Best movie of this year hands down!

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

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.

This is a decent British made (but very biased) film probably an 8 or 9 for an aviation enthusiast from Europe. I'm giving it a 6 although I could have rated it less. I watched it on Turner Classic Movies (USA version) because it was described as a comedy drama featuring Laurence Olivier so that sounded interesting to me. Thinking it was a feature film I was surprised that it was actually a second feature documentary. Laurence Olivier plays one balloonist from the 18th century so with a total time of around 70 minutes and dozens of aviators featured his screen time is about 1 minute long and he plays an Italian! That is probably the highlight of the film actually. It gets pretty boring and actually disappointing when they get to the climatic Wright Brothers who have no actors playing them with lines and their screen time is about 30 seconds. The reenactment did look nice though. Much more time is given to the English Channel crossing (go figure). Then after WWI they skip the round the world flight by the US Army in 1924 and instead talk about a bunch of, you guessed it, European and British Commonwealth aviators. A very very brief mention is given to Lindberg, Earhart, and Wiley Post, probably because they were just too big at the time to be ignored. It finishes with what seems to be a lot of filler material about sea planes which could have easily been shortened, before getting back on track and showing some innovative new planes. It's possible that this was a big infomercial FOR the Imperial Airways Flying Boat business! 6 of 10 may be too generous but the footage of early helicopters and other pioneering planes (auto-car!) and the reenactments will make an aviation buff glad they watched. One thing I figured out in reflection shortly after I finished this is that the British were nurturing ties with the Italians showing a lot of their participation in the air races of the 20's and 30's and definitely could care less about the Americans who had Doolittle (of Raid On Tokyo fame) win the Snyder Cup for 3 years but is never mentioned. I cannot imagine a non aviation buff viewer of 2014 finishing this film. Also, the version I watched had Churchill in it so I probably watched a re-release version and not the one from 1936 unless they were being very prophetic because Churchill was in politics then but not the Prime Minister.

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.

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.