France to stub out on-screen smoking

THE sultry smoker lighting up in a Parisian café terrace, a staple image for countless French films, could soon be a thing of the past if the country’s health minister goes ahead with plans to ban smoking in movies.

Jean-paul Belmondo with a Gauloise permanently hanging from his lips in Jean-luc Godard’s classic movie Breathless is a perfect example of the romantic image the cigarette is given on the big screen in France.

That was back in 1960, when far more people smoked, but even today more than three quarters of French-made films still show people smoking, according to figures compiled by a French senator. Agnès Buzyn, health minister, says that this needs to come to an end as part of her plans to “denormalise” smoking, which kills around 75,000 people every year in France.

“We know that major advertising campaigns [to encourage people to quit cigarettes] do not work,” she said on Friday, adding that other methods such as targeting young people on social media or banning cigarettes from the big screen should be tried.

“I don’t understand the importance of cigarettes in French cinema,” she said. Ms Buzyn said she would be contacting the French culture minister to discuss the issue and that so-far unspecified “measures” would be taken to make French directors and screenwriters kick their tobacco habit.