Sometimes a film has the ability to crystallize an idea into a clarity that you could never have imagined. 1940’s The Thief of Bagdad is one such film.
There are, after all, hundreds of lessons to be gleaned from a reading of 1001 Arabian Nights. But, if there’s a central lesson to be learned from the dizzying layers of narrative contained within that text, it’s that stories are an amazing thing, a holy thing. The simple act of one person telling another a story has the ability to save a life, to change the world, to redefine the way that human beings can understand their own existence. And while The Thief of Bagdad never discusses the power of story in those terms, it is still a film that is in delirious love with the nature of story and storytelling, a film that is in such a mad-dash to communicate volumes of myth and adventure and magic that it hardly ever stops for breath.
In one of the cheekier bits, the titular thief (of Bagdad) Abu (played by Sabu) bemoans that the current princess-rescuing, wizard-thwarting, genie-conjuring adventure is distracting him from the real fun, which would be setting sail with this friendly captain he’s just met, a gent by the name of Sinbad. Yes, that one. Because The Thief of Bagdad is the kind of film where capital-S Story is pressing in from all sides, the kind of film where every off-handed line betrays a giant, ever-expanding world where anything is possible.
A remake of a silent Douglas Fairbanks film from 1924, (though the films have MASSIVE departures from one another) The Thief of Bagdad opens with a blind man (John Justin) begging for alms, by his side an unusually intelligent dog. This blind man, we learn, is a deposed king, while the dog was once an impetuous thief (of Bagdad). How did a king end up a beggar and a thief (of Bagdad) end up a dog?
Well, it all has something to do with a princess (June Duprez) trapped in an unending sleep, and an evil wizard guy named Jaffar (Conrad Veidt, whose character’s name is not pronounced the same way twice throughout the film) and also involves a mechanical horse that can fly and blue roses that steal memories and an army of frozen kings and a spider-demon-thing that lives in the sky and also there’s a genie and did I mention the flying carpet and-
Again, this is not a film overly concerned with making sure every story point adds up or ties into the overarching narrative neatly. No, The Thief of Bagdad is concerned wholly with sweeping the viewer up into a crazy adventure, powering through with a tone of unerring romance and excitement. It’s the sort of movie where of course the bottle you find on the beach contains a genie. And of course the only way for Abu to locate his friend is to battle a spider-demon-thing and steal a magic ruby from a giant statue. Of course.
The legendary Michael Powell is one of the three credited directors (also on the slate were Ludwig Berger and Tim Whelan. There are an additional three uncredited directors on the record, one of whom is named “Zoltan” because sometimes life is awesome).
The question that plagues a viewing of such an excellent film is: Why has a film with such a pedigree seemed to vanish? Why, when various filmmakers and film lovers are assembling lists of the great fantasy and adventure films, does this one seem like an afterthought? What does Sabu have to do to get some respect? (Besides wear a shirt. Sabu is capable of many great things in this film. Wearing a shirt is not one of them). I’m sure you could rush to blame the film’s dated special effects but that doesn’t seem a valid excuse in a world where Wizard of Oz continues to dominate pop culture to the degree that it does. So why is it that a film this infectiously in love with the very fundamental nature of stories seems to be an also-ran in the minds of the populace?
The truth, I think, is that some films just get lucky. They have the exact, perfect, alchemical confluence of factors that no one can predict or plan. A movie like The Wizard of Oz isn’t necessarily ‘better’ but its music, iconography, and cast, the oh-so relatable heart at the center of its tale, they all hit people in the exact right spot to sustain cinematic immortality. And, hey, fair enough. There’s nothing that anyone can do to control how a film will or won’t be received (if artists could do that, I’d imagine Powell would love a mulligan on the whole Peeping Tom thing). But it’s important to remember that just because a film is lesser known, that doesn’t make the film itself a lesser thing.
And there’s something wonderful about being a lost treasure, a diamond in the rough (to borrow a term from another Arabia-adjacent fantasy adventure). Films like The Wizard of Oz or The Godfather or Citizen Kane, these are masterpieces that have been killed, gutted and mounted on pop culture’s wall DECADES before the current generation might actually get the chance to see them. There’s simply no meat left on the bones.
But cinema’s coffers overflow with treasure, and for a cinema lover there are few pleasures more, uh, pleasurable than sitting down with a film you know nothing about and being blown through the back of the theater/living room/airplane seat by what you have just witnessed. Movies like Thief of Bagdad aren’t just pretty dead things to be half-watched while texting an instagrammed tweet; they’re fiery missives of consciousness from out of time, art that has the ability to rip away years and hit us in the here and now as mightily as it did back then.
The flying carpet is waiting. Take her for a spin.