

magical realism was not popular.

The real avant garde was situated in

the interest for material things.

I imagine that nobody could grasp the idea

that this childish presentation of the world

was capable of eliciting deep thought

and reflection.

It was a blossoming rose garden.

"Good morning," said the roses.

The little prince gazed at them.

All of them looked like his flower.

"Who are you?" he asked, astounded.

"We're roses," the roses said.

His flower had told him she was

the only one of her kind in the universe.

"I thought I was rich because my flower was unique,

"and all I own is an ordinary rose."

And he lay down in the grass and cried.

The little prince sees a garden of roses.

They are all beautiful,

and all the same.

And he realizes that his rose

that he found so unique,

was not unique.

The accident was due to

several converging causes.

On that day the wind was forcing us

to take off in an uphill direction.

Unfortunately, the landing strip in Guatemala

is situated at an altitude of 1,500 metres,

which significantly reduces a plane's importance.

At the end of my run,

I was going about 140 km per hour,

and I hadn't yet left the ground.

With no other choice,

I lifted the plane

to get over the obstacles in our way.

I managed to get it off the ground,

but no longer than a second.

I crashed on the other side

of the landing strip.

From that moment on,

I don't know what happened.

My next memories start about a week after that.

In 1939, I was 14 years old

when war was declared.

I remember that day...

England and France declared war on Germany

at 5 o'clock in the evening.

If you tame me,

we shall need one another.

To me, you will be unique.

And I will be unique to you.

The little prince meets

a merchant selling pills

that will stop you from ever being thirsty again.

And the little prince says,

"I would walk towards a fountain."

It's the time that we activate.

The power to live, the power to do,

the power to advance.

Saint-Exupery puts an end to the fatality

of passive time and instead creates

a time that belongs to the soul.

The letters we have indicate

his level of despair,

and even the total loss of creativity.

He was feeling hopeless and depressed

in the streets of New York.

It was then that his wife, Consuelo,

suggested that they head to Long Island.

To rest and get some sea air.

So they went to Long Island,

and someone offered him his huge home,

Bevin House.

His American editors,

seeing that he wasn't writing a new book,

and "Pilote de Guerre" was a bestseller,

they suggested to Antoine

that he write a children's story.

This little fellow here

is a fellow that Saint-Exupery drew

in various forms.

There are many of them

that we can find throughout the years.

This little fellow is the foreshadowing

of the little prince.

He drew with a Stylograph.

The tip upside down.

I can still see him doing it.

There is a drawing that Consuelo made in 1930,

so, 12 years before The Little Prince.

It's a self portrait.

She had the lioness haircut of that era,

a bit like a little boy.

She had a large shawl with stars all over it.

It looks just like The Little Prince.

So, you can see that the birth of

The Little Prince comes from

many factors accumulated over time.

"It was now the eighth day

"since my accident in the Sahara.

"But I have not yet succeeded

"in repairing my plane,

"and I have nothing more to drink.

"I too would like to walk to

a spring of fresh water."

The desert is not simply a spiritual place.

It's a philosophical place.

To breathe in the desert is to feel

the fragility of your breath.

You simplify yourself,

in order to survive.

The act has all the signs of a suicide.

The ultimate choice.

At the end of alienation,

at the end of infantile work,

"at the end of man's exploitation of man,"

there lies the ultimate choice... suicide.

Saint-Exupery tells us

the true kingdom is the consciousness,

the person.

And the ties you create with other people.

The Little Prince learns to be the master

of his kingdom.

He'll return to his planet

to find his flower

because he finally realized that it was she

that was the most important.

For him, the only thing that matters

in existence is to participate.

All his exiled writer friends

who joined him in New York

were sipping champagne with Marlene Dietrich

and Greta Garbo,

living a worldly life.

He said, "I feel like I'm watching the war

"from a theatre seat."

On July 31st,

he leaves for his 10th reconnaissance mission

over Grenoble, Lyon, and Belieu.

At first, I was told he was still alive;

missing did not necessarily mean dead.

He had survived so many accidents

and catastrophes.

When he had that accident in Guatemala,

he promised me he would never fly again.

But, once he recovered,

he went back to flying.

The Little Prince left also

with this flock of wild birds.

He continued flying.

The Little Prince is his spirit,

asking him, "Why would you abandon your rose?"

That death was a very hard shock for her.

But at the same time...

she didn't completely collapse.

She continued to live.

But it was clear

that Antoine was the love of her life.

After that, she lived in her memories.

That was Aunt Consuelo.

What happened there on his planet?

Look up at the sky.

Ask yourself,

"Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?"

And you'll see how everything changes.

Saint-Exupery wanted everyone to have

a similar language.

To unite everyone

in one common context...

...without having to go to war.

The little prince is a universal

message of peace.