Alì Babà e i 40 ladroni

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is the best of the Montez-Hall movies, ahead of Arabian Nights, which perhaps deserves an 8, Cobra Woman, which deserves a 7, and White Savage, which deserves only slightly over a 6. My 9 rating is perhaps a bit high -- maybe 8.4-8.6 would be more accurate -- but I give it a 9 in protest against the ridiculously low IMDb average.

What sets this above all the others is the script; both plot and dialogue are superior. The performances are also livelier, the acting better (both of the leads, Hall and Montez, and of the supporting cast), and the feeling of forward movement in the story much greater.

In fact, I rank this film third, all-time, among classic adventure films in which only normal human beings with normal human powers are involved (no genies, dragons, gods, animated skeletons, Jedi knights, etc.), and which are not at least part tongue-in-cheek (like the Indiana Jones films). Only The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Mark of Zorro are better in this category. (Though The Black Swan, The Most Dangerous Game and a few others come close.)

Kurt Katch turns in a great performance as the evil Hulagu Khan. To the 7-to-13-year-olds who crowded the Saturday matinée in 1944, Katch's Khan would be the classic portrayal of the tyrant. Of course, to adult eyes, Katch's performance is over-acted, but films in this genre have to be judged with their intended audience in mind.

Special mention should go to Turhan Bey, and to Frank Puglia as Montez's sycophantic father. The only performance which could be thought a flaw in the film is that of Andy Devine, as the fat "comedy relief" thief. The "cowboy humour" he brings from his other roles seems a bit out of place in a basically high-toned, medieval-flavoured tale about the Muslim and Mongol Middle East. I could have done without him. Still, he was doing what the part called for, so really any blame should be assigned to the writer and director rather than Devine himself. And again, we have to consider the primary audience for the film (though adults can enjoy it, too) was the kids -- and that sort of comedy relief would be what many 40s kids liked.

The music, camera work, and Technicolor are all first-rate. The film is polished. When 1940s Universal did one of its rare, big-budget "A"-list movies, it could do it very well.

Love, courage, nobility; a despicable Oriental tyrant and a people groaning under his heel; the transformation of thieves into patriots; action, glamour, spectacle, and a rousing climax -- this film is a perfect piece of sheer entertainment.

I watched this movie with my kids over and over again when they were young. They loved it. It's a great family movie if you have pre-teen kids who have not yet been jaded by the modern emphasis on loudness and special effects, and can still accept the older styles of acting and storytelling because they have the openness of childhood. If you start them out on Indiana Jones and Star Wars, it may be impossible for them to go back later and really enjoy these older-style adventure movies. Give them this experience while they can still enjoy it.

What I have noticed, which I think greatly glues this film to the viewers impression after so many lapsed years, is solid non-ambitious scenario, it is an easy story, really, yet some tricks of great master of film making are: 1. joining 3 totals, from 3 different angles, with no loss of trill in action, each total represented new information about the horse chase. 2. transition in memory sequences of protagonist, with water-surface blur transitions,which is rarely used, do not know why, because it is well crafted thing. 3. Using comedy actor which has comedy charisma to play one of major side rolls. Just his appearance provokes humor, which is essential for benevolent character of this like fairy tale story. 4. Ambient of orient, carefully picked scenery for scenes made near water manifest longings and cravings for love, freedom, better life, and emphasize the strong inner romantic feelings of protagonists...

The Alexander Korda production of THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940) - still the quintessential Arabian Nights movie - led to a spate of colorful romps made by Hollywood studios to escape the grim everyday realities of WWII; this may not be the best or even the most enjoyable of the lot but is reasonably representative of this fantasy sub-genre.

Actually, I had intended to watch this over last year's Christmas period as it was shown on Italian TV very early one morning but the transmission started even earlier than expected and consequently I had to abort the viewing; therefore, I am grateful that (in spite of some deficiencies which I'll get to later) I remedied this through a copy of the Asian DVD I've just gotten hold of.

The film obviously deals with the famous tale of the title but here Ali Baba (Jon Hall) is the son of a deposed (and subsequently murdered) Caliph who as a boy (played by Scotty Beckett) found refuge in the thieves' hide-out inside the cave and was raised by their leader (Fortunio Bonanova) as his own son. Meanwhile, Ali's childhood friend grows up to be Maria Montez and is naturally coveted by the evil tyrant now in power at Bagdad (Kurt Katch). Andy Devine is also on hand to provide some mild comic relief as Baba's "nursemaid" and Turhan Bey (like Hall and Montez, also a regular in such diversions) is Montez's only male slave and sympathetic to Ali's cause.

As I said, the film is fairly entertaining and, as can be expected from a grade-A Universal production, handsomely mounted but it mainly survives nowadays on its high quotient of nostalgia both to people of my father's generation (who were around when this subgenre was still in full bloom) and to others who, like me, grew up on these things when they played during the summer holidays on TV. To get back to the presentation of the film on the disc I watched: while the all-important colors were not as vibrant as a full-blown restoration job would have made them look, the print was serviceable all around...were it not for the very odd fact that it omitted the opening and closing credits completely!

In any case, this satisfactory viewing has brought back fond childhood memories of similar costume pictures and has certainly whetted my appetite for more; I also received a bunch of Sinbad pictures at the same time that this disc arrived and I ought to purchase the recently released DVD of ARABIAN NIGHTS (1942) one of these days - although, frankly, I think Universal missed the boat when they didn't release it as part of an Arabian Nights franchise collection which could have also included, apart from ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES itself, any of the following: BAGDAD (1949), THE DESERT HAWK (1950), FLAME OF ARABY (1951), THE PRINCE WHO WAS A THIEF (1951) and SON OF ALI BABA (1952). This is not to mention many other such extravaganzas made by other film studios which are still unreleased on DVD like ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS (1945), SINBAD THE SAILOR (1947), THIEF OF DAMASCUS (1952), SON OF SINBAD (1955), THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1961; an Italian remake with Steve Reeves supervised by ALI BABA helmer, Arthur Lubin), THE WONDERS OF ALADDIN (1961; another Italian production which utilized the now legendary and multi-faceted talents of Mario Bava), etc. One final thing: I once missed out on a TV screening of the 1954 French version of ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES starring Fernandel and directed by Jacques Becker and, even though it doesn't have much of a reputation (especially within its director's considerable canon), I'd love to watch it for myself one day...

Only Universal pictures in the forties had the secret of such beautiful films, starring Maria Montez and Jon Hall, even pulled by naive and run fo the mill stories, predictable and nearly always on the same scheme. But who cares? After all, Paramount Pictures also gave us terrific adventures movies in the fifties, directed by the likes of Eddie Ludwig and Lewis R Foster. At Universal they had directors such as Arthur Lubin, John Rawlins, George Waggner, Curt Siodmak. These kinds of films, such as this very on are purely beautiful jewells, full of enchantment, especially for those like me for whom those features remind the childhood. Remember SUDAN, ARABIAN NIGHTS, WHITE SAVAGE, full of exotic charm. You don't find such films any more.

This movie is a colourful adventure movie that is greatly entertaining if you like this old technicolor style of Orientalist films. I mainly love it because of two things: fond childhood memories from a time when I even watched it on a black and white TV set in the mid-80s and [name=nm0700084]'s Prince Cassim.

This actor has played small parts in a couple of classic movies and often appeared alongside some of the big names of his days, but it is in this movie and a couple of later productions mainly that he got a chance to show more of his talent and skills. His expressions and his work with his voice are formidable and he is seriously underrated as his range of characters is pretty impressive. Not to speak about how he managed to make this villain character mean and miserable, contemptible and touching at the same time. His Prince Cassim to me has always been the character with the most depth in this film.

That said, the film is of course to be classified as strongly Orientalist and escapist, it never lets you forget that you're watching a piece of Hollywood fiction with main characters that are boringly one-sided (good or bad) and it avoids answering the most interesting question: What Ali would've done with Cassim if he had faced the decision as he was the father of Ali's beloved and future wife who - as a good daughter - still had a soft spot for her dad despite his awful misbehaviour. But all of this is part of the style of this sort of movies at the time and therefore I find it excusable.

On the other hand the interweaving of 13th century history with a tale from the 1001 nights is done in an amazingly apt manner as the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols is in fact attributed to the machinations of a treacherous vizier (along with an incompetent caliph) in some sources, the caliph was actually killed by the Mongols and there was indeed a fugitive who claimed to be a surviving member of the dynasty and subsequently continued the line of the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad in Egypt. Therefore there might've been more knowledge at work than one would expect from this type of light entertainment and I'm wondering how they came to mix these ingredients with the Ali Baba story.

All things considered I rate this 8 out of 10 because my 21st century adult self is unable to overlook the issues listed above.