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Cult Review
Senior Film Conservator
Should you watch The Conquest of the Air! tonight? Honestly, only if you have fifteen minutes to spare and a weird obsession with pre-WWII aviation footage. If you need a plot, characters, or even coherent sound, you will absolutely hate this. 🛩️
It is basically a hyped-up newsreel masquerading as a movie.
The whole thing feels like it was put together by someone who just discovered how to edit film transitions. We get rapid shots of bombers dropping payloads on targets that look suspiciously like empty dirt lots.
Then, suddenly, we are looking at "parachute junipers." Yes, that is what the old promotional text called them, and honestly, they do look like jumping bushes sometimes.
The absolute best part is the people jumping out of planes while sitting in wicker chairs.
I had to rewind that part twice. Why are they in chairs? Is the sky not comfortable enough? 🪑
It makes the old-school plane stunts in things like Berlin Via America look downright safe by comparison.
There is no narrative thread here. It is just one "shot hot from heaven" after another, as the screaming title cards love to tell us.
The camera angles are actually pretty wild for 1933. Some cameraman was definitely hanging upside down out of a cockpit to get these shots.
You can feel the wind shaking the lens. It has a gritty, dangerous texture that modern CGI just cannot replicate.
Sometimes the edit just cuts to black for a second too long. You think the movie ended, but no, more biplanes appear.
It is way more chaotic than something like The Fighting Eagle, which actually tried to have a dramatic arc. This is just pure, unadulterated airplane noise and gravity-defying stunts.
Watch it with the sound off while playing some lo-fi music. That is the optimal experience.