Douglas Fairbanks flies across
the screen with an effortless, incomparable power.
And he does so, not against a blue screen backdrop,
but on an actual set built with hammer, saw and
nails. George Lucas has said, regarding
Star Wars that one of the things he wanted
to do is create enormous, imaginative sets for
his characters like in the old days of Hollywood.
What Lucas achieves with computers is remarkable
but in The Thief of Bagdad
what viewers see on screen is almost all real
(trick photography of flying horses, carpets,
etc. aside). A comparison between Lucas and Fairbanks
is striking in that both concentrated on epic
fantasy films achieving a production value unrivaled
by competitors and they did it with their own
capital and companies.
Fairbanks
as the Thief. |
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Buoyed by the successes of
his Zorro and
Robin Hood, Fairbanks
put more money into Bagdad
than had ever been put into a movie and it shows.
Citizens of Hollywood must have been amused by
the extraordinary construction of a fabled Arabian
city stretching over many blocks of Santa Monica
Boulevard right in the middle of their still developing
town.
In no small measure, fantastic
stunts and special effects have always played
a crucial role in the allure of cinema. One of
the most extraordinary aspects of this film is
its power to still play well on that level after
one hundred years of magical illusion. But that's
because its not all dazzling images and costuming.
There is an elaborate story here with great characters
as well.
The Thief in
action. |
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The film begins and ends with
the same image; that of a wise man whose advice
appears as words written in the stars -
"Happiness Must Be Earned". There is
a difference between happiness and fun, which
is something the Fairbanks character must learn
as he begins his journey a fun-loving thief. Soon,
he sets his eyes on the Princess (Julianne Johnston),
daughter to the Caliph of Bagdad. When she has
her pick of royal suitors Fairbanks disguises
his self as one in effort to gain entrance to
the palace and all its wealth. When she eventually
picks him however, he is so overcome with love
that he reveals his identity as thief and suffers
public flogging. Redemption and marriage to the
Princess becomes possible finally when the Caliph
offers his daughter's hand to whoever can
obtain the world's rarest treasure.
Arabian
flying carpet. |
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Heroes are occasionally written
as characters with a morally questionable past.
Thrust into desperate circumstances where society
faces danger, the hero then rises above past sins
achieving greatness and benefiting all. It's
a dramatic tool used effectively with many of
the Bogart roles, Star Wars' Han Solo, Antonio
Banderas' Zorro (also a thief) and Indiana
Jones, who is in a sense a grave robber whose
questionable past is especially revealed through
the character of Marion. Indy is in fact a descendent
of all Fairbanks' adventure roles in that
he is a character of great physicality (flying
through the air with the use of a whip, climbing
out of the ocean onto a submarine, leaping from
horse to truck, etc.). Incidentally, the Prince
of Persia in The Thief
of Bagdad looks very much like one of the
chilled monkey brains dinner guests from Temple
of Doom. He is a mustachioed fat man with
a turban and the image is so cartoonish it seems
unlikely to be coincidence.
Some criticize the epic running
time for a silent where obviously much reading
is essential, but the story never ceases to evolve
and the pace is hardly slow. One luxury not afforded
in a theatre viewing is the ability to stop watching
and come back to it the way one would with a novel.
Modern technology affords us that luxury and so
to criticize a movie simply because its long loses
validity. The question put to lengthy films like
Lawrence of Arabia
or The Godfather
has always been, "but is it good?" A
silent film deserves no less consideration just
because it is silent.
The fun-loving
Thief. |
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On the other hand, the experience
of watching a silent is different. Our world is
presented in a way that is more abstract than
with modern films and may demand a greater effort
on the part of the viewer. But, as in the message
of this movie, the reward for the effort, the
happiness earned, can be surprising.
There is a fragile quality to the
silents inherently conveyed by the flickering
images, the scratchy surface of the reels and
the tinkling piano score. Boldly defying the fragile
nature of these films is the acrobatic daring
and ever-present smile of Douglas Fairbanks. The
contrast is constantly endearing. Throughout history,
the most difficult art to produce has been art
which expresses joyfulness. Remarkable among the
achievements of this kind are the songs by Gershwin,
the dancing by Fred Astaire, the paintings by
Matisse and these incredible films by Douglas
Fairbanks (I say ‘films by' given
that the film company belonged to him, he wrote
a number of them and reportedly had a hand in
all aspects of the production). They are all brilliant
but The Thief of Bagdad
is the most imaginative and wondrous of them all.
(Stephen Jared) |