The Thief Of Bagdad (1940)

Jaffar Takes

The Thief Of Bagdad
UK/USA 1940 
Directed by Ludwig Berger, 
Michael Powell & Tim Whelan
London Film Productions
Imprint  Blu Ray Zone B

Please note: One day before publishing this review, I discovered I'd already reviewed this movie 16 years ago. However, this is a more detailed account of it and, it turns out, my tastes must have changed a lot over the years... I take less prisoners with this one. I will leave both reviews up in the index so you can take your pick but, this review is how I feel about this movie now. 

So the second movie of Imprint’s beautifully restored box set of The Thief Of Bagdad films is the 1940 version produced by Alexander Korda. This was my father’s favourite film but, alas, it arrived too late for him to look at it one last time. But I wanted to watch it again to try and figure out if I was missing anything from previous viewings. I’ve never felt this was a truly great film but, my dad did so...

Yeah. Okay... this is about the best way yet to see this landmark and rightfully respected film adaptation, purporting to be sourced from certain stories in the varous tales (and titles) of the 101 Arabian Nights. And it’s a fine film, to be sure. It looks amazing although, some of the effects, with it being the first colour film to employ blue screen techniques, look a little dated and wobbly to me. I say this after loving the effects work on the Douglas Fairbanks version, which I reviewed here. 

I find this version a little slow though but, the narrative has an interesting structure in that it flashes back from a little way into the story to tell how the former king, played by the quite charming John Justin, was made blind by the evil Jaffar, played by Conrad Veidt. And also why his friend, the actual thief of Bagdad, played here by Sabu, was turned into his seeing eye dog, again courtesy of the antagonist. 

We learn that Jaffar needs to find these two to restore the consciousness of the love interest, played by June Duprez and how, after the film catches up with itself and this happens, the former king and thief are again outcast and trying to find a way to get back to Jaffar, while Jaffar murders the young lady’s father, played by Miles Malleson (who also helped write the movie) in their absence. This involves mostly Sabu in adventures featuring a djinni (played with a large personality by Rex Ingram), a giant spider battled on its web, a blue all-seeing eye as a crystal and a purloined flying carpet. But there’s also a mechanical, Pegasus-style flying horse and a multi armed automaton of a blue skinned lady with murderous intent. 

And it’s fine with the actors all very good and charming but, alas, I did feel it a little slow and less adventuresome than I would probably have liked. But it’s not without its many good points, not least of all being the magnificent score of Miklós Rózsa... which will probably call to mind many of that composer’s other scores, including one with a similar soundscape, being his score for the later movie The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad (reviewed by me here). Sinbad actually gets a mention in this movie but, alas, we don’t quite get to meet him in this particular tale. 

Now the film tends to jump around a bit with, it seemed to me, scenes which could have been in there left to the imagination. I am putting this down to a constantly changing script and trouble during filming (the primary director was the great Michael Powell but, as you can see, three directors are credited). Also, the film started off being shot in Great Britain but, it was during The Blitz so the production had to relocate to America some way through. Sabu had grown a couple of inches in the interim period between shoots so, all of his scenes had to be reshot again in the US. You can often tell the scenes which were shot in each location because, in the scenes shot on set in America, the women all have their blouses tightly buttoned up to the top where, in continuity defying fashion, the UK scenes are a lot looser with the way the costumes are worn on the ladies in question. 

It’s leisurely but it’s still a bit of a romp and it obviously struck a chord with my dad when he first saw it (he watched it at least once a decade I think) and I’d still recommend it to friends to watch this version. But that’s me just about done on this one, I think. Other than to reiterate that this new restoration of The Thief Of Bagdad on Blu Ray looks absolutely superb (and that might well be why some of the effects work looks a bit clunky I suspect... it probably wasn’t supposed to be seen this sharp on technology this good). So if you are a fan of this film... this is currently the best iteration of it to buy... although I suspect there will be a US and UK restored version arriving on their respective shores before another decade has passed. 

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. 

The Criterion genie out of the bottle...

The Thief of Bagdad 1940 UK/US

Produced by Alexander Korda

Criterion Edition DVD Spine No. 431

Region 1

Alexander Korda’s troubled 1940 production of The Thief of Bagdad is one of those timeless movies that you never get tired of revisiting over the years and is very much a father of the full-colour special effects movie. Many of those old effects movies had effects which, if not easy, were fairly run of the mill for black and white movies but this remake of The Thief of Bagdad developed processes to do the kinds of effects needed in colour for the first time and so this will always be an important film.

It’s also brilliant in almost every other way you can want too... shot design, colours, music, acting and screenplay are all first class. Actually, the way the action flows may well be endemic to the awful problems of struggling to get the picture completed (Korda had to go to America in the end when he ran out of money on the project... fortunately, the US realised just how brilliant the footage he already had in the can was). There is an economy to the scenes which may well be due to the limitations of the process. For instance, instead of showing the two lead characters escaping from a dungeon cell, the characters say what they are going to do and then in the next sequence they are already out and on a boat. Directors should maybe take this kind of approach more these days.

This brilliant Criterion Region 1 release has everything you would expect from a Criterion edition... a great print, a flawless transfer and a whole load of extras - a Michael Powell propaganda film made while The Thief of Bagdad was on hiatus, a documentary about the special effects featuring such luminaries as Ray Harryhausen, a radio interview with composer Miklos Rosza and one of the commentary tracks is by Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorcese... plus a few other nice extras.

All in all, the best possible DVD release so far of this classic movie. A must buy!