The Thief of Bagdad (1940 film)

The Thief of Bagdad
Film poster for 1947 Film Classics re-release
Directed by	Michael Powell Ludwig Berger Tim Whelan Uncredited: Alexander Korda Zoltan Korda William Cameron Menzies
Produced by	Alexander Korda
Written by	Lajos Biró Miles Malleson
Starring	Conrad Veidt Sabu John Justin June Duprez
Music by	Miklós Rózsa
Cinematography	George Perinal
Editing by	Charles Crichton
Studio	London Films
Distributed by	United Artists (UK/US)
Release date(s)	December 5, 1940 (1940-12-05) (US) December 25, 1940 (1940-12-25) (UK)
Running time	106 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

The Thief of Bagdad is a 1940 British Technicolor fantasy film produced by Alexander Korda, and directed by Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, and Tim Whelan, with contributions by Korda's brothers Vincent and Zoltán, and William Cameron Menzies. The film starred child actor Sabu, also Conrad Veidt, John Justin, and June Duprez.

Although the film was produced by Alexander Korda's company London Films in England, due to the outbreak of World War II, filming was completed in California. The film won the Academy Awards for Cinematography, Art Direction (Vincent Korda) and Special Effects (Lawrence W. Butler, Jack Whitney) and marks the first major use of bluescreening in film. It was also nominated for Original Music Score.

Although a remake of the 1924 version, the two films also have significant differences; most significantly, the thief and the prince are separate characters in the 1940 version.

Plot

The film's backstory is told in flashback, mimicking the style of the Arabian Nights.

Ahmad (John Justin), the naive King of Bagdad, is convinced by his evil Grand Vizier, Jaffar (Conrad Veidt), to go out into the city disguised as a poor man to get to know his subjects (in the manner of his grandfather Harun al-Rashid). Jaffar then has Ahmad thrown into a dungeon, where he is joined by the young thief Abu (Sabu), who arranges their escape. They flee to Basra, where Ahmad becomes acquainted with its Princess (June Duprez). However, Jaffar also journeys to Basra, for he desires the Princess. Her father, the Sultan (Miles Malleson), is fascinated by the magical mechanical flying horse Jaffar offers and agrees to the proposed marriage. Upon hearing the news, the Princess, by now deeply in love with Ahmad, runs away. Confronted by Ahmad, Jaffar magically blinds him and turns Abu into a dog; the spell can only be broken if Jaffar holds the Princess in his arms.

The Princess is eventually captured (but not recognized) and sold in the slave market. She is bought secretly by Jaffar and taken to his mansion, but falls into a deep sleep from which he cannot rouse her. Ahmad is tricked by Jaffar's servant Halima (Mary Morris) into awakening the Princess. Halima then lures the Princess onto Jaffar's ship by telling her that there is a doctor aboard who can cure Ahmad's blindness. The ship immediately sets sail. Jaffar informs the Princess about the spell; she allows herself to be embraced, whereupon Ahmad's sight is restored and Abu is returned to human form. They chase after the ship in a small boat, but Jaffar conjures up a storm to shipwreck them.

Abu wakes up alone on a deserted beach and finds a bottle. When he opens it, an enormous Djinn or genie (Rex Ingram) appears. Embittered by his long imprisonment, the genie informs Abu that he is going to kill his rescuer, but Abu tricks him back into the bottle. The genie then offers to grant Abu three wishes if he will let him out again. The hungry boy uses his first wish to ask for sausages. When Abu demands to know where Ahmad is, the genie flies Abu to the top of the highest mountain in the world. On it sits a temple, and in the temple there is an enormous statue with a large jewel, the All-Seeing Eye, set in its forehead. The genie tells Abu that the Eye will show him where to find Ahmad. Abu fights off a giant guardian spider while climbing the statue and steals the gem.

The genie then takes Abu to Ahmad. When Ahmad asks to see the Princess, Abu has him gaze into the All-Seeing Eye. Ahmad despairs when he sees Jaffar arranging for the Princess to inhale the fragrance of the Blue Rose of Forgetfulness, which makes her forget her love. In agony, Ahmad lashes out at Abu for showing him the scene. During the ensuing argument, Abu unthinkingly wishes Ahmad to Bagdad. The genie, freed after granting the last wish, departs, leaving Abu alone in the wilderness.

Ahmad appears in Jaffar's castle and is quickly captured, but seeing him restores the Princess's memory. The furious usurper sentences them both to death. Abu, unable to watch his friend's impending doom, shatters the All-Seeing Eye and as a result is transported to the "land of legend", where he is greeted by the Old King (Morton Selten) and thanked for freeing the inhabitants, who had been turned to stone. As a reward, he is given a magic crossbow and is named the king's successor. However, in order to save Ahmad, Abu steals the king's magic flying carpet and rushes to the rescue.

Abu's marvellous aerial arrival in Bagdad (which fulfils a prophecy cited in the course of the story) sparks a revolt against Jaffar. Abu kills the fleeing Jaffar with his crossbow, and Ahmad regains his kingdom and his love. However, when Abu hears (with growing alarm) Ahmad telling the people of his plan to send him to school to train to become his new Grand Vizier, Abu instead flies away on the carpet to find his own fun and adventure.

Cast

• Conrad Veidt as Jaffar
• Sabu as Abu
• June Duprez as the Princess
• John Justin as Ahmad
• Rex Ingram as the Djinn
• Miles Malleson as the Sultan of Basra
• Morton Selten as the Old King
• Mary Morris as Halima, Jaffar's agent
• Bruce Winston as the Merchant
• Hay Petrie as the Astrologer
• Adelaide Hall as the Singer
• Roy Emerton as the Jailor
• Allan Jeayes as the Story Teller
• Leslie Phillips as market urchin (uncredited)
• Cleo Laine as market urchin (uncredited)

Alexander Korda had intended to cast Vivien Leigh as the Princess, but she went to Hollywood to be with Laurence Olivier.

Reception

New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther enthused that the film "ranks next to Fantasia as the most beguiling and wondrous film of this troubled season." Crowther praised "its truly magnificent color" and the performances of all five main actors.

Roger Ebert has rated The Thief of Bagdad among his great movies, "on a level with The Wizard of Oz." According to Ebert, "it maintains a consistent spirit, and that spirit is one of headlong joy in storytelling." He praised the performances of Sabu and Veidt ("perfectly pitched to the needs of the screenplay"), though he was less impressed with the chemistry between Duprez and Justin ("rather bloodless").

Unlike its 1924 predecessor, who got a 100 %, but who is rendered at 94 %, The Thief of Bagdad has a 100% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes.

Influence

Although it was a remake of the earlier silent version, this film has been highly influential on later movies based on The Book of One Thousand and One Nights setting. For example, the Disney film Aladdin borrows freely from it, particularly the characters of the evil Vizier and the Sultan, both drawn with a marked similarity to the characters in The Thief of Bagdad. The thieving monkey Abu in the Disney cartoon is obviously based on the boy played by Sabu. Richard Williams, speaking about his film The Thief and the Cobbler, said that one of his interests was in creating an Oriental fantasy that did not copy from it. The Prince of Persia franchise also shares similar characteristics with the film.

Likewise, various plot elements of The Thief of Bagdad—most notably, the theft of the ruby from a high place and the battle with the giant spider—derive from the 1928 short story, The Tower of the Elephant, by Robert E. Howard^{[citation needed]}.

Larry Butler invented the first proper bluescreen process for the special effects scenes in this film, a variation on the existing "traveling matte" process. This technique has since become the standard process for separating screen elements and/or actors from their backgrounds and placing them on new backgrounds for special effects purposes, and has since been used in thousands of films.

Home media

The film was released on DVD by MGM on 3 December 2002. That version is now out of print. The Criterion Collection released a two-disc DVD release on 27 May 2008 that includes a commentary track by filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, who are both longtime fans of the film (their comments were recorded separately and then edited together).

References

Bibliography

• Leibfried, Philip; Willits, Malcolm (2004). Alexander Korda's The Thief of Bagdad, An Arabian Fantasy. Hollywood, Calif.: Hypostyle Hall Publishers. ISBN 0-9675253-1-4. 
• The Great British Films, pp 55–58, Jerry Vermilye, 1978, Citadel Press, ISBN 0-8065-0661-X

External links

• The Thief of Bagdad at the TCM Movie Database
• The Thief of Bagdad at the Internet Movie Database
• The Thief of Bagdad at AllRovi
• The Thief of Bagdad at the British Film Institute's Screenonline Full synopsis and film stills (and clips viewable from UK libraries).
• Reviews and articles at the Powell & Pressburger Pages
• The Making of the Thief of Bagdad
• The Thief of Bagdad at Rotten Tomatoes