L'aquila solitaria

This is as close to a one-man show as you're ever going to see on film as Jimmy Stewart dominates the picture while all others just have bit roles.

I found it interesting because I find Charles Lindberg's feat amazing and worth watching. I also enjoyed the widescreen picture. I'm surprised it's not available on DVD. The most amazing part of Lindberg's feat, from what I discovered watching the movie, was that he went 30 hours without sleep before he even took off! To stay awake for the entire trip to Paris after that was incredible.

To keep the viewers' interest, the film flashes back a number of times to Lindberg's earlier days and most of that is pretty interesting. Yes, there are some lulls in here and the movie could have been shortened from its 138 minutes but Stewart does a nice job of entertaining us, as he usually did.

I do have one question, one complaint and one suggestion. My question is, "Why is there no mention of his wife, Anne Morrow?" Odd, they totally left her out of this. She was famous in her own right.

My complaint is the emphasis - it's brought up twice in case you missed it the first time - on Lindberg not believing in prayer, only the things he could see. Pagan Hollywood just has to get their agenda in, and much of it began in the 1950s when moral restrictions began to slowly ease. This is just one more example.

They also left out what happened right after the flight, thus making the film more of a story about the voyage than of Lindberg's aviation career. Too bad, because, as many of you might know, his son's kidnapping is one of the biggest stories of that era. My suggestion then is that a full biography, with the emphasis on this flight across the Atlantic, might have been a better way to go. I think you would see that with a re-make, along with a faster- moving film.

Jimmy Stewart is Charles Lindbergh in "The Spirit of St. Louis," a 1957 film directed by Billy Wilder and based on Lindbergh's book about his transatlantic flight.

The film deals with little else but Lindbergh's career up to and including his monumental flight from Roosevelt Field to Le Bourget in France in 33 hours back in 1927. We see Lindbergh as a mail pilot, then attempting to raise funds to buy a plane, though a plane ended up being built by a small aircraft company. And then the flight itself - and Wilder somehow makes it suspenseful and interesting. He really captures the pilot's complete isolation with no copilot or radio, talking to himself (Stewart provides the narration), sleep-deprived, with only the sound of the plane for company, falling asleep at the wheel, and finally, unsure where he was and using map topography to figure it out. It's an amazing story. During the flight sequence, there are flashbacks to earlier points in Lindbergh's life.

The Spirit of St. Louis is replicated, and once seen, it's very hard to believe it got out of Roosevelt Field. Lightweight, Lindbergh made sure it carried only the absolute essentials and refused to even bring a parachute or radio because of the extra weight.

Today, for me anyway, James Stewart is just James Stewart, one of the great film stars and actors. I'm blissfully unaware of his age most of the time, and I was in this film as well. For me, he was tall, lanky Lindbergh, determined to succeed and very likable. I realize that John Kerr was offered the role first, but if he had taken it, the film would have flopped initially, as it did starring Stewart, due to the huge budget, but I don't believe it would hold up as well as it does today.

Heroes are very rarely discussed as human beings, and many of their words and actions are taken out of context and out of the era. Lindbergh was ahead of his time in his environmental and aeronautical pursuits and very much of his time in some of his political beliefs. And as we now know, fidelity wasn't one of his strong points. Reading an excellent, well-researched biography like Scott Berg wrote is preferable to making snap judgments. Hindsight is easy.

Complicated men have complicated lives. You don't achieve what Lindbergh did in the Spirit of St. Louis by being ordinary. Wilder does an excellent job in showing his crowning achievement, and in evoking the excitement people felt at the time.

Jimmy Stewart made films that were always watchable, with an amazing variety from the quirky Harvey to the dark Vertigo & even as far as supplying a voice for the cartoon American Tail. Unlike others (Ronald Regan & John Wayne to name but two) he wasn't afraid to fight for his country either & his experience as a USAF pilot during WW2 served him well for this epic.

The central problem for the film makers is the 30 hour flight, there simply wasn't enough material to depict this, the most famous episode of the whole story & the whole reason behind the legend. The use of the flashback here is entirely reasonable & to be expected as a result.

What does annoy me is the fact that he wasn't the first to fly non stop across the Atlantic. He WAS the first to fly SOLO & the first to fly non stop to Paris, but he just wasn't first to fly across the Atlantic non stop. Alcock & Brown flew across, non stop, in 1919, some 8 years before Lindnergh. Don't forget 8 years may not seem much but consider that in 8 years we went from the Mk1 Spitfire to the almost supersonic Sabre jet! Also the Vivkers Vimy bomber Alcock & Brown used was World War 1 surplus equipment, running on gasoline that had more in common with used dishwater. Yet this achievement is side stepped by Hollywood & simply ignored, yet if it was Lindbergh who'd crawled out to chip ice off the wings of his aircraft time after time we'd never have heard the end of it (a daring feat necessary because the Vimy kept accumulating too much ice to keep flying during a storm).

Useful, this film is an incomplete picture, as carefully framed in it's story line as the the impressive camera work. It does, however, continue to present a skewed view of history.

I have watched this film several times over the years and always find it an entertaining experience. As a retired airline pilot, I am interested in most aviation movies and this is one of the better ones. I know that Lindbergh was only 25 years old at the time of his historic solo flight to Paris and that James Stewart was almost 50 when making this movie but I can overlook that fact because Stewart has always been one of my all-time favorite actors and does one of his usual outstanding performances as the "lone eagle".

There is a good mixture of comedy and drama throughout the film and a good use of flashbacks. It also helps that James Stewart was a pilot in real life both in the military and civilian life.

Overlong though exciting story behind the story of Lindbergh's incredible flight from New York to Paris. It deals Charles 'Slim' Lindbergh (excellently performed by James Stewart , he always wanted to portray him , when he ultimately got his chance is very old for a young role ; he was given this character after John Kerr had turned it down, owing to his disapproval of Lindbergh's pro-Nazi sympathies and his racist and anti-Semitic views) struggles to finance and design an airplane that will make his New York to Paris flight the first solo transatlantic crossing . As a 25-year-old U.S. Air Mail pilot, Lindbergh (Charles wanted Anthony Perkins to play him in the movie) emerged suddenly from virtual obscurity to instantaneous world fame as the result of his Orteig Prize-winning solo nonstop flight on May 20–21, 1927, made from the Roosevelt Field in Garden City on New York's Long Island to Le Bourget Field in Paris, France, a distance of nearly 3,600 statute miles or 5,800 km , in the single-seat, single-engine purpose-built Ryan monoplane Spirit of St. Louis . As a result of this flight, Lindbergh was the first person in history to be in New York one day and Paris the next.

Interesting picture with plenty of thrills , emotion , biographic elements and brief touches of humor . The film is pretty well though the action does drag at times and results to be overlong . Magnificent acting by James Stewart -at age 48- who gives a real Tour De Force back by good plethora of secondaries . However , many critics felt he was too old to be believable . In fact , producer Jack L. Warner was strongly opposed to the casting of James Stewart, which he believed caused the film to flop on its release in 1957 . Colorful and evocative cinematography in CinemaScope by two awesome cameramen Peverel Marley and Robert Burks , Hitchcock's ordinary . Impressive and thrilling musical score by Franz Waxman . However , the soundtrack was re-composed but composer Franz Waxman was no longer available so veteran film composer Roy Webb was hired along with Warner Brothers Music Director Ray Heindorf to come up with new cues based on Waxman's original material . The motion picture was compellingly directed by Billy Wilder , but it was a box office flop when originally released . After the film received bad notices from preview audiences, it was extensively re-edited with some new footage shot . Rating : Above average , this one remains a quality movie for the whole family .

This exciting and inventive picture well well based on true events , these are the followings : Six well-known aviators had already lost their lives in pursuit of the Orteig Prize when Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field on his successful attempt in the early morning of Friday, May 20, 1927. Burdened by its heavy load of 450 U.S. gallons of gasoline weighing about 1,230 kg, and hampered by a muddy, rain-soaked runway, Lindbergh's Wright Whirlwind-powered monoplane gained speed very slowly as it made its 7:52 am takeoff run, but its J-5C radial engine still proved powerful enough to allow the Spirit to clear the telephone lines at the far end of the field "by about twenty feet or six meters with a fair reserve of flying speed". Over the next 33.5 hours, he and the Spirit faced many challenges, including skimming over both storm clouds at 10,000 ft , 3,000 m, and wave tops at as low at 10 ft (3.0 m), fighting icing, flying blind through fog for several hours, and navigating only by the stars , whenever visible , and dead reckoning before landing at Le Bourget Airport at 10:22 pm (22:22) on Saturday, May 21. The airfield was not marked on his map and Lindbergh knew only that it was some seven miles northeast of the city. He initially mistook the airfield for some large industrial complex with bright lights spreading out in all directions. The lights were, in fact, the headlights of tens of thousands of cars all driven by eager spectators now caught in "the largest traffic jam in Parisian history " . A crowd estimated at 150,000 spectators stormed the field, dragged Lindbergh out of the cockpit, and literally carried him around above their heads for "nearly half an hour".