The New Pictures

The Spirit of St. Louis (Leland Hayward-Billy Wilder; Warner). Based on Charles Augustus Lindbergh's Pulitzer Prizewinning book (TIME, Sept. 14, 1953) --which was sold to Producer Leland Hayward and Director Billy Wilder for a share of the picture's profits--this excellent film takes as its story line the simple, glorious trajectory of the flight itself. The essential facts of Lindbergh's early life--he was the son of a well-known Minnesota Congressman, barnstormed as a boy pilot, made top of his class as an Army flying cadet, was flying the mail between St. Louis and Chicago when he got the big idea--are presented in artful flashbacks.

The take-off for Paris, as Director Billy Wilder has filmed and cut it, is a striking piece of cinematic craftsmanship. One by one, like bricks in a rising wall the difficulties are stacked in front of the hero (James Stewart) and in the moviegoer's mind: bad weather, the sod runway almost ankle-deep in mud and spotted with potholes, high wires and high trees near the field's edge, engine running 30 revs too low, gas load at least a hundred gallons more than the plane has ever taken off with, pilot already worn from lack of sleep, worried faces of mechanics, earnest discouragements from the hero's friends, and again those high wires. At the moment when the tension becomes unbearable, the young man at the controls, face ashen with anxiety and exhaustion, slips on his helmet, slips the leash of fate and high emprise. And as the pilot and plane go bouncing down that interminable takeoff run like a pair of crazy dice, most moviegoers will find that their hearts are riding on the gamble.

Once the spectator has caught the tail of Lindbergh's kite, he will hardly dare to let go--Director Wilder sees to that. He worries the last quiver of excitement from the facts--from the time Lindbergh fell asleep in mid-Atlantic, from the fishing boat he hailed ("Which way is Ireland?"), from the landfall at Ireland's Dingle Bay, less than three miles off course after 3,000 miles of flight by dead reckoning. And always there is the thrilling sight of the little plane as it flashes through the air as clean as a sword.*

When the plain facts are not sufficient for the purposes of mass entertainment, Wilder is not averse to dressing them up in high commercial style. He supplies plenty of hee-haw at the suspender-salesman and apoplectic-captain level, a musky little whiff of romance on the eve of the flight, a couple of near crashes that never really were, and a streak of sentimental, pseudo-religious superstition, involving a St. Christopher medal.

But the joking and the hoking do not seriously impair the moviegoer's sense that he is sharing in the execution of a great and significant event. And Actor 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.

We Are All Murderers (Kingsley International) consists of two provocative French movies for the price of one. The first picture sets the scene for the second by showing how a murderer is spawned by the vigorous collaboration of bad heredity and worse environment. The murderer (Marcel Mouloudji) has grown out of a Paris slum that resembles nothing so much as the inside of a very old garbage pail. Director Andree Cayatte's camera inspects the neighborhood with pitiless acuity, studies the murderer's alcoholic mother, his prostitute sister (his father is unknown). During the German occupation, the young man accidentally becomes involved with the resistance, is made a killer, and, on orders, executes a series of Nazi soldiers and resistance traitors. At war's end he is killing habitually. Eventually he is caught, condemned to death.

Here begins the second movie: an indictment of capital punishment, particularly as it is practiced in France. With shudder-inspiring realism, the film shows what happens to France's condemned men. They are not told when they are to die. The guillotine, which they call "the machine," is portable, and they are rarely able to sleep for wondering whether it is in the prison, whether that night will be their last on earth. They are put to bed with handcuffs on, and when their turn conies, the ceremony is brutal. Toward dawn, guards and witnesses tiptoe in their stocking feet to the door of the cell, silently slip the bolt. The guards dash to the condemned man's bed, seize him tightly. Then, as the witnesses file in, an official mournfully announces: "Your appeal has been refused. Be brave."

The victim walks or is dragged to the prison chaplain, where, if he likes, he may confess. Then he is placed on a chair. With perhaps merciful speed and expertness, guards tie his hands behind his back, tie his feet, neatly cut the collar from his shirt. The camera watches this grisly operation so closely that the moviegoer, with a little empathy, can feel the cold blade as it glides across the neck. After that the prisoner, unable to walk, is dragged to his death like a trussed sheep. And after that, one of the condemned men poses an old question that is sure to provoke some new doubts: "If I was wrong, why are you right?"

*Three rivet-for-rivet reproductions of The Spirit of St. Louis were made for the picture. Actor Stewart, a bomber-wing commander in World War II and still a weekend flyer, had one of them made. The other two were put together by Paul Mantz' associates, and each cost more than three times as much as the $10,580 original made by Ryan Airlines.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.