‘The Thief of Bagdad’ or — An Enchanting Technicolor Delight?
It had been so long since I had seen ‘The Thief of Bagdad’ (1940) that my memories of it were as distant in time as the tale itself; nothing more than a hazy myth of genies, distant lands, flying carpets and high adventure. Although I was also re-visiting it through a certain bias as I’ve since become a big fan of the 1924 Douglas Fairbanks/Raoul Walsh silent version so was curious to see how this would compare. So let’s open the stopper to this cinematic bottle, unleash the genie and find out!
What immediately hits you when watching producer Alexander Korda’s (and this does seem like a film where it is very much the producer in charge) version of this classic tale are the dazzling Technicolor colours which pop out the screen at you with such intensity that I started reflexively ducking as though my TV set was firing brightly coloured jelly beans at me. The film positively vibrates with radiant blues, reds, purples and pinks as though a rainbow cake had come to life before my very eyes and was dancing enticingly before me. Am I supposed to watch this movie or start eating it?
The other big difference between this and the 1924 version is that Korda’s blasts along at a terrific pace, hardly ever stopping for breath and with an almost constant, and energetic, score by Miklós Rózsa adding to the overall sense of propulsion to this tale. And the tale is that of a blind man called Ahmed who is, in reality, the deposed Sultan of Bagdad. Ahmed was a young and naive ruler who was tricked by his Grand Vizier, Jaffar, into taking on the guise of a beggar thus allowing Jaffar to seize the Royal throne for himself. What an idiot this Ahmed is.
What follows is a series of exciting adventures as Ahmed, with the help of young Abu (who is the thief of Bagdad and is also, for now, Ahmed’s dog!) attempts to reclaim his throne, win the hand of a beautiful Princess and bring the evil Jaffar to justice. These adventures involve everything from flying carpets, wish-granting genies, flying mechanical horses, giant spiders, distant lands, murderous robotic goddesses and all manner of magical sights and wonders.
This briskness gives the 1940 version the slight upper hand over the previous incarnation which has a few more languid moments, despite Fairbanks’ compulsive athleticism. Korda and his writers also make the wise decision to make the thief a young boy, played with natural charm by child star Sabu. This is a better fit. After all, it makes more sense for a street-wise thief living by his wits to be a young kid as opposed to a middle-aged man with a pencil moustache.
The film also benefits from having Conrad Veidt as the evil Jaffar. Veidt exudes incredible magnetism with every frame he’s in, which is just as well as he compensates for John Justin as Ahmed who is so wooden and lacking charisma that he threatens to sink the entire movie every time he opens his mouth or… or, well, does anything at all for that matter.
What’s also fun to behold is the obvious influence ‘The Thief of Bagdad’ must have had on so many fantastical movies that followed. I was sitting there thinking “Did that influence Coppola’s ‘Dracula’? (shadows on the wall detached from their source to give a sense of the uncanny) and “Oh, that looks like Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’!” whenever there were special effects sequences where the camera MOVES around the models and miniatures, as opposed to simply staying static, to really sell the scale, scope and “reality” of it all. I can also imagine an enthusiastic Ray Harryhausen watching this and eagerly jotting down plenty of notes, especially for his excellent Kali sequence in ‘The Golden Voyage of Sinbad’ (1973). It’s all very impressive stuff.
What’s also impressive is that the movie was helmed by three different directors plus THREE uncredited ones too, so it’s pretty remarkable that it all hangs together as well as it does. One of the credited directors was the legendary Michael Powell so I was trying to see if I could spot the scenes he might’ve directed and I have the hunch it could be those at the palace of the Sultan of Basra with all his toys as they look, and feel, a lot like ‘Tales of Hoffmann’ (1951) as mechanical playthings come to life against huge sets with colourful backgrounds. I could very well be completely wrong but it was fun either way doing a little detective work.
Yet for all that I still slightly prefer Walsh’s 1924 version. Korda’s has the quicker pace but also has a slightly more scattershot narrative, as well as the fact that it splits our attention between Ahmed (who is the focus of the first half) and Abu (who is the focus of the second), whereas with Fairbanks it is purely centered around him (although that could also be the result of the genie of his massive ego escaping from the bottle of his own psyche). There’s also something, for me, a little more magical about the silent version’s special effects, something just a touch more dreamlike, and although Rózsa score for Korda’s film is excellent it doesn’t stand a chance against Carl Davis’ adaptation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Scheherazade’. But these are personal quibbles and both versions wonderful examples of fantastical story telling at its finest so simply watch both.
