The Spirit of St. Louis

It was just a plane trip across the Atlantic ocean.  So a simple viewer might think of The Spirit of St. Louis, the story of the first flight across the Atlantic, made by Charles Lindbergh in 1927.  It’s quite easy to take Lindbergh’s flight lightly.  After all, dozens if not hundreds of planes now cross the Atlantic each day.

Back in ’27, however, Lindbergh had to endure almost forty hours of nonstop flying, in a plane he couldn’t see out the front of, with technology that no one was sure about.  Before Lindbergh, several flights across the Atlantic had been attempted — there was a $25,000 prize for completing the flight — but none obviously succeeded.  Most that didn’t succeed resulted in death, so when Lindbergh took his plane up, he was taking the ultimate risk.

The movie honors this risk in a glorified way, and we admit we were sucked into it.  Lindbergh exemplified the best of American pluck and determination, which is what this movie celebrates.  Lindbergh even put his own money into his plane — $2000 of the $15,000 cost, according to the movie.  The story begins with Lindbergh seeking private investors for his plane, then the construction of the special plane, then Lindbergh’s gritty, mostly boring but harrowing at times, flight.  This movie is all about how private risk earns bountiful rewards, and how a determined soul can push creative and geographical boundaries.  Good grief, we wish people nowadays could catch this fever.  If they made an exemplary biopic of the 2000s, it would be of some greedy banker begging at the feet of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.  Give us Lindbergh and the pre-WWII generation any day.  These people had a much better understanding of what it was to be free and responsible.  This movie, and not To Kill a Mockingbird, should be required viewing in American classrooms.

Jimmy Stewart plays Lindbergh here, and though he’s too old and his toupee is quite bad, his agitated determination and jittery voice are perfect for a role that could otherwise be dull.  Half the movie takes place in the tiny cockpit of a one-man plane, so Stewart had to deal with not being able to move.  Much of the movie is propelled by his voiceover narration, which heightens the suspense considerably even though you know the result of the flight.  Lindbergh indeed deserved the nickname “Lucky Lindy.”  What disasters he avoided during his transatlantic flight are amazing to behold. It is fitting that he, though not apparently a praying man, utters a pray to God right before he lands.

The movie is based on Lindbergh’s Pulitzer-Prize winning memoir of the flight, and it is surely ten times better than this movie.  YetThe Spirit of St. Louis does offer the visualization of the event, and this at least got us thinking.  What would it have been like to be a shepherd in Ireland, watching Lindbergh’s plane come from the ocean?  Or what would it have been like to have lacked sleep for 72 hours, only to be mobbed by 200,000 people after you landed your plane?  These and dozens of other intriguing circumstances make Lindbergh’s more than just a simple flight across the Atlantic.

Though the movie probably would lose its power during a second and third viewing — one of our qualifications for deeming a movie “great” is its rewatchability — we make an exception for this.   Surely not all viewers will care for it as much as we did.  But no doubt, it is a great movie.

Entertainment: 9

Intelligence: 5

Morality: 10