Alex Korda’s 1941 version of Thief of Bagdad kicked off a cycle of Middle Eastern fantasy adventures which didn’t really taper off until 1963’s Cleopatra. Ironically both that film and this were produced by Walter Wagner.
This was one of the most popular fantasy of the cycle, and it’s not hard to see why: it would have been just the tonic after a hard day at the munitions factory. Even now elements of it hold up extremely well: gorgeous technicolour, enjoyable sets, good looking dancing girls, dashing heroes, imperious heroines, comic relief fatties, energetic direction, and a story that gleefully steals from various Arabic legends (not to mention Westerns).
There is also the appeal of Maria Montez, who became a star with this film. She is given a star entrance, all feisty in a skimpy outfit, seen in the reflection of a mirror. She certainly wasn’t the best actor in the world but she was good looking, and was good act lounging on pillows and acting imperious.
The script is a bit of a mess Rather oddly, this starts with the villain Leif Ericson hanging by his chains (he’s been there for seven days!) about to be killed by the hero Jon Hall when his men come to rescue him. Shouldn’t the roles have been reversed? It’s not very nice of Hall to hang up his brother for a week, no matter how bad he’s supposed to be, and gets the movie off to an odd start.
After a bit of swashbuckling, Hall runs away (not very heroic) and is hit by an arrow. Sabu sees it, figures out who Hall is from his ring, then swaps rings with an anonymous baddy – but doesn’t tell anyone who he is. No one seems to notice Hall is missing for a very long time. What sort of government was he running? A couple of assassins take a pot-shot at him and he’s out of commission. (It’s never established that Hall was a good ruler or that his brother Ericson is a bad one.) Sabu and Montez – who work for a theatre company along with Saladin and Aladdin – decide to get out of town until things die down, after which Montez hopes her boyfriend, Hall’s usurping brother, will come to power and make her queen. Sabu persuades Montez to take Hall with them as they head off into the desert. Montez agrees because she likes the look of Hall. Everyone thinks Hall is dead so Ericson takes over the throne legitimately.
(That’s not that evil. Making him even more human is the fact he mainly wants to become caliph mainly to marry Maria Montez, who wants to be a queen – that’s a very human emotion. This script isn’t very well structured. If Sabu was really on Hall’s side surely he could have told everyone who he was when he found him, the baddy hadn’t taken over yet. I think instead they should have had Hall more obviously betrayed and make the baddies more powerful in the beginning).
Montez goes back to marry the baddy, but she doesn’t know that the baddy’s second in command has arranged for Montez to be sold into slavery so she won’t marry the baddy. But its okay because by this time Hall has fallen in love with her too – and he promises her. The baddy tracks down Montez and rescues her – you know, he’s not really that much of a baddy, he just wants his girlfriend back. The real baddy is the second in command, who wants Montez to kill Hall’s brother.
Anyway there is a rousing battle at the end. Hall and his brother fight a duel – and the brother would have won it had not the second in command stabbed the brother in the back. So to be honest the brother should have been ruler.
But regardless this is still colourful fun. Soldiers in particular must have loved the scene where Sabu breaks into a harem and the girls chase after him. Then to distract a guard on his behalf they stage a fight. Turhan Bey appears as a soldier and some of the action was shot in Monument Valley, giving it a Western feel every now and then. The three leads were later reunited in White Savage, Cobra Woman, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Gypsy Wildcat and Sudan.
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