Brigitte Bardot lounged barefoot on a beach in Saint-Tropez, taking long puffs of a cigarette. Another actor, Jean-Paul Belmondo, strode down the Champs-Élysées, smoke billowing from his provocative lips, capturing the relentless rebellion of a generation.
In France, cigarettes weren't just cigarettes: they were cinematic statements, flirtations and rebellions wrapped in rolling papers.
However, from 1 July, if the iconic scenes of Bardot and Belmondo were reproduced in real life, they would be punishable by fines of up to €135 ($153) - despite the French Ministry of Health saying there would be a period of "education" in May. The decree published on Saturday morning makes no mention of fines for offences.
The decree still needs to be supplemented by an order from the minister of health to define the precise areas where smoking will no longer be permitted in schools, libraries, sports facilities and other venues that will receive, train or accommodate minors.
This measure was promised by the government at the end of 2023 and confirmed in late May by Health Minister Catherine Vautrin, with an initial implementation date of July 1 across France.
After decades of glorifying tobacco, France is now launching its biggest smoking ban to date. The new restrictions, announced by Vautrin, will ban smoking in virtually all outdoor public spaces where children could gather, including beaches, parks, gardens, playgrounds, stadiums, school entrances and bus stops.
"Tobacco must disappear where there are children," Vautrin told French media. The freedom to smoke "stops where the right of children to breathe clean air begins".
While the Vautrin law reflects public health priorities, it also signals a deeper cultural shift. Smoking has defined French identity, fashion and cinema for so long that this new measure has the effect of a silent French revolution in a country whose relationship with tobacco is notoriously complex.
According to the League against cancer, more than 90% of French films from 2015 to 2019 included scenes of smoking, more than double the rate seen in Hollywood productions. Each French film featured an average of nearly three minutes of smoking on screen, the equivalent of six 30-second TV adverts.
Cinema had a particular influence: Belmondo's rebellious smoker in Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" became a symbol of youthful defiance the world over. Bardot's cigarette smoke floated in "And God Created Woman", symbolising unbridled sensuality.
Yet this glamourisation has consequences. According to French health authorities, some 75,000 people die every year from tobacco-related illnesses. Although smoking rates have recently fallen - less than 25% of French adults now smoke daily, a historically low level - the habit remains deeply entrenched, particularly among young people and chic city dwellers.
France's relationship with tobacco has long been full of contradictions. Air France only banned smoking on all its flights in 2000, years after the major US airlines began phasing it out in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This delay reflects the country's slowness to break with its cultural love affair with cigarettes, even at an altitude of 10,600 metres.
Strolling through the elegant streets of the Marais, Paris' trendiest district, reactions to the smoking ban ranged from pragmatic acceptance to nostalgic defiance.
"It's about time. I don't want my children to grow up thinking that smoking is romantic," said Clémence Laurent, a 34-year-old fashion buyer, sipping an espresso on the terrace of a crowded café. "It's true that Bardot made cigarettes glamorous. But Bardot didn't care about today's lung cancer warnings."
In a neighbouring shop, second-hand goods dealer Luc Baudry, 53, saw the ban as an attack on an essentially French culture. "Smoking has always been part of our culture. If cigarettes are taken away from us, what do we have left? Kale smoothies?" he quipped.
Opposite him, Jeanne Lévy, 72, giggled in a hoarse voice, deeply marked - she said - by decades of Gauloises cigarettes. "I smoked my first cigarette watching Jeanne Moreau," she confessed, her eyes sparkling behind vintage sunglasses. "It was her voice - smoky, sexy, lived-in. Who wouldn't want that voice?"
Indeed, Jeanne Moreau's hoarse, nicotine-grated voice turned smoking into poetry, immortalised in classics like François Truffaut's "Jules et Jim". Smoking has acquired an existential prestige that has made quitting unimaginable for generations of French smokers.
The new French law reflects wider European trends. Countries such as the United Kingdom and Sweden have already tightened regulations on smoking in public spaces. Sweden banned smoking on restaurant terraces, at bus stops and near school playgrounds in 2019. Spain, meanwhile, is extending its smoking ban to café and restaurant terraces, areas that remain exempt in France, at least for the time being.
Smoking is now banned in outdoor and public areas in Milan, Italy's financial and fashion capital. This is the strictest extension of a series of bans that began in 2021 and are designed to "improve the city's air quality".
Finally, the European Commission will recommend extending the smoking ban to café terraces, bus stops and zoos, and also plans to include nicotine-free products in the ban, according to a leaked document obtained by Euronews .
On the Place des Vosges in Paris, arts student Thomas Bouchard clutched an electronic cigarette still exempt from the new ban and shrugged.
"Maybe vaping is our compromise," he said, exhaling softly. "A little less sexy, maybe. But fewer wrinkles too."
