Filmmaking is a collective enterprise, and it has been so almost since its inception. As every new storytelling tool demands additional crew members to oversee it, and since the cinematic grammar never stops evolving, movie production has unfolded into an endeavor that nowadays comprises
thousands of people. Even though, as a consequence, the responsibilities delegated to each role in such massive crews can become considerably fuzzy, it is still
widely accepted that a movie as a whole is (and has always been) the result of the creative vision of its director above everyone else: swap the producer, replace the editor or have the script altered during filming, and the ensuing movie will arguably still be the same overall; change its director, however, and you risk having an artistically fragmented mess of an outcome. That is, unless the true auteur behind that film is not its director, but in fact its
producer, something that was quite common during the old
Hollywood Studio Era. In those "producer's movies", the director was nothing but a cog in the machine, being either replaced when failing to abide by the de facto movie auteur's orders (as in
David O. Selznick's troubled production of
Gone with the Wind - 1939), or working in parallel with other directors so as to complete a picture as fast as possible (the case with any animated feature by Walt Disney Studios made during
Disney's lifetime). What we then have as a result is not the director's vision of a story, but rather the spectacle of having flaunted onscreen the best showmanship money can buy, which is not in itself a bad thing: when
Alexander Korda, for instance, set himself to produce his version of the tale of
The Thief of Bagdad, he managed not only to baffle audiences with the use of then-revolutionary
special effects, but also to make a film whose magic still resonates to children to this day.
A blind beggar (John Justin) is asked to tell the story of his life by a mysterious woman he met on the market (Mary Morris)
. He then narrates how he, Ahmad,
was once the Sultan of Bagdad, counseled by his vizier Jaffar (Conrad Veidt), who, wanting to take over his kingdom, tricked him into being arrested. He explains next that, once in jail, he met
Abu the Thief (Sabu), who hatched a plan for them to escape to the city of Basra, where Ahmad fell in love with its princess (
June Duprez). He also describes how
Jaffar, who wanted the princess for himself, managed to obtain her hand in marriage, and how the princess, who corresponded Ahmad's love, then fled the palace. He concludes his tale by detailing his confrontation with
Jaffar, whose aftermath was him being magically blinded, with Abu being turned into the dog he now always has by his side. The woman subsequently tells him that his princess is in her house, but has been in a deep sleep ever since she was found, to wake up only when reunited with her beloved. It is soon revealed that mysterious woman is in fact
Jaffar's servant, working under his orders in a last effort to wake the princess from her slumber. Upon waking up, the princess is tricked into boarding Jaffar's ship, where he lets her know that Ahmad's spell would only be broken if she let him hold her in his arms, to which she consents. Ahmad and Abu, their spell now broken, promptly set sail in a small boat looking for her, but are stranded due to Jaffar's conjuring of a storm. Abu ends up in a deserted island, where he becomes the master of a
Djinn (Rex Ingram) he freed from a bottle. With the
Djinn's help, he finds Ahmed, but they are separated again when Abu accidentally wishes him in Bagdad. As that was Abu's last wish, the Djinn abandons him in the wilderness, and Abu, again by accident, is magically transported to the Land of Legend, where he is named its King's successor for having (albeit involuntarily) lifted the curse that had turned all of the land's inhabitants into stone. Abu, nevertheless, to help Ahmad, whom he knew must had been captured by Jaffar upon being whisked away to Bagdad, steals the King's magic carpet and flies to his aid. He proceeds to
kill Jaffar with an enchanted arrow, thus reuniting Ahmed to his princess and giving him back his kingdom. Distressed by the prospect of being turned into a learned vizier by the again Sultan Ahmad, however, Abu takes off on his flying carpet, in search of adventure.
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| Jaffar (Conrad Veidt) magically blinding Ahmad (John Justin) |
The Thief of Bagdad was a very personal project for British producer
Alexander Korda, as it was the first movie ever made by his newly-established Alexander Korda Productions, with him investing all his money and reputation on it. As a result, he became extremely controlling of the project, with Korda, an
alleged genius for manipulative diplomacy, always having the last word on any creative decision director
Ludwig Berger had to make. On top of that, as tension was mounting on the UK over the fear of a second World War, Korda was forced to bring several other directors to the project in order to accelerate filming, thus effectively nullifying any vision its original director might have had for the final movie. In the end, the film achieved the success Korda expected, with
critics praising it as the perfect escapist fun in those hard times, as well as
commending him for how well the whole production was held together despite all odds. Continuity was hurt by having so many people "in charge", however, with proper names being pronounced differently during the movie, as well as several plotlines either being forgotten (like the fact that no one was allowed to look at the Princess' face) or coming out of nowhere (e.g. Abu being transported to the Land of Legend and suddenly being named its King's successor) -- plot holes that even child Me was aware of.
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| Abu (Sabu) fighting a giant spider |
As a matter of fact, it's always funny to realize how much your views have evolved since you were a kid... I've
already talked about my change of heart about the movie that made me start liking movies, the goddamn awful
The Tattoo Chase (1989), but now take Disney's
Sleeping Beauty (1959) as another illustration to that point. Today, as an adult, I can't help but awe at the scene in which Aurora first meets Prince Phillip, finding it comparable to a beautiful Medieval tapestry brought to life; as a child, however, I could't wait for it to be over! You see, in the bit right before it, the three Fairy Godmothers had started making preparations for Aurora's surprise birthday party, and, as tension was building up between Flora and Merryweather, with Fauna starting to clumsily bake her first cake ever, the action was abruptly cut to Aurora in the fields! As a kid (or rather, as a boy), I was like, "Noooo!!! There is some serious fairy antics about to go on! I want to see that, not some dumb girl picking flowers!!!". Likewise, when watching
The Thief of Bagdad as a child, Abu was my hero, and I couldn't get enough of his scenes, dying of boredom at the love story between droopy-eyed Ahmad and Princess What's-Her-Name. I wanted to see Abu duping merchants into giving him honey, outsmarting the almighty Djinn, fighting giant spiders, not being a side-kick for a dead-weight like Ahmad, clearly helpless without him. Now, some 20 years since I last watched
The Thief of Bagdad, I approached it with the same nostalgic expectations I had thanks to Sleeping Beauty, thinking that, maybe, John Justin's Ahmad was not so bad after all. Alas, what I did found out was that, although there is no salvation for him at the end of the nostalgia tunnel, there were indeed plenty of other things to like about the movie itself that 10-year-old-Me had failed to grasp.
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| Abu freeing the Djinn (Rex Ingram) |
Loosely based on the
homonym silent film from 1924 by
Raoul Walsh, which, in turn, was an amalgamation of several tales from the
Arabian Nights, Korda's
The Thief of Bagdad boasts an exquisite use of Technicolor in
William Cameron Menzies' production design, charmingly characterizing each important area thematically with a different, near-monochrome palette.
John Armstrong,
Oliver Messel and
Marcel Vertès' beautiful costume design is also used to support the character development of
Conrad Veidt's Jaffar, who has his state of mind color coded in his robes: he starts the movie dressed predominantly in black, which grows less prominent in his clothing as his love for the Princess is revealed, to the point of becoming inconspicuous when he is declaring his love for her in his boat; upon being refused by her, however, he goes back to his black-based wardrobe, being dressed entirely in black in the moment of his demise. Furthermore, no talk about
The Thief of Bagdad would be complete without mentioning its special effects, which feel strangely charming despite being (or perhaps because they are) extremely old-fashioned. Developed for the movie by
Lawrence Butler as a generalization of the
traveling matte process for color films, the
chroma key technique became the de-facto special effects standard in the industry until the late 50s, when
Petro Vlahos developed the superior
sodium vapor process, used in
Robert Stevenson's
Mary Poppins (1964).
Miklós Rózsa's soundtrack, although highly praised at the time (see Ebert's
review), felt to me like a double-edged sword: in one hand, it is full of pleasant tunes one can't help humming (like the
Sailor's Song, which becomes Abu's unofficial theme), and, in being used for punctuating the action onscreen (as when Abu is chased by the royal guards in his introductory scene), it contributes for the overall feeling of live action Disney animation that permeates the movie; on the other hand, with its overuse of choruses, in vogue in the 1940s, it is the main element that stands out as dated in the production.
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| Jaffar (Conrad Veidt) and the Silver Maid (Mary Morris) |
The most problematic point in
The Thief of Bagdad is undeniably its leading performers --
Conrad Veidt aside. With his dopey eyes and inexpressive face,
John Justin fails miserably at inspiring empathy as Sultan Ahmad, being sabotaged even further by the screenplay itself, which constantly requires him to explain his feelings with superlatives. Not only that, but the role of the original Thief (played vivaciously by
Douglas Fairbanks in 1924) was split into the thief Abu and Sultan Ahmad in Korda's version, with all the dexterity, ingenuity and adventurous spirit going to the former, whereas to the latter was left only an underdeveloped romantic subplot. As a consequence, Ahmad becomes nothing but a burden for Abu, who, in turn, is reduced to the role of the "noble savage" who is promptly willing to risk his life in order to protect the deposed sultan.
Sabu is no prodigy either, but his stiff acting and artificial laughter are counterbalanced by scenes with plenty of audience appeal, which, in the end, do nothing but reinforce in the audience the idea that the thief Abu, and not Sultan Ahmad, should be the main character of the movie -- which is called
The Thief
of Bagdad after all. Ahmad and Jaffar's love interest,
June Duprez is not given much to work with as the Princess (not even a name), falling madly in love with Ahmad at first sight and then being relegated to the role of damsel-in-distress. The supporting cast, on the other hand, is quite remarkable. Despite having only a few scenes in the movie,
Rex Ingram's psychotic Djinn is so memorable that he was featured in nearly all promotional material for the movie.
Mary Morris, although innocuous as Jaffar's servant, makes herself stand out in her second role in the film, the Silver Maid, his deadly gift for the Sultan of Basra. The Sultan himself, played by
Miles Malleson, manages to astutely captivate the audience in his total disconnection from reality, having a similar character in
Ron Clements and
John Musker's
Aladdin (1992) modeled after him.
As a closing remark, I must admit that, while the adult in me leans toward the 1924 silent version with Douglas Fairbanks, it is Korda's talkie the one I will definitely watch with my future children.
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