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Monday, January 8, 2018

THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS (1957)

A high-profile flop in its day (even Jack Warner, a mogul who never took blame for these things, conceded surprise, if not fault), the story of Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 New York to Paris flight, fleshed out with bio-flashbacks during the prep & flight, was an odd assignment for writer/director Billy Wilder. Wilder, who served on a post-war DeNazification Panel and lost much of his extended family to the Holocaust, must have compartmentalized Lindbergh the Heroic Icon, remembered from his time in Berlin, against the latter-day America Firster who gave cover to pro-Nazi/Anti-Semitic sentiments in mainstream America. The non-linear story structure mostly hangs together, and features a few stellar set pieces (Takeoff from New York; Landing in Paris). But it badly misses the youth, glamour & MidWest reticence that caused such a sensation as a miscast James Stewart comes in a couple of decades older than the real article, unglam & spouting so much narration he seems anything but laconic. Fortunately, it’s also one of those films that looks and plays better on the small screen than it did in the theater. And, every now & then, when lenser Robert Burks nails lighting & camera angle for a youthful money shot of Stewart, you can see how this might have worked.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Wilder could be oddly insensitive on the age issue. His next, LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON/’57, uncomfortably paired a rapidly aging Gary Cooper against Audrey Hepburn (though there, the strain deepens the film); or in his all-geriatric FRONT PAGE/’74 remake. As for Stewart, five years on in John Ford's THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE/’62, he’s nearly thirty years too old for his fresh-faced lawyer. But, of course, that’s much the point with practically the whole cast decades off in that remarkable memory film.

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