The fantasy genre really took off as special effects improved. The ability to use CGI to make dragons, trolls, and massive armies created new ways to tell stories involving magic and magical beings. But it wasn’t as if the genre appeared out of whole cloth with The Lord of the Rings. Fantastic imagery goes back to the time of Georges Melies, and there have even been some fine examples of the genre over the years.
1940’s The Thief of Bagdad was one such attempt, a classic in its own way, and I finally got around to it.
The movie opens with a blind beggar and his incredibly clever dog being taken in by a group of women. The man explains what happened in flashback. His name is Ahmad (John Justin), and he is the rightful Sultan of Bagadad, tricked off his throne by his power-hungry vizier Jaffar (Conrad Veidt). Jaffar has some magical powers, and while both men romance the same nameless Princess (June Duprez), Jaffar not only got permission from the Princess’s father to marry her, he used magic to not only blind Ahmad but also transform his youthful friend Abu (Sabu) into the dog. With some help from the Princess, the two are healed, and Abu goes on a mission to help his friend get his throne back and marry the Princess once and for all, a quest that will include a genie, giant spiders, and a flying carpet.
If you’re thinking this movie has a lot in common with Disney’s Aladdin, I didn’t even mention how the Princess’s father is a childlike man obsessed with toys. And yes, the Princess does not have a name, like, at all.
As it is, this is a fun movie with a lot of clever moments though they all come from the title character. Played by then 16 year old Indian actor Sabu, Abu is clever, brave, and daring. He gets by as much on bis wits as anything else, particularly when it comes to getting the necessary wishes out of the giant genie. True, the special effects are hardly good by today’s standards, but the color for 1940 was pretty good as near as I can make out. I suspect the movie was aimed more for children, and the characters who aren’t Abu are kinda bland, especially Ahmad and the Princess, but it was mostly fun.
That said, there’s is one aspect that has aged poorly, and that’s the casting. Yes, this was 1940 and produced in Britain, but the fact that most of the cast is Caucasian aside from Sabu, the genie, and maybe a handful of others. Whitewashing wasn’t really a thing people worried about, and this was still a 1940 English idea of what the Middle East was like. For the time, it wasn’t an issue. For me in 2021, that’s a different story.
Grade: B+
0 Comments