Alì Babà e i 40 ladroni

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...

I saw this a few days ago after a gap of many years and it's still fun to watch. There was a whole spate of these highly colored Arabian Nights adventures in the 1940's and audiences lapped them up. The fun now is in the apparent seriousness with which they were made and the earnestness of not very good actors and actresses spouting there quasi poetic dialog.

These films were bonanzas for the exotic looking performers of the period, Turhan Bey, Jon Hall and Maria Montez (one of the lust objects of my adolescence). She would often wear quite revealing see-through dresses and there was always at least one scene where she emerged from a bath or swimming pool, quickly being discretely covered by large towels borne by hand-maidens.

Extras were cheap in those days and so there is a cast of thousands but most of the time the director does no more than fill the screen with bodies. Look at the battle scenes and you will see most of the participants are just waving their scimitars in the air aimlessly.

Ali Baba has wicked caliphs and valiant freedom fighters battling it out in the Hollywood desert. The ridiculousness of the All American Andy Devine as an Arab. Fairy tale cardboard castles. All makes for colorful entertainment.

I give it 8 out 10.

I have a fairly sophisticated taste in cinema classics so I am a bit ashamed to rate this as one of my Favorite films of all time. I must cite first and foremost the sublime and under-rated masterpiece of a score by Edward Ward WHICH DESERVES A CD FOR SURE!!-Kurt Katch as Hulagu Khan is one of the screens most odious villains and the very fast pace all add to it's delight.....FOR ME-Weird, but not once in the entire film does handsome Jon Hall as Ali ever actually kiss Lady Amara, the exotic Maria Montez! Another bonus is the the vision of loveliness that is GORGEOUS Ramsay Ames as the incredibly HOT, sexy and traitorous lady in waiting Nalu who betrays her mistress-I just have to own up that GULP....I love this flick! PS-What a tragedy that Bagdad today is not the happy one that we find at this film's conclusion. SO SAD.

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.

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.