Always is both a love story and an adventure that touches the emotions of the heart and the impact of our spirits on others.

Richard Dreyfuss (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Holly Hunter, John Goodman and Brad Johnson have the leading roles, with a special appearance by screen legend Audrey Hepburn.

Steven Spielberg directed from a screenplay by Jerry Belson and Diane Thomas. Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy and Spielberg are the producers, and Richard Vane is co-producer. The music is by John Williams.

The project is one that intrigued Spielberg for years, with plans to film it going back a decade. The roots of the story go back to the popular WWII-set 1940s film A Guy Named Joe, which starred Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne and directed by Victor Fleming. For Always, the framework of the story has been changed to the present day and the pilots are not wartime fighter pilots, but courageous and sometimes daredevil flyers, battling runaway forest fires. It is that edge of danger, with its triumphs, fears, laughter and camaraderie, that intensifies all of the characters' relationships.

In the film, Pete (Dreyfuss) is the greatest flier of them all, a master of the sky who seems to know no fear. The only thing he can never do, to the sorrow of Dorinda (Hunter), the woman he loves, is to stop flying. It is as much a part of him as breathing. Dorinda is fearful every moment he is in the air, and her fears are sadly realized when, in the course of saving their best friend Al (Goodman) in a daring mid-air rescue, Pete loses his life.

Yet despite his death, Pete’s mission, and Dorinda and Pete’s love for each other, is far from over.

Somewhere on the way to Heaven, Pete meets Hap (Hepburn), an angel who explains that he must go back to pass on all he knows to another pilot, Ted (Johnson). Pete becomes Ted’s guardian angel and inspires the younger man to become as great a flyer as he was.

But along the way, Pete discovers the true purpose of his mission and that, though he cannot be seen or heard, he must return to Dorinda one more time and show her the way to go on without him, and thus earn his own place in Heaven.

Always, released to theaters on December 22, 1989, marked Spielberg's second film as director that year, following that summer's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.