Directed by Raoul Walsh
Starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sojin, Snitz Edwards
Produced by Douglas Fairbanks Pictures
The streets of Bagdad bustle with activity. Merchants ply their wares and the wealthy move from stand to stand. Seemingly oblivious to it all, a young man sleeps on a ledge. However, once one of the bazaar's well-to-do customers pauses before the sleeping man, his eyes open and his hand finds the rich man's purse.
The thief moves on to other adventures on the Bagdad streets. He steals bread from a balcony. He slips the ring off the finger of an aristocrat. And he steals a remarkable magic rope that rises into the air like a pole with the slightest gesture. At the end of his day, he takes his loot back to his home, an alcove in the bottom of a well that he shares with another thief.
The magic rope allows him to formulate a plan. He can use it to scale the walls of the caliph's castle at night and steal some valuables inside. His plan is successful until he is captivated by the beauty of the sleeping princess in the castle. He is almost captured, but escapes with only one treasure, the slipper of the girl he has fallen for.
Soon, we find out that the princess is to marry and that princely suitors are arriving in Bagdad to win her hand. The thief is not a prince, but he can steal some clothes to look the part. He becomes one of four potential husbands for the girl. And the princess is instantly drawn to our thief in his guise of Prince Ahmed. She has to choose her prince and she chooses Ahmed.
Unfortunately, one of the princess' slave girls saw the thief the night before and recognizes him. The slave also happens to be a spy for the Mongol prince who covets both the city of Bagdad and the princess. The Mongol hopes to marry into the object of his desire, but is prepared to take it by force.
Ahmed reveals his criminal past to the princess, but not before the slave has ratted him out to the king. Ahmed is captured, beaten and sentenced to death, but the princess helps him escape.
The king now forces the princess to pick another husband. To draw out the decision, she decides she will wed the man who bring her the rarest treasure a week later. The three remaining princes set off to find treasure and win the princess' hand. Before leaving though, the Mongol prince begins bringing disguised troops into the city as a contingency plan.
However, our thief learns of a treasure that may allow him to become a prince. He must set off on a quest through many trials to attain it, but at the end he can be with his love and earn happiness.
Will the thief succeed in his quest? And what of the 20,000 Mongol troops who have snuck into the city?
In The Thief of Bagdad, we have another lavish Douglas Fairbanks production. The biggest difference between this and his previous work? The Thief of Bagdad is a massive spectacle filled with special effects and trick photography that provide thrills. In Robin Hood, Zorro and The Three Musketeers, Fairbanks WAS the special effect.
The production here is appropriately massive in scale. The action moves from the streets of Bagdad to the cavernous palace to the various trials the thief must complete and all of them are impressive. The production design is one of the great strengths of the film.
The last third of the film provides a perfect template that numerous other films and video games have followed. The thief must complete a series of tasks, earning mystical items along the way to help him complete future trials. And each of the tasks is more thrilling than the previous ones. Among the items he uses in his inventory: a medallion that brings a tree to life, a flying horse (a crude but really effective special effect), and a cloak of invisibility.
His ultimate prize is a chest that will allow him to conjure whatever he wishes; it operates like a magic lamp without an annoying genie or an arbitrary limit on the number of wishes. The way the thief uses the chest are pretty obvious, but also perfectly realized. In order to fight the Mongol forces, Ahmed conjures his own army from the sands. The effect of the puffs of smoke as each soldier is created is simple, but again perfect.
The primary issues I had with the film come in the first half. I hated the first half hour of the film. It was repetitive, overly-long and had that acting style that causes people to be turned off by silents. Once the thief meets the princess, the movie switches gears from annoying to dull. The audience knows where it is all going, but the movie plods along to get there. Once the thief sets off on his quest, the set pieces take over the film and elbow out the opportunities for overacting by Fairbanks and the rest of the cast.
In a film with several bad actors, Fairbanks is actually the worst for me. His every arm gesture and look reminded me of a bad Vegas magician. Think Gob from Arrested Development. He reminded me of something Will Smith said when he moved from television to the big screen: actors on a large canvas can communicate more with small movements; on the small TV screen, you need bigger movements to communicate with the audience.
Fairbanks does every movement with a flourish. It's frustrating to watch. I know some claim that this type of overacting was typical of the silent era, but I have seen too many examples that shatter that myth to give Fairbanks a pass here. Fortunately, the spectacle and story take over the latter half of the film and Fairbanks has less opportunity to mug for the camera.
There are a couple of actors whose performances were fantastic. Sojin as the Mongol prince always conveyed that aura of menace without moustache twirling (and he certainly had the moustache to twirl). Anna May Wong as the Mongol spy was brilliant. You could always see there was more going on behind her eyes than she was letting on.
There is one plot point that bugged me. SPOILERS AHEAD. All three of the other suitors find magical items as their rare treasure to present to the princess. The Mongol prince finds a magical apple that can restore life and health to someone who is dying. The other two procure a flying carpet and a crystal ball that shows events in other places. To give himself a leg up, the Mongol prince sends someone ahead to Bagdad to poison the princess so he can swoop in and restore her to health. I thought that was a diabolically clever plan.
Sadly, he executes it by asking the one prince to look into the crystal ball to see that the princess is dying and then all three use the magic carpet to speed to the princess' rescue. Once the princess is saved, they all have a legitimate claim to having saved the princess. Why didn't he just head to Bagdad on his own?
So now the king has to decide. So the Mongol prince states he will bide his time. And apparently, in Mongolia, "bide your time" translates to "unleash your army of 20,000 soldiers on the city" because that's what happens immediately after he says it. I can't help but feel like there are scenes or lines of dialogue missing to explain this. I acknowledge I am nitpicking, but I was impressed enough with the villain's initial plan that the way it failed felt like a cheat.
I almost turned off The Thief of Bagdad a half an hour into its running time. I'm glad I stuck with it. The entertainment value of the second half of the film is off the charts and the special effects are fantastic in a "how did they do that in 1924?" kind of way.
*** out of *****
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