The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

I watched this one last night for the first time in years. It was a childhood favorite, though to be honest, I preferred the Douglas Fairbanks version (which was my gateway into silent movies). This Alexander Korda production is a blockbuster that still impresses today for its scale, state-of-the-art special effects, and intoxicating sense of wonder.

This is one of those magic films where all of the elements come together and work in great unison. Despite having three credited directors (and other three uncredited), like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, the overarching vision of the producer creates a cohesive experience out of the many individual parts. There is the cast: John Justin as Ahmad, June Duprez as the Princess, Sabu as Abu, and of course, the great Conrad Veidt as Jaffar. Justin and Duprez are appealing romantic leads, but it is really Sabu and Veidt who make the biggest impressions. Veidt does so much acting with his eyes in this film, and it's a testament to his ability to really embody a performance that he does it so well. If you've seen him in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and especially The Hands of Orlac, it's apparent that he was one of the greatest physical actors of all time, right up there with Lon Chaney, I'd go so far to say.

Special mention should also be made of Rex Ingram's unforgettable performance as the genie, a truly larger-than-life character that Ingram brings to life in ways that are both astonishing and frightening. The scenes in which he interacts with Sabu are a marvel of special effects, combining large-scale models and early bluescreen technology to completely defy your belief of what was possible to do in 1940. The scenes are still impressive today -- one can only imagine how they must have stunned audiences 80 years ago.

The fantasy world would not be complete without the sets to bring it all to life. Vincent Korda and an uncredited William Cameron Menzies (who'd worked on the earlier Fairbanks version) designed a sprawling, lavish Technicolor fantasy version of old Bagdad that seems to go on forever past the edges of the screen. There is also some interesting location photography taken in the Grand Canyon, of all places, that contributes a genuinely epic sense of scale to those scenes (due to mounting wartime conditions in Britain, Korda had to move the production to Hollywood in the middle of the shoot, and took advantage of the geography of the Southwest United States). 

A final note should be made of Miklos Rozsa's sweeping symphonic score, which would clearly later influence the work of John Williams on films like Star Wars. It's a prime example of that grand Hollywood tradition of scoring that includes Max Steiner's soundtrack for King Kong and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score for The Adventures of Robin Hood.

All of the pieces come together to form an unforgettable experience that has enchanted generations of moviegoers. I've often said that Alexander Korda knew better than almost anyone else what really made a good movie. If you look at his filmography, he produced one crowd-pleasing, timeless classic after another. The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Elephant Boy, Jungle Book, The Four Feathers, To Be Or Not To Be, The Third Man...the list goes on. The Thief of Bagdad takes it place firmly alongside these other Korda classics.