Billy and Wendell Mayes don't allow us to get bogged down in Lindbergh's 30+ hour flight by flashing back to his earlier life, including his days as a stunt flyer and mail pilot. And there's these great little touches, like the woman (Patricia Smith) who provides the mirror (and the handy way Wilder uses this to show the audience the essential aircraft workings) and the St Christopher that is dropped into his sandwiches. It's a (another) great performance from Jimmy Stewart - note his exhausted, bewildered response at the end as he's dragged from his beloved aircraft at the end by a cheering French horde (anyone who's ever been on a long car journey will know that feeling of bonding with the machine that got you there).
Wilder wanted to use a true story he'd heard that Lindbergh has a night of passion with a waitress before the flight took off; and then on a Fifth Avenue parade at the end, the girl is there waving at him, but he doesn't notice her. But Lindbergh would have none of that, nothing about his personal life, just the flight itself. Which is perhaps why the film, inventive as it might be, cannot disguise the fact that it's a little anodyne with regards to the man himself.
The film benefits from a fine Franz Waxman score. Photographed in CinemaScope by Robert Burks and J Peverell Marley, Arthur Schmidt the editor, the indispensable Doane Harrison a 'production associate'. Produced by Warner Bros.
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