In the final sequence, Fairbanks’ Ahmed whisks his beloved through the sky on a flying carpet, his arms crossed jauntily, as the stars reassemble themselves to spell out a final message: “Happiness must be earned.” Sometimes, though, it arrives in the form of a somersault, a mischievous silent cackle, or a silky little rug soaring on an air current, defying science in the name of delight. When The Thief of Bagdad (Douglas Fairbanks) sneaks into a royal palace, he discovers and instantly falls in love with a beautiful princess (Julanne Johnston. Abú, un ladronzuelo que actúa por las calles de Bagdad, es detenido y encarcelado. (Fairbanks and some of the other actors wore brown makeup in their roles, not uncommon at the time, as unacceptable as it would be today.) The special effects may be technically primitive by today’s standards, but that doesn’t diminish their enchantment. AKA: EL LADRON DE BAGDAD, Ladrón de Bagdad, The Thief of Bagdad: An Arabian Nights Fantasy, Der Dieb von Bagdad. Inevitably, cinema quickly tapped into a reservoir of oriental tales to quench its thirst for romantic fantasy, adventure, and. Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan & 3 more. Audiences adored it, and even today, it’s easy to see why. F or centuries, a double helix of fact and fiction about the East has spiraled into legend and entered the West’s popular imagination. The Thief of Bagdad, director Raoul Walsh’s breakthrough film, cost roughly $1.14 million, a small fortune at the time, and took 65 weeks to make. But his plans swerve when he falls in love with a stunningly beautiful princess (Julanne Johnston): he must win her love, even if that means outwitting her watchful servant (played by a very young Anna May Wong). Brief Synopsis An Arabian thief sets out on a magical adventure to win a beautiful princess. He started off gabbing his first Oscar as the cunning slave dealer in Spartacus (1960) made a smooth screen adaptation by directing his smash play, Romanoff and Juliet (1961), earned critical acclaim for his co-adaptation, direction, production and performance in Herman Melville's nautical classic Billy Budd (1962) and earned a second Oscar. While the upstanding citizens of the city are distracted by their daily prayers, he steals a magic rope, a whatnot with a thousand and one nefarious uses. In this One Thousand and One Nights-inspired escapade, the suave, wiry Fairbanks is Ahmed, a devil-may-care thief who delights in stealing whatever he wishes, wheeling through the city in a pair of billowing chiffon pants, heedless of the laws of God or man or anyone who insists men shouldn’t wear printed silk. Raoul Walsh’s The Thief of Bagdad (1924), which starred Douglas Fairbanks, provided the British-based, Hungarian-born producer Alexander Korda with a model for what he wanted to achieve fifteen years later, when he came to make his own version of the story: a supremely confident demonstration of mesmerizing visual effects, this time in Technicol. Of all the swashbucklers featuring the swinging king of the silents, Douglas Fairbanks, none is more fanciful and dreamlike than The Thief of Bagdad.
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