every year there one can not miss much anticipate red hot big budget title with the right combination of star and director and subject matter that fail miserably at the box office . this year it be superman return . in 1982 it be blade runner . in 1957 it be billy wild the spirit of st louis and a film that have everything top director and huge star and best sell true story about an american hero except enough of an audience to cover it cost . maybe the public still remember lucky lindy anti semitism and his loud admiration for nazi germany achievement before the war ( neither cover in the film and which end with his arrival in paris before the legend get too tarnish ) . maybe because they think they know the story or that it be just go to be one guy stick in a cockpit for two hour . certainly wilder and co writer wendell mayes be aware of the dramatic pitfall of lindbergh relatively uneventful flight and alternate between a well execute flashback structure to key point in his life and the build up to the flight itself . once the film be airborne and it both surprising and suspenseful and finding genuine drama in his attempt to stay awake and to navigate without proper instrument . it also build up a quite remarkable sense of dread that unlike anything else in wilder filmography and ally to a real sense of the epic represent shot like the ominous storm cloud over the hanger the dark dawn before the flight carry a real chill of forebode to them . even the typically mute and problematic warnercolor add to the film rather than detracts from it . along with the superb use of cinemascope and there a remarkable score from franz waxman represent majestic and soar but fill with understated menace and and cleverly use a part of the fabric of the film rather than mere musical accompaniment . the film do lose point for implying and though never actually say outright and that this be a race to be the first to fly the atlantic in fact and lindbergh be the third man to fly across the atlantic after almost completely forgotten brit alcock and brown astonishing flight eight year earlier but it still a remarkably tense and engrossing adventure story that deserve the success it never find .