The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)

Directed by Billy Wilder. Starring James Stewart, Bartlett Robinson, Arthur Space, Patricia Smith, Murray Hamilton, Marc Connelly, Charles Watts, Richard Deacon, Erville Alderson.

Biographical aviation drama, refreshingly focused on a snippet of a man’s life instead of a cornball account from childhood to elder pastures, recounting Charles Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic flight aboard the specially-designed aircraft, Spirit of St. Louis. Because watching a non-stop flight over the ocean with a foregone conclusion doesn’t exactly raise hairs on end, the flying sequences (as well as the efforts to finance, design and build the plane) are interspersed with flashbacks, the sort that are more padding than enriching. Lindbergh, as played by a way-too-old-for-the-part Jimmy Stewart as a man of modesty, nobility, social awkwardness, and piloting prowess (quite the stretch, eh?), isn’t a terribly fascinating subject in this form, just a down-to-earth dreamer with the courage to go where no man had dared before—a true American hero before all that anti-Semitism business came to light. Billy Wilder, for all his gifts as a dramatist and snappy cynic and secret romantic, can’t do much with the grandeur or suspense of a nuts-and-bolts operation, even with the gauzy glow of the anamorphic color lensing and Franz Waxman’s triumphant music. Conversations with a fly are a bit disarming, but not at all compelling, I’m afraid to say. Scripted by Wilder, Charles Lederer, and Wendell Mayes from Lindbergh’s autobiography.

55/100