Which 1957 Billy Wilder film dramatizes Charles Lindbergh's solo transatlantic flight?

The 1957 Billy Wilder film dramatizing Charles Lindbergh’s solo transatlantic flight is The Spirit of St. Louis.

The American biographical drama stars James Stewart as Lindbergh and adapts Lindbergh’s 1953 autobiography, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954. Rather than beginning only at takeoff, the film spends substantial time on the engineering, fundraising, weather delays, and risky decisions behind the flight.

Lindbergh departed Roosevelt Field on Long Island on May 20, 1927, in the purpose-built Ryan monoplane Spirit of St. Louis. He reached Le Bourget Field near Paris roughly 33 hours later, becoming the first person to complete a solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic. Wilder’s film uses flashbacks to connect that ordeal with Lindbergh’s earlier work as an airmail pilot and barnstormer.

The film is sometimes confused with aviation pictures such as The High and the Mighty or Strategic Air Command, but those stories do not dramatize Lindbergh’s historic crossing. Franz Waxman composed the music, while Wilder shared screenplay credit with Charles Lederer and Wendell Mayes.