The Thief Of Bagdad 1924

Arabian Heights

The Thief Of Bagdad 
USA 1924 Directed by Raoul Walsh
United Artists/Imprint Blu Ray Zone B

Five years after Douglas Fairbanks formed United Artists... with Mary Pickford (to whom he was married), Charlie Chaplin and D. W. Griffith... he got very enthusiastic about doing this huge, expensive epic of a film, The Thief Of Bagdad. This is the first film featured in Imprint’s new The Thief Of Bagdad three movie Blu Ray restoration boxed edition. A couple of weeks before he died, my dad expressed a more than passing interest in, when he got well enough again, rewatching his favourite movie, the 1940s Korda version of The Thief Of Bagdad. Unbeknownst to him, I’d already pre-ordered this set direct from Imprint in Australia (because the pound to Australian dollar rate is wonderful at the moment) for him as a Christmas present. Alas, my father passed away before it arrived and he was in no real state to watch it anyway but, my mother and I are now watching it for him, hoping that some kind of spirit of my dad is somehow watching it with us.

Now, I’ve not seen a movie with Fairbanks in it before and, while I can certainly admire his physical prowess and understand why he was so popular in his day, I found his acting to be a little more over-the-top than was maybe strictly necessary. It’s more what you think of as a stereotype of silent acting as opposed to what my actual experience of what silent movie acting can often be. Nevertheless, I also found him quite endearing and don’t begrudge him his popularity because... yeah... he’s still pretty entertaining to watch. However, another actor in the film does contrast with him in terms of style to his detriment... but more on her in a minute. 

I have to say, the prospect of sitting through over two and a half hours of this movie seemed daunting but, no, I was caught up in it straight away and it really didn’t seem that long at all. You can see why the film was so expensive to make... it looks truly epic and the sets are amazing. For example, the wonderful gate of Bagdad which splits open in four different directions, revealing giant teeth holding it together when locked, is absolutely marvellous and just one of many inventive moments in this movie (it certainly wouldn’t look out of place in the first Flash Gordon serial, reviewed here, made over a decade later). 

Fairbanks’ thief character (and his partner in crime, played wonderfully comically by Snitz Edwards) is set up in a long series of scenes highlighting his ingenious and skilled thievery (including some nice use of a magic rope in the early scenes which, honestly, the character shouldn’t have been so quick to throw away because it would have been useful on his later adventures in the movie). Anyhow, he becomes infatuated, in a series of incidents too convoluted to cover here, with the Sultan’s daughter, played by Julanne Johnston and, in the last hour of the film (with his character believed dead by all but his romantic interest), he competes with three princes to find and bring back the rarest treasure on Earth, to give to the lady and win her hand in mariage... specifically competing against the villainous Mongol prince, played by Sôjin Kamiyama (in a role which I can’t help but think may have influenced Alex Raymond on his newspaper strip creation of the Flash Gordon villain Ming The Merciless). 

The villain is also helped by the treacherous slave girl in the Sultan’s palace... who is played by Fairbanks’ big discovery and who is the actress I was talking about earlier, in a relatively small (spread out over the length of the movie) but pivotal role... 

So... when Fairbanks was trying to cast the film, he saw the film The Toll Of The Sea (reviewed by me here) and so he got in contact with the leading lady from that small production, Anna May Wong, to fulfil this role in his movie. And it pretty much shot her to fame and kickstarted her career properly. And she really does a great job here too. She also indulges in the essential style of silent movie acting where everything needs to be relayed with gestures and expressions but, she’s much more subtle and understated here than, for example, Fairbanks’ overuse of his hand making grabbing motions every time his character sees something he wants to steal. She’s pretty amazing in this, it has to be said and, yeah, a nice surprise because, when I pre-ordered this set, I hadn’t read her biography as yet and didn’t realise she was in this until I’d read that (my review of that book can be found here).

Anyway, back to the adventures... while his rivals pick up, respectively, a magic carpet, a magic eye/jewel and a magic, healing apple... Fairbank’s thief goes through several quests culminating in his recovery of a magic chest, which gives him pretty much anything he wishes for. So he braves The Valley Of Fire... timing his jumps over volcanic pits which pretty much pre-dates modern video game design... kills creatures in The Valley Of Monsters (slitting open the chest of one, we see the blood splash down in a moment that definitely marks this film out as a pre-code movie), braves The Cavern Of Enchanted Trees, meets The Old Man Of The Midnight Sea and then rides a pegasus-like horse from The Abode Of The Winged Horse to the Moon Kingdom to retrieve both his chest and a cloak of invisibility. All this before rushing back to Bagdad and conjuring a battalion of soldiers to defeat the secret army the Mongol Prince has raised in Bagdad for the conquest of the city. 

And it’s great stuff... some of the special effects such as the magic carpet, done practically by lifting a platform on cables and flying it over the heads of the people of the set of Bagdad, look absolutely amazing and put to shame effects done differently over the years since this one hit cinemas. And though some of the creatures look a little fake and the wings on the horse a little less powerful than you would expect, I was completely bowled over by the spectacle of this film and enjoyed every second of it. Carl Davis’ ‘new score’, which has recycled bits of Rimsky-Korsakov’s music, including lots of repetitive steals from Scheherazade, really upped the game too (I love that whole symphonic suite anyway) although, the use of The Flight Of The Bumblebee seemed a little too on the nose, it has to be said.

All in all, though... great film and a wonderful transfer from Imprint films. I will wholeheartedly recommend this version of The Thief Of Bagdad to anyone I know and I look forward now to revisiting the Korda version in this set, along with the Steve Reeves version which I haven’t yet seen. 

Doctor Who: Robot Of Sherwood

The Brave And The Gold

Doctor Who: Robot Of Sherwood
UK Airdate: 6th September 2014
BBC 1

You know, I’ve never had much of a good time with Doctor Who when he goes back to a medieval setting and gets involved with androids. I remember the classic but, for me, boring Tom Baker story called The Androids Of Tara which, while technically not set on Earth, was at a point in the planet in the story's development where it was a dead spit of those kinds of times but cross pollinated with a futuristic, nowadays we might call it steam punk, sensibility. What it actually was, of course, was a remake of The Prisoner Of Zenda but, whatever it was, it didn’t sit well with this particular audience member at the time.

And continuing on that theme, don’t get me started on the wretched Fifth Doctor companion Kamelion, who was first introduced in the court of King John in 1215 and who was one of the most hideous ideas for a companion ever conceived... no, really don’t get me started.

About the only “androids in history” plot I’ve really taken to in recent years, I would guess, is the David Tennant story The Girl In The Fireplace, which was a real corker. Now Robot of Sherwood is, alas, nowhere near as something as good as that but, contrary to my misgivings about this one, it’s actually not a bad little episode, considering it’s all rather silly... but when did silly stop being anything other than good fun in Doctor Who.

The episode is written by Mark Gattis, who I have been mellowing to a lot in recent years, especially after his absolutely essential Doctor Who 50th year anniversary docudrama An Adventure In Space And Time (reviewed here). Here he delivers a particularly entertaining romp where we get a little more of the flavour of Peter Capaldi’s take on The Doctor as he tries to prove to Clara that Robin Of Loxley didn’t exist... something Robin himself is none too sure of.

The episode includes much homage to Robin Hood stories from the past with more than an emphasis on Errol Flynn’s classic portrayal of the character in The Adventures Of Robin Hood and also with regards to a stunt or two performed by Douglas Fairbanks and recreated here, to an extent. But all this pales in comparison to both Capaldi’s shining moment where he defeats Robin’s sword with a spoon (nice scene that) and in regards to the chemistry between Tom Riley (as Robin Hood), Clara and The Doctor. There are some great scripted moments which highlight the banter between these three, with Clara definitely getting all the points for being the cleverest one in the show, for most of the story, so that’s good. Ben Miller’s turn as the inevitable Sheriff Of Nottingham is also a good one and he matches the congenial lack of gravitas within the script with all the enthusiasm of the others. Cracking dialogue, for the most part, which mostly made up for the story being so... well... a bit rubbish.

The story, such as it is, goes with the idea that a bunch of robots are harvesting gold via the Sherif’s taxes to be able to repair their damaged spaceship, handily disguised as part of an English castle. The reality is, though, that it doesn’t have much substance or make any real pretence to have any, other than to be a story which one can hang on examples of the growing nature of Clara and The Doctor’s current relationship and a few light and fluffy action pieces.

That being said, however, it does manage to hit high in the “entertainment” stakes and deliver the kind of light and fluffy that Doctor Who has always been good at over the years, when it wants to do that kind of thing. So well done to Gatiss for writing such a good ‘un... even if the climax did seem a little pointless and... um... yeah, I said it was silly, right?

Other than that though, nice music which once again gave us some nice versions of Clara’s theme, got us a little closer to the new version of The Doctor in terms of leitmotif elements plundered from the last few years and even did the obvious, though very welcome, Korngold as filtered by Zimmer kind of grooves that everyone was probably expecting, to be fair. Still, not to be sneezed at and it’s hard enough doing stuff like this on a small scale budget and with the kind of deadline demands top shows like this probably incur. So big thumbs up for me on that front too, I must say, and I look forward to cues from this on the inevitable Siva Screen CD to tie in with this series at some point in the near future. Some nice stuff here.

The trailer for next weeks episode looks like it’s the good Doctor going back to dark and scary stuff and I have to say, I definitely approve of that kind of direction, especially for Capaldi’s incarnation. Now that is an episode I am looking forward to... so I’ll hopefully see you here again next week as I pull that one apart, if you can make it. Good bye for now.