The Spirit of St. Louis is a 1957 American aviation biography film directed by Billy Wilder and starring James Stewart as Charles Lindbergh.

The screenplay was adapted by Charles Lederer, Wendell Mayes and Wilder from Lindbergh's 1953 autobiographical account of his historic flight, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954.

Along with reminiscences of his early days in aviation, the film's storyline largely focuses on Lindbergh's lengthy preparation for, and accomplishment of, his history-making transatlantic flight in the purpose-built Spirit of St. Louis high-wing monoplane.

A suspender salesman tells him that two airmen just died competing for the Orteig Prize for the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris.

Quoted a price of $15,000 ($260,000 today) for a Bellanca high-wing monoplane, Lindbergh lobbies St. Louis financiers with a plan to fly the Atlantic in 40 hours in a stripped-down, single-engine aircraft.

When the Bellanca deal falls apart because Columbia insists on selecting the pilot, Lindbergh approaches Ryan Airlines, a small manufacturer in San Diego, California.

To decrease weight, Lindbergh refuses to install a radio or other heavy equipment, even a parachute, and plans to navigate by "dead reckoning".

Over Nova Scotia, he sees a motorcyclist below, remembering his own Harley-Davidson motorcycle that he had once traded as partial payment for his first aircraft, a World War I war-surplus Curtiss Jenny.

Pulling out a sandwich from a paper bag, Lindbergh discovers the hidden Saint Christopher medal and hangs it on the instrument panel.

Finally seeing the city lights ahead of him, Lindbergh approaches Le Bourget Airfield in the dark, becoming disoriented by panning spotlights aimed into the sky.

Landing safely and bringing The Spirit of St. Louis to a full stop, Lindbergh is rushed by hordes of people while sitting in the plane.

Later in his life, he recalled Lindbergh's famous flight as among the most significant events of his youth, one that led him to seek a career as an aviator.

Principal photography began on September 2, 1955, with filming taking place at L'aérodrome de Guyancourt, near Versailles, which would stand in for Le Bourget.

The original 64-day schedule ballooned into a 115-day marathon, as weather and Stewart's unavailability hampered the production, with final sequences shot in March 1956.

The film garnered mixed reviews, with Bosley Crowther at The New York Times praising the "... exciting and suspenseful episodes" while noting that Stewart's performance as Lindbergh did not convey the human side well:"We see very little of his basic nature, his home life or what makes him tick.

Time in its 1957 review describes the actor's success in conveying on screen the public's perception of Lindbergh's feat three decades earlier:Stewart, for all his professional, 48-year-old boyishness, succeeds almost continuously in suggesting what all the world sensed at the time: that Lindbergh's flight was not the mere physical adventure of a rash young 'flying fool' but rather a journey of the spirit, in which, as in the pattern of all progress, one brave man proved himself for all mankind as the paraclete of a new possibility.

[citation needed] In recent years, the film has regained some of its luster, and a modern reevaluation has centered on the screenplay's characterization of Lindbergh and the methodical depiction of the preparations for the momentous flight.

The Smithsonian Institution periodically screens the film as part of its "classic" series, and the DVD re-release in 2006, with remixed and digitized elements and a small number of special features, has evoked commentary such as "captivating" and "suspenseful".