The Thief of Bagdad

Starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sojin, and Anna May Wong. Unrated.

It's not often that one gets to see, let alone review, an 80-year-old movie. And such an occasion will prompt, even in the less critically minded, a few not-too-taxing thoughts about how we got from there to here.

Certainly, the original The Thief of Bagdad (the Korda brothers, Alexander and Zoltan, made a beautiful Technicolor version in 1940) constitutes a happy surprise for anyone sticking to the notion that silent films are small-scaled, cheap-looking, and, well, quiet. Anticipating the swashbuckling fare of Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power, not to mention the Disney-ride silliness of Pirates of the Caribbean (and an animated Aladdin that seems to lift whole segments from Thief) this star vehicle for Douglas Fairbanks was a sensation in 1924. That was when the star's company (with wife Mary Pickford and partner Charlie Chaplin), United Artists, spent a then-astronomical $2 million trying to outdo Fairbanks's sprawling Robin Hood of just two years earlier.

The actor, working with painterly cinematographer Arthur Edeson, designer William Cameron Menzies, and director Raoul Walsh (directors weren't such exalted creatures back then), certainly got good value for his money. The sets are gigantic, the costumes outrageous (and sometimes more revealing than what Hollywood would later allow, after the Production Code kicked in), and there are literally thousands of extras in a climactic battle sequence that adds an astonishing capper to a seemingly endless series of adventurous delights.

Reworking tales from the Arabian Nights, Fairbanks (an incredibly buff 40 at the time) plays a nameless thief whose ways are changed when he meets a beautiful princess, played by the too-passive Julanne Johnston. He also cast Japanese character actor Sojin as the evil Mongol Prince--who, with his malevolent Fu Manchu looks thereby conflated all Orientalism into one menacing figure, as was the custom of the day--and Chinese-American Anna May Wong in her first big role, as a duplicitous servant of the princess. The gorgeous teenager has no trouble stealing every scene she's in, and there's plenty of visual trickery here, sometimes including real apes, elephants, and tigers, to capture the imagination of even the most CGI-jaded viewers.

The print showing at the Cinémathí¨que is 15 minutes shorter than the 155-minute version circulating on tape and disc (usually with superbly matched music from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade). Hopefully, some after-the-fact editor has merely excised the many repetitive reaction shots that further cheapened the overly declamatory postures that passed for acting back then. Whatever the length, though, these images are timeless.

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