Flying Padre

Flying Padre is a 1951 short subject black-and-white documentary film, which is notable as the second picture directed by Stanley Kubrick, after Day of the Fight. The film is nine minutes long. The subject of Flying Padre is a Catholic priest in rural New Mexico, Father Fred Stadtmuller. Because his 400-square mile parish is so large, he uses a Piper Cub airplane (named the "Spirit of St. Joseph") to travel from one isolated settlement to another... more

Flying Padre is a 1951 short subject black-and-white documentary film, which is notable as the second picture directed by Stanley Kubrick, after Day of the Fight. The film is nine minutes long. The subject of Flying Padre is a Catholic priest in rural New Mexico, Father Fred Stadtmuller. Because his 400-square mile parish is so large, he uses a Piper Cub airplane (named the "Spirit of St. Joseph") to travel from one isolated settlement to another. The film shows him providing spiritual guidance, giving sermons at funerals, and serving as an impromptu air ambulance by flying a sick child and his mother to hospital. After Kubrick sold his first short film, the self-financed Day of the Fight, to RKO in 1951 for $4000 (pocketing a $100 profit), the company advanced the 23-year-old filmmaker money to make a documentary short for their Pathe Screenliner series. Flying Padre was the result. In an interview in 1969, Kubrick referred to Flying Padre as "silly". The film is narrated by CBS... less