The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)

Director:

Billy Wilder

Writers:

Charles A. Lindbergh (book)
Billy Wilder (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

20 April 1957 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Biography | Drama | History

Tagline:

The Story Behind the Story of Lindbergh's Incredible Flight to Paris!

Plot:

Charles 'Slim' Lindbergh struggles to finance and design an airplane that will make his New York to Paris flight the first solo transatlantic crossing.

Plot Keywords:

Transatlantic | New York | Aviation | Pilot | Ireland

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

James Stewart	...	Charles Augustus 'Slim' Lindbergh
Murray Hamilton	...	Bud Gurney
Patricia Smith	...	Mirror Girl
Bartlett Robinson	...	Benjamin Frank Mahoney, President Ryan Airlines Co.
Marc Connelly	...	Father Hussman
Arthur Space	...	Donald Hall, Chief Engineer Ryan Airlines
Charles Watts	...	O.W. Schultz, Salesman Atlas Suspender Co.

Runtime:

135 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording) | 4-Track Stereo

Certification:

Iceland:L | UK:U | Finland:S | West Germany:6 | USA:Approved (certificate #17794)

Filming Locations:

Guyancourt, Yvelines, France

Company:

Billy Wilder Productions

Trivia:

Average Shot Length = ~10.1 seconds. Median Shot Length = ~9.6 seconds.

Goofs:

Errors in geography: Lindbergh bought his first plan in Georgia, but the terrain appears to be too dry for Georgia.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Reporter: [checking his copy] Here at the Garden City Hotel, less than a mile from Roosevelt Field... less than three-quarters of a mile from Roosevelt Field... everyone is waiting, as they have been now for seven days and nights, waiting for the rain to stop...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "What's My Line?: (1957-02-03)" (1957)

Soundtrack:

The Stars and Stripes Forever

One of the most exhilarating adventure stories ever filmed

Every year there's one can't-miss much-anticipated red-hot big-budget title with the right combination of star, director and subject matter that fails miserably at the box-office. This year it was Superman Returns. In 1982 it was Blade Runner. In 1957 it was Billy Wilder's The Spirit of St Louis, a film that had everything - top director, huge star, best-selling true story about an American hero - except enough of an audience to cover its costs. Maybe the public still remembered Lucky Lindy's anti-Semitism and his loud admiration for Nazi Germany's achievements before the war (neither covered in the film, which ends with his arrival in Paris before the legend got too tarnished). Maybe because they thought they knew the story or that it was just going to be one guy stuck in a cockpit for two hours. Certainly Wilder and co-writer Wendell Mayes are aware of the dramatic pitfalls of Lindbergh's relatively uneventful flight, alternating between a well-executed flashback structure to key points in his life and the build-up to the flight itself. Once the film is airborne, it's both surprising and suspenseful, finding genuine drama in his attempts to stay awake and to navigate without proper instruments.

It also builds up a quite remarkable sense of dread that's unlike anything else in Wilder's filmography, allied to a real sense of the epic: shots like the ominous storm clouds over the hanger the dark dawn before the flight carry a real chill of foreboding to them. Even the typically muted and problematic WarnerColor adds to the film rather than detracts from it. Along with the superb use of CinemaScope, there's a remarkable score from Franz Waxman: majestic, soaring but filled with understated menace, and cleverly used as part of the fabric of the film rather than mere musical accompaniment. The film does lose points for implying, though never actually saying outright, that this was a race to be the first to fly the Atlantic - in fact, Lindbergh was the third man to fly across the Atlantic after almost completely forgotten Brits Alcock and Brown's astonishing flight eight years earlier - but it's still a remarkably tense and engrossing adventure story that deserved the success it never found.