René Valéry's 8 mm "Cigar" Film at Savigny

Autumn 1954. France was in the grip of a flying saucer wave. Wire stories out of Lyon spoke of an aerial carousel over the Drôme and the Dauphiné. Among them was a report from a man who said he had more than a story. He had film.

René Valéry was introduced to readers as the artistic director of the Olympia music hall in Paris. Paris-Presse described him as a balanced man who until then had not believed in flying saucers.

Var-Matin carries the date. Thursday, 16 September 1954. "It was approximately 6 p.m.," Valéry told the paper. He and his wife were at Savigny, in the Rhône, in the canton of L'Arbresle. "We were walking, when we saw a craft at approximately 700 or 800 m of altitude. It went up vertically without the least engine noise. Behind it, it left a broad trail of white smoke."

He did not believe it was a jet. He would have heard the whistle, he said, and "this cigar had by no means the shape of a jet." He was carrying an 8 mm movie camera, and he hastened to film the object. Yet he was not sure of himself. He wondered whether he had hallucinated. The visibility, he said, was not very good, and he feared he had perhaps missed his saucer.

Paris-Presse told it differently. In Jean-François Devay's column, Valéry was at his own property in Savigny when a sort of metallic spot moved slowly over him, without the slightest noise of engine or whistling of reactor. It trailed a huge tail of smoke. He ran into the house, came back with the camera and filmed. "The sky was blue, the light excellent," he said. "The film must be good!"

The reel was sent for development. It would be ready the day after tomorrow, Paris-Presse reported, so the truth might come out on Thursday, 30 September. The Lyon dispatch reached France-Soir, Le Figaro, Combat, L'Humanité and around fifteen other papers. La Gazette Provençale added that the film could be of real value, if Mr. Valéry really saw the strange craft.

Then nothing. Patrick Gross, who gathered 28 French newspaper reports of the case, found no follow-up in the press about the film. No frame has ever been published. Gross notes that an 8 mm film was far harder for a newspaper to print than a photograph.

No official investigation is known. The debate has been left to the cataloguers. Guy Quincy, in his Observations 1954, wondered about a helicopter. Patrick Gross suggested a meteor or a jet plane, and leaned toward the jet, since Valéry had time to fetch his camera. High-altitude Boeing RB-47 Stratojets crossed the Rhône valley at the time, and a contrail would explain the white trail.

Gross also cautioned that no explanation is guaranteed. Against all this stands the witness, who heard no whistle and saw the wrong shape. And his estimate of 700 or 800 metres cannot now be checked.

The story drifted as it travelled. Harold T. Wilkins, in Flying Saucers Uncensored, moved it to the Pyrénées and wrote that a Parisian cabaret director "photographed it." FOTOCAT, compiled by V.-J. Ballester Olmos, lists the case twice, with the explanation "not available." No independent source has confirmed that a René Valéry held the Olympia post. Le Progrès of 1 October 1954 and the Italian papers of early October remain unread, and they are the best remaining chance of learning whether the film was ever shown.