6/10
The Good and Bad Of This "Spirit"
30 November 2005
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.
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