The Conquest of the Air

Dry but interesting British docudrama on the history of flight. There's some real footage of people and events for the more recent episodes. The older stuff is shown through dramatic reenactments, some of which are kind of fun. The plane stuff might appeal to aviation buffs but I liked the older stuff. My favorites are the earliest scenes which show a bunch of morons in ancient times jumping off of buildings trying to fly and failing, including Simon the magician. These scenes would be greatly improved if they featured the Goofy holler ("Yaaaaaaa-hoo-hoo-hoo-hooey!"). The cast is fine for what they have to do. The most notable actor in the film is Laurence Olivier and he's only in it briefly. It's not going to be everybody's cup of tea. The narration almost put me to sleep a few times. I think if you're the kind of person who likes the old documentary shorts (I do) then you'll probably find this interesting as it feels like a longer version of one of those.

To clarify some questions raised by other user comments, I quote from the liner notes to a CD collection called "Classic British Film Music," which includes a suite from the score Arthur Bliss composed for the original version of the film:

"CONQUEST OF THE AIR was planned as an epic chronicle of mankind's romance with flight from the early legend of Icarus to speedy aerial circumnavigations of the modern age. This history was to be retold as a series of lavishly mounted tableaux vivants featuring, among others, Hay Petrie as a corpulent Tiberius Caesar ... and Laurence Olivier in fine voice as the grandiloquent balloonist Vincent Lunardi. However the film was not immediately released--appearing belatedly in 1940 in a much truncated form--running for only seventy-one minutes—and with many of its original sequences either missing or drastically curtailed—but with additional scenes added impress the extent of Britain's growing military airpower. During the wholesale dismantling of the original footage, no account was taken of Bliss's music, which was copped up along with the film stock" .... (Liner notes by David Wishart)

So keep in mind when viewing the film as it now survives that this is a very poor "remix" of something we will almost certainly never see, and that might have been very fine.

Some of the other reviewers answered certain questions I had about this film. Certainly what I saw today was not the original production of Conquest Of The Air. What apparently this film tried to be was the first docudrama ever done. If someone can recall an earlier one I'll stand corrected. That additional newsreel footage of Winston Churchill who was probably First Lord of the Admiralty when it was shot indicates a second World War had begun which promised and delivered to be more terrible than the last.

Taking the story of man's fascination of flying back to ancient mythological days, Conquest Of The Air shows a patient building block like achievement of man trying to get off the ground and travel like the birds. For earlier times they're recreated with players and sets the most prominent being Laurence Olivier.

As an educational film Conquest Of The Air is informative, but as entertainment it falls far short of the mark.

NOTE: While the release date on IMDb says it's 1936, there is a problem with this date. The film version I saw went up to 1938. Perhaps more material was added and I watched a re-release. Or, what's more likely is that the 1936 date is an error.

"Conquest of the Air" is a strange film in that there is a lot to admire and a lot to dislike. On the plus side, it's a nice and rather comprehensive review of the history of flight--with a strong emphasis on the botched attempts to fly from the middle ages up to about 1800. There also is a nice bit about ballooning and dirigibles. So, historically speaking, it's a nice educational overview. HOWEVER, while I admire the film in recreating so many nice tableaux, the narration is dreadfully boring and the film often comes off as an awful educational film--the sort they used to bore kids with in the good old days. Surely this could have been made in a more interesting fashion--this coming from a guy who LOVES airplanes and historical films. In addition, there were some curious omissions--such as the deaths of many of the famous people (such as Wilbur Wright during one of his flights). Worth seeing if you adore planes and balloons but not for the easily bored.

By the way, I think if the film had featured less aviators and spent more time on the most important the overall film would have been more interesting and far less episodic.

Originally made in 1931 with a couple of updates in 1937 and again in 1940, using historical recreations in the first part and switching more to a documentary style for the later parts. The recreations are a bit hit and miss most seem to give historical French, Italian and German characters broad English accents but Laurence Olivier gives his character an attempt at a genuine accent. A young Michael Rennie also makes a brief appearance. Ends on a rather odd note talking of the future use of peaceful flight showing gliders, but the footage used is from Germany and was in fact the method Germany used to train pilots to get around WWI restrictions on it's airforce. But overall, considering it's 1931 origin not a bad film.