The Thief Of Bagdad
From cinema's inception, it split into two
different camps: Those inspired by the Lumière brothers' "Employees Leaving The
Lumière Factory," which was the original prototype for films that reflect or
document real life, and those inspired by Georges Méliès' "A Trip To The Moon,"
which operates in the realm of pure escapism and artifice. There may be no
greater example of the latter than Alexander Korda's awe-inspiring 1940
production of The Thief Of Bagdad, a Middle Eastern fantasia that springs from the
screen like an illustrated storybook come to life. Sparing no expense, Korda
hired top-flight artisans (including co-director Michael Powell, composer Miklós
Rózsa, and cutting-edge effects man Lawrence Butler), constructed massive sets
in London and Hollywood, and shot in a beautiful three-strip Technicolor.
Treating cinema as a giant toy box, Korda resembles a child with an overactive
imagination, giddily piling on every exotic and magical conceit the story can
handle.
Based on a portion of One Thousand And One
Arabian Nights, The Thief Of Bagdad offers young people a charismatic surrogate in Abu (Sabu), a
crafty, irreverent little thief who befriends the fallen Prince Ahmad (John
Justin) when the two are thrown into the same prison cell. After leading the
kingdom into tyranny, the prince's nefarious, power-hungry adviser Jaffar
(played by the dark-eyed German silent star Conrad Veidt) has cast him out of
Bagdad and bribes the sultan of Basra to relinquish the hand of his beautiful
daughter (June Duprez). So Ahmad and Abu escape the scheduled execution and
plot to expose Jaffar, win the princess for Ahmad, and restore the kingdom to
newfound glory.
Most of the children of today know this story as
Disney's Aladdin,
but one of the crucial differences here is that a jive-talking genie isn't the
main attraction; it's Sabu, which gives a young audience a much greater point
of identification. Apart from the endless visual wonders on display—a
mechanical flying horse, a magic carpet, a belligerent genie, a giant
spider—Sabu's utter fearlessness and guile in the face of serious
predicaments make the film special. For kids who have to find their way through
a big, scary world, his adventures remain an inspiration.
Key features: The supplements on this
two-disc edition are generous even by Criterion standards, including a tag-team
commentary by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, a cool demonstration of
the flying-horse effects, and Korda and Powell's 1940 propaganda film The
Lion Has Wings.