''The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh'' is a short film made in 1984 by

Orson Welles George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...

. The film was intended as a private video letter from Welles to his longtime friend and accountant Bill Cronshaw, who was ill. In the film, Welles sits behind a typewriter at his desk and speaks of the human spirit, quoting the journal of aviator

Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...

. Welles was in visibly poor health himself when the film was made, and he did not intend for it to be seen by the public. Graver, Gary, with Andrew J. Rausch, ''Making Movies with Orson Welles; A Memoir''. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2008,

Production

''The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh'' was the last film project completed by Orson Welles in his lifetime. After Welles's death in 1985, all of his unfinished films were bequeathed to his long-term companion and mistress

Oja Kodar Oja Kodar ( ; born Olga Palinkaš; 1941) is a Croatian actress, screenwriter and director known as Orson Welles's romantic partner during the later years of his life. Personal life Olga Palinkaš was born in Zagreb to a Hungarian father and a ...

, and she in turn donated many of them (including ''The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh'') to the Munich Film Museum for preservation and restoration. In 2000 the

Munich Film Museum The Munich Film Archive, in the Munich Stadtmuseum, is one of eight film museums in Germany. It has no showrooms and is limited to screening the films in a single cinema with 165 seats, as well as collecting, archiving, and restoring film copies. ...

released a digitally restored version of the complete three minutes of footage, which has subsequently been screened at numerous film festivals. Although the restored footage has never been released on video or DVD, a brief clip of the unrestored footage can be seen at the end of Vassili Slovic's 1995 documentary ''Orson Welles: the One-Man Band.''

References

External links

* 1984 films Short films directed by Orson Welles 1984 short films Charles Lindbergh 1980s English-language films American short films {{short-film-stub