Fairbanks considered this to be the favorite of his films, according to his son.[4] The imaginative gymnastics suited the athletic star, whose "catlike, seemingly effortless" movements were as much dance as gymnastics.[5] Along with his earlier The Mark of Zorro (1920) and Robin Hood (1922), the film marked Fairbanks's transformation from genial comedy to a career in "swashbuckling" roles.[6] The film, strong on special effects (flying carpet, magic rope and fearsome monsters) and featuring massive Arabian-style sets, also proved to be a stepping stone for Anna May Wong, who portrayed a treacherous Mongol slave.
The Thief of Bagdad is now widely considered one of the great silent films and Fairbanks's greatest work. Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance writes, "An epic romantic fantasy-adventure inspired by several of the Arabian Nights tales, The Thief of Bagdad is the greatest artistic triumph of Fairbanks's career. The superb visual design, spectacle, imaginative splendor, and visual effects, along with his bravura performance (leading a cast of literally thousands), all contribute to making this his masterpiece."[7]
The film was remade several times; the 1940 Technicolor version splits the main character into two: a deposed prince and a thief, the latter played by Sabu.
Plot
Soviet Russian film poster of The Thief of Bagdad
Ahmed steals as he pleases in the city of Bagdad. Wandering into a mosque, he tells the holy man he disdains his religion; his philosophy is, "What I want, I take."
That night, he sneaks into the palace of the caliph using a magic rope he stole during ritual prayers. All thoughts of plunder are forgotten when he sees the sleeping princess, the caliph's daughter. The princess's Mongol slave alerts the guards, but he gets away.
When his associate Abu reminds the disconsolate Ahmed that a bygone thief once stole another princess during the reign of Haroun al-Rashid, Ahmed sets out to do the same. The next day is the princess's birthday. Three princes arrive, seeking her hand in marriage (and the future inheritance of the city). Another of the princess's slaves foretells that she will marry the man who first touches a rose-tree in her garden. The princess watches anxiously as first the glowering Prince of the Indies, then the obese Prince of Persia and finally the Prince of the Mongols pass by the rose-tree. The mere sight of the Mongol fills the princess with fear, but when Ahmed appears (disguised in stolen garments as a suitor), she is delighted. The Mongol slave tells her countryman of the prophecy, but before he can touch the rose-tree, Ahmed's startled horse tosses its rider into it.
That night, following ancient custom, the princess chooses Ahmed for her husband. Out of love, Ahmed gives up his plan to abduct her and confesses all to her in private. The Mongol prince learns from his spy, the princess's Mongol slave, that Ahmed is a common thief and informs the caliph. Ahmed is lashed mercilessly, and the caliph orders he be torn apart by a giant ape, but the princess has the guards bribed to let him go.
When the caliph insists she select another husband, her loyal slave advises her to delay. She asks that the princes each bring her a gift after "seven moons"; she will marry the one who brings her the rarest. In despair, Ahmed turns to the holy man. He tells the thief to become a prince, revealing to him the peril-fraught path to a great treasure.
The Prince of the Indies obtains a magic crystal ball from the eye of a giant idol, which shows whatever he wants to see, while the Persian prince buys a flying carpet. The Mongol prince leaves behind his henchman, telling him to organize the soldiers he will send to Bagdad disguised as porters. (The potentate has sought all along to take the city; the beautiful princess is only an added incentive.) After he lays his hands on a magic golden apple which has the power to cure anything, even death, he sends word to the Mongol slave to poison the princess. After many adventures, Ahmed gains a cloak of invisibility and a small chest of magic powder which turns into whatever he wishes when he sprinkles it. He races back to the city.
The three princes meet as agreed at a caravanserai before returning to Bagdad. The Mongol asks the Indian to check whether the princess has waited for them. They discover that she is near death, and ride the flying carpet to reach her. Then the Mongol uses the apple to cure her. The suitors argue over which gift is rarest, but the princess points out that without any one gift, the remaining two would have been useless in saving her. Her loyal slave shows her Ahmed in the crystal ball, so the princess convinces her father to deliberate carefully on his future son-in-law. The Mongol prince chooses not to wait, unleashing his secret army that night and capturing Bagdad.
Ahmed arrives at the city gate, shut and defended by Mongols. When he conjures up a large army with his powder, the Mongol soldiers flee. The Mongol prince is about to have one of his soldiers kill him when the Mongol slave suggests he escape with the princess on the flying carpet. Ahmed liberates the city and rescues the princess, using his cloak of invisibility to get through the Mongols guarding their prince. In gratitude, the caliph gives his daughter to him in marriage.
Fairbanks sought to make an epic.[6] Lavishly staged on a Hollywood studio set, at a reputed cost of $1,135,654.65,[12]The Thief of Bagdad was one of the most expensive films of the 1920s. Art director William Cameron Menzies was largely responsible for the production design, closely following the requirements laid down by Fairbanks, who acted as writer, producer and star. Fairbanks' meticulous attention to detail,[13] as well as complex visual imagery, required the use of state-of-the-art special effects, featuring a magic rope, a flying horse, a flying carpet and full-scale palace sets.[6]
Music
Douglas Fairbanks encouraged the respected composer Mortimer Wilson to provide a fully-fledged classical score. Wilson composed leit-motifs for each character and developed them symphonically. He also spent many hours in the editing room working on combining his music with the film. The score has been re-constructed by Mark Fitz-Gerald and recorded.[14] A 1924 Literary Digest article details Wilson's work on the film (and includes a photo of the composer).[15] Wilson also wrote the music for Fairbanks's next two films, Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925) and The Black Pirate (1926).
Every age has its wonder entertainments, and 1924's The Thief of Bagdad transported audiences to a new level of imaginative fantasy. It had the biggest star of the era in a production that dwarfed anything anyone had ever seen ... It has sets bigger than those in Intolerance and costumed crowd scenes to rival the enormous Italian spectacles of the day. What's more, the picture is packed with elaborate special effects, many of which still have the power to impress. ... Some critics prefer Douglas Fairbanks' earlier modern-day adventures to his twenties' costume epics, but this dazzler still takes people's heads off. Simply put, the production's overall design and execution -- sets, costumes, lighting, special effects -- are coordinated so tightly that the illusion of grandeur is complete.[16]
Darragh O'Donoghue is of the opinion that:
"The first reel provides some of the purest joy the silent cinema can offer. ... Where initially there had been a satisfying equivalence between the discrete adventures of Ahmed as a psychologically plausible thief in medieval Mesopotamia and Ahmed as a universal Everyman figure, in the film's latter two-thirds, the former distinctive superstructure gives way to a kind of Pilgrim’s Progress in Orientalist drag. ... Adventure sequences are staged like fairground tableaux and have none of the interest in physical process or emotional investment that made the early reels so exciting. ... After promising a dream, this great but flawed film eventually sends its audience to sleep.[17]
The film along with The Sheik (1921) was adapted into a broadway by Dardanella which was performed on October 12, 1928, in Surabaya, and starred Indonesian actor Tan Tjeng Bok which later earned him the nickname "Douglas Fairbanks of Java".[18] Future American dancer, Devi Dja, also appeared in the broadway by working behind the stage.[18]
Honors
In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its 10 Top 10, the 10 best films in 10 "classic" American film genres. After polling over 1,500 people from the creative community, The Thief of Bagdad was acknowledged as the ninth best film in the fantasy genre.[19][20]
The 1940 film of the same name made the title character, played by Sabu, a sidekick for a handsome prince rather than the leading man. Indian actor M. G. Ramachandran assumed the role of Ali, the thief of Baghdad in the 1960 film Baghdad Thirudan. The 1924 film was directly remade in Europe in 1961 as Il Ladro di Bagdad, with Steve Reeves in the lead, while a 1978 made-for-television film combined plot elements of these with others from the Sabu version.
A number of Indian films, were made under the titles of: Baghdad Ka Chor (The Thief of Baghdad) in 1934, 1946, 1955; Baghdad Gaja Donga (Thief of Baghdad) in 1968; and Thief of Baghdad in 1969 and 1977.[22] A television series, Thief of Baghdad, was also made in India which aired on Zee TV between 2000 and 2001.
Home media
The Thief of Bagdad is in the public domain and many cheap, unrestored black-and-white copies have been issued on VHS and DVD. A restored version first appeared on US DVD in 1998, distributed by Image Entertainment. It featured original color tinting and a musical accompaniment arranged from the original 1924 music cue sheets and performed in 1975 by Gaylord Carter on a Wurlitzertheater pipe organ.[23]Kino International reissued the DVD in 2004, this time with a longer, improved print and chamber ensemble score. The film has also been released on Blu-ray by the Cohen Film Collection (US) in 2013[24] and Eureka! Entertainment (UK) in 2014.[25] That version features a Carl Davis orchestral score and an audio commentary by Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance.
The Black Pirate is a 1926 American silent action adventure film shot entirely in two-color Technicolor about an adventurer and a "company" of pirates. Directed by Albert Parker, it stars Douglas Fairbanks, Donald Crisp, Sam De Grasse, and Billie Dove. In 1993, The Black Pirate was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures to be added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Sinbad the Sailor is a fictional mariner and the hero of a story-cycle. He is described as hailing from Baghdad during the early Abbasid Caliphate. In the course of seven voyages throughout the seas east of Africa and south of Asia, he has fantastic adventures in magical realms, encountering monsters and witnessing supernatural phenomena.
Robin Hood is a 1922 silent adventure film starring Douglas Fairbanks and Wallace Beery. It was the first motion picture ever to have a Hollywood premiere, held at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on October 18, 1922. The movie's full title, under which it was copyrighted, is Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood. It was one of the most expensive films of the 1920s, with a budget estimated at one million dollars. The film was a smash hit and generally received favorable reviews.
The Iron Mask is a 1929 American part-talkie adventure film directed by Allan Dwan. In addition to some sequences with dialogue, the film featured a synchronized musical score with sound effects and a theme song.
The Thief of Bagdad is a 1940 British Technicolor historical fantasy film, produced by Alexander Korda and directed by Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger and Tim Whelan, with additional contributions by William Cameron Menzies and Korda brothers Vincent and Zoltán. The film stars Indian-born teen actor Sabu, Conrad Veidt, John Justin, and June Duprez. It was released in the US and the UK by United Artists.
The Thief of Bagdad may refer to:
Jaʽfar ibn Yahya Barmaki or Jafar al-Barmaki (767–803), also called Aba-Fadl, was a Persian vizier of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, succeeding his father in that position. He was a member of the influential Barmakid family, formerly Buddhist leaders of the Nava Vihara monastery. He was executed in 803 at the orders of Harun al-Rashid.
Mr. Robinson Crusoe is a 1932 Pre-Code American film. It is one of the few "talkie" films starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., in his penultimate film role; Fairbanks also produced the film and provided the story during the Great Depression. The film was directed by A. Edward Sutherland, a veteran silent film director, for Fairbanks's Elton Productions, and released by United Artists. Steve Drexel shows a fiery optimism and can-do spirit that matches the Fairbanks screen persona that appears in his most popular films.
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is a 1944 adventure film from Universal Pictures, directed by Arthur Lubin, and starring Maria Montez, Jon Hall, and Turhan Bey. The film is derived from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, but its storyline departs greatly from the folk tale of the same name, wedding that story to an actual historic event. The film is one of series of "exotic" tales released by Universal during the Second World War; others include Cobra Woman, Arabian Nights, and White Savage.
The Golden Blade is a 1953 American adventure film directed by Nathan Juran and starring Rock Hudson as Harun Al-Rashid and Piper Laurie as Princess Khairuzan. It is set in ancient Bagdad and borrows from the Arabic fairy tales of One Thousand and One Nights as well as the myth of King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone.
La Rosa di Bagdad is a 1949 Italian animated film by Anton Gino Domeneghini. In 1952, the film was dubbed into English, retitled The Singing Princess and dubbed by Julie Andrews as her first venture into voice-over work. The film was reissued in 1967, at the height of Andrews' subsequent Hollywood career. It is often cited as one of the first animated films from Europe and in Technicolor together with The Dynamite Brothers. It is also Italy's first film in Technicolor.
Arabian Adventure is a 1979 British fantasy adventure film directed by Kevin Connor and starring Christopher Lee and Oliver Tobias.
The Americano is a 1916 American silent adventure / romantic comedy film directed by John Emerson and stars Douglas Fairbanks in his last production for Triangle Film Corporation. Based on the novel Blaze Derringer, by Eugene P. Lyle, Jr., the scenario was written by John Emerson and Anita Loos who also wrote the film's intertitles. The film was re-released by S.A. Lynch Enterprises on August 21, 1923. Three 16mm prints and one 8mm print of the film still exists. Set in a fictional South American country of Paragonia, it has been described as one of a group of films that supported United States imperialism by providing support to the idea of manifest destiny.
The Thief of Bagdad is a 1952 West German musical comedy film directed by Karel Lamac and starring Theo Lingen, Paul Kemp, Sonja Ziemann and Rudolf Prack. It is not a remake of the 1940 film of the same name, but a comedy about the magic tricks of a female thief in Old Baghdad. It was filmed at the Bendestorf Studios in Lower Saxony. The film's sets were designed by the art directors Heinrich Beisenherz and Alfred Bütow.
The Desert Hawk is a 1950 action adventure film directed by Frederick De Cordova starring Yvonne De Carlo and Richard Greene.
The Nut is a 1921 American silent film comedy directed by Theodore Reed.
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Sr. was an American actor and filmmaker best known for being the first actor to play the masked Vigilante Zorro, best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films. One of the biggest stars of the silent era, Fairbanks was referred to as "The King of Hollywood". He was also a founding member of United Artists as well as the Motion Picture Academy and hosted the 1st Academy Awards in 1929.
The Good Bad-Man is a 1916 American silent Western film directed by Allan Dwan. The film was written by Douglas Fairbanks, and produced by Fairbanks and the Fine Arts Film Company. It stars Fairbanks and Bessie Love.
The Thief of Baghdad is a 1961 film directed by Arthur Lubin and starring Steve Reeves.
The Thief of Baghdad is a 1978 fantasy film directed by Clive Donner and starring Roddy MacDowall and Kabir Bedi. A British and French co-production, the film was released theatrically, except for the United States where it debuted on television.
References
↑ Cohn, Lawrence (October 15, 1990). "All Time Film Rental Champs". Variety. p.M-194. ISSN0042-2738.
Finler, Joel W. (1975). All Time Movie Greats. London: Cathay Books. ISBN0-904644-25-1.
Vance, Jeffrey (2008). Douglas Fairbanks. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN978-0-520-25667-5.
Whitford, Eileen (2007). Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood. Lexington-Fayette, KY: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN978-0-8131-9179-9.
Further reading
Eagan, Daniel (2010) America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 ISBN0826429777, pages 88–89
Goessel, Tracey. The First King of Hollywood: The Life of Douglas Fairbanks. Chicago Review Press (October 1, 2015) ISBN1613734042
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