''The Thief of Bagdad'' is a 1924 American silent swashbuckler film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring

Douglas Fairbanks Douglas Elton Fairbanks Sr. (born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman; May 23, 1883 – December 12, 1939) was an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films including '' The Thi ...

, and written by Achmed Abdullah and Lotta Woods. Freely adapted from '' One Thousand and One Nights'', it tells the story of a thief who falls in love with the daughter of the

Caliph A caliphate or khilāfah ( ar, خِلَافَة, ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of caliph (; ar, خَلِيفَة , ), a person considered a political-religious successor to th ...

of Baghdad. In 1996, the film was selected for preservation in the United States

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception ...

by the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Fairbanks considered this to be the favorite of his films, according to his son. The imaginative gymnastics suited the athletic star, whose "catlike, seemingly effortless" movements were as much dance as gymnastics. Along with his earlier ''

Robin Hood Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature and film. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is dep ...

'' (1922), the film marked Fairbanks's transformation from genial comedy to a career in "swashbuckling" roles. The film, strong on special effects of the period (

flying carpet A magic carpet, also called a flying carpet, is a legendary carpet and common trope in fantasy fiction. It is typically used as a form of transportation and can quickly or instantaneously carry its users to their destination. In literature One ...

, magic rope and fearsome monsters) and featuring massive Arabian-style sets, also proved to be a stepping stone for

Anna May Wong Wong Liu Tsong (January 3, 1905 – February 3, 1961), known professionally as Anna May Wong, was an American actress, considered the first Chinese-American movie star in Hollywood, as well as the first Chinese-American actress to gain intern ...

, who portrayed a treacherous Mongol slave. ''The Thief of Bagdad'' is now widely considered one of the great silent films and Fairbanks's greatest work. Fairbanks biographer

Jeffrey Vance Jeffrey Vance (born May 21, 1970) is an American film historian and author who has published books on movie stars including Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Career While working as an archivist for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists he met El ...

writes, "An epic romantic fantasy-adventure inspired by several of the Arabian Nights tales, ''The Thief of Bagdad'' is the greatest artistic triumph of Fairbanks's career. The superb visual design, spectacle, imaginative splendor, and visual effects, along with his bravura performance (leading a cast of literally thousands), all contribute to making this his masterpiece."

Plot

Ahmed steals as he pleases in the city of Bagdad. Wandering into a

mosque A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers ( sujud) are performed, ...

, he tells the holy man he disdains his religion; his philosophy is, "What I want, I take." That night, he sneaks into the palace of the caliph using a magic rope he stole during ritual prayers. All thoughts of plunder are forgotten when he sees the sleeping princess, the caliph's daughter. The princess's Mongol slave alerts the guards, but he gets away. When his associate Abu reminds the disconsolate Ahmed that a bygone thief once stole another princess during the reign of

Haroun al-Rashid Abu Ja'far Harun ibn Muhammad al-Mahdi ( ar , أبو جعفر هارون ابن محمد المهدي) or Harun ibn al-Mahdi (; or 766 – 24 March 809), famously known as Harun al-Rashid ( ar, هَارُون الرَشِيد, translit=Hārūn ...

, Ahmed sets out to do the same. The next day is the princess's birthday. Three princes arrive, seeking her hand in marriage (and the future inheritance of the city). Another of the princess's slaves foretells that she will marry the man who first touches a rose-tree in her garden. The princess watches anxiously as first the glowering Prince of the Indies, then the obese Prince of Persia and finally the Prince of the Mongols pass by the rose-tree. The mere sight of the Mongol fills the princess with fear, but when Ahmed appears (disguised in stolen garments as a suitor), she is delighted. The Mongol slave tells her countryman of the prophecy, but before he can touch the rose-tree, Ahmed's startled horse tosses its rider into it. That night, following ancient custom, the princess chooses Ahmed for her husband. Out of love, Ahmed gives up his plan to abduct her and confesses all to her in private. The Mongol prince learns from his spy, the princess's Mongol slave, that Ahmed is a common thief and informs the caliph. Ahmed is lashed mercilessly, and the caliph orders he be torn apart by a giant ape, but the princess has the guards bribed to let him go. When the caliph insists she select another husband, her loyal slave advises her to delay. She asks that the princes each bring her a gift after "seven moons"; she will marry the one who brings her the rarest. In despair, Ahmed turns to the holy man. He tells the thief to become a prince, revealing to him the peril-fraught path to a great treasure. The Prince of the Indies obtains a magic

crystal ball A crystal ball, also known as an orbuculum or crystal sphere, is a crystal or glass ball and common fortune-telling object. It is generally associated with the performance of clairvoyance and scrying in particular. In more recent times, the cry ...

from the eye of a giant idol, which shows whatever he wants to see, while the Persian prince buys a

. The Mongol prince leaves behind his henchman, telling him to organize the soldiers he will send to Bagdad disguised as porters. (The potentate has sought all along to take the city; the beautiful princess is only an added incentive.) After he lays his hands on a magic apple which has the power to cure anything, even death, he sends word to the Mongol slave to poison the princess. After many adventures, Ahmed gains a

cloak of invisibility A cloak of invisibility is an item that prevents the wearer from being seen. In folklore, mythology and fairy tales, a cloak of invisibility appears either as a magical item used by duplicitous characters or an item worn by a hero to fulfill a qu ...

and a small chest of magic powder which turns into whatever he wishes when he sprinkles it. He races back to the city. The three princes meet as agreed at a caravanserai before returning to Bagdad. The Mongol asks the Indian to check whether the princess has waited for them. They discover that she is near death, and ride the flying carpet to reach her. Then the Mongol uses the apple to cure her. The suitors argue over which gift is rarest, but the princess points out that without any one gift, the remaining two would have been useless in saving her. Her loyal slave shows her Ahmed in the crystal ball, so the princess convinces her father to deliberate carefully on his future son-in-law. The Mongol prince chooses not to wait, unleashing his secret army that night and capturing Bagdad. Ahmed arrives at the city gate, shut and defended by Mongols. When he conjures up a large army with his powder, the Mongol soldiers flee. The Mongol prince is about to have one of his soldiers kill him when the Mongol slave suggests he escape with the princess on the flying carpet. Ahmed liberates the city and rescues the princess, using his cloak of invisibility to get through the Mongols guarding their prince. In gratitude, the caliph gives his daughter to him in marriage.

Cast

as Ahmed, the Thief of Bagdad *

Snitz Edwards Snitz Edwards (born Edward Neumann, 1 January 1868 – 1 May 1937) was a stage and character actor of the early years of the silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialog ...

as His Evil Associate * Charles Belcher as The Holy Man (Imam) / Narrator *

Julanne Johnston Julanne Johnston (May 1, 1900 – December 26, 1988) was an American silent film actress. Biography Johnston was born and educated in Indianapolis, Indiana, then her family moved to Hollywood. There she took dancing lessons at the Denishawn S ...

as The Princess. Johnston had appeared the previous year in another Arabian Nights fantasy, the now lost '' The Brass Bottle'', directed by Maurice Tourneur * Sojin Kamiyama as Cham Shang, Prince of the Mongols *

as The Mongol Slave * Brandon Hurst as The Caliph * Tote Du Crow as The Soothsayer * Noble Johnson as The Prince of the Indies *

Mathilde Comont Mathilde Comont (9 September 1886 – 21 June 1938), credited also as Mathilda Caumont, was a French-born American actress, primarily of the silent era. Biography Born in Bordeaux, she appeared in films in her native country, particularly ...

as The Prince of Persia (uncredited) * Sam Baker as The Sworder * Sadakichi Hartmann as The Court Magician (uncredited) (uncredited) * Laska Winter as Slave of the Lute (uncredited) The eccentric Second World War soldier

Jack Churchill John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, (16 September 1906 – 8 March 1996) was a British Army officer who fought in the Second World War with a longbow, a Scottish broadsword, and a bagpipe. Nicknamed "Fighting Jack Churchill" and "Mad Jack" ...

had an uncredited part, as did blues musician

Jesse Fuller Jesse Fuller (March 12, 1896 – January 29, 1976) was an American one-man band musician, best known for his song "San Francisco Bay Blues". Early life Fuller was born in Jonesboro, Georgia, near Atlanta. He was sent by his mother to live with ...

Production

Fairbanks sought to make an epic.Finler 1975, p. 16. Lavishly staged on a Hollywood studio set, at a reputed cost of $1,135,654.65, ''The Thief of Bagdad'' was one of the most expensive films of the 1920s. Art director

William Cameron Menzies William Cameron Menzies (July 29, 1896 – March 5, 1957) was an American film production designer (a job title he invented) and art director as well as a film director and producer during a career spanning five decades. He began his career ...

was largely responsible for the production design, closely following the requirements laid down by Fairbanks, who acted as writer, producer and star. Fairbanks' meticulous attention to detail, as well as complex visual imagery, required the use of state-of-the-art special effects, featuring a magic rope, a flying horse, a flying carpet and full-scale palace sets.

Music

Douglas Fairbanks encouraged the respected composer Mortimer Wilson to provide a fully-fledged classical score, unusual at the time. Wilson composed leit-motifs for each character and developed them symphonically. He also spent many hours in the editing room working on combining his music with the film. The score has been re-constructed by Mark Fitz-Gerald and recorded. A 1924 Literary Digest article details Wilson's work on the film (and includes a photo of the composer). Wilson also wrote the music for Fairbanks’s next two films, ''

Don Q, Son of Zorro ''Don Q, Son of Zorro'' is a 1925 American silent swashbuckler romance film and a sequel to the 1920 silent film '' The Mark of Zorro''. It was loosely based upon the 1909 novel ''Don Q.'s Love Story'', written by the mother-and-son duo Kate a ...

'' (1925) and ''

The Black Pirate ''The Black Pirate'' is a 1926 American silent action adventure film shot entirely in two-color Technicolor about an adventurer and a "company" of pirates. Directed by Albert Parker, it stars Douglas Fairbanks, Donald Crisp, Sam De Grasse, an ...

'' (1926).

Reception

Glenn Erickson praised the film, writing:

Every age has its wonder entertainments, and 1924's The Thief of Bagdad transported audiences to a new level of imaginative fantasy. It had the biggest star of the era in a production that dwarfed anything anyone had ever seen ... It has sets bigger than those in Intolerance and costumed crowd scenes to rival the enormous Italian spectacles of the day. What's more, the picture is packed with elaborate special effects, many of which still have the power to impress. ... Some critics prefer Douglas Fairbanks' earlier modern-day adventures to his twenties' costume epics, but this dazzler still takes people's heads off. Simply put, the production's overall design and execution -- sets, costumes, lighting, special effects -- are coordinated so tightly that the illusion of grandeur is complete.

Darragh O'Donoghue is of the opinion that:

"The first reel provides some of the purest joy the silent cinema can offer. ... Where initially there had been a satisfying equivalence between the discrete adventures of Ahmed as a psychologically plausible thief in medieval Mesopotamia and Ahmed as a universal Everyman figure, in the film's latter two-thirds, the former distinctive superstructure gives way to a kind of Pilgrim’s Progress in Orientalist drag. ... Adventure sequences are staged like fairground tableaux and have none of the interest in physical process or emotional investment that made the early reels so exciting. ... After promising a dream, this great but flawed film eventually sends its audience to sleep.

Honors

In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its '' 10 Top 10'', the 10 best films in 10 "classic" American film genres. After polling over 1,500 people from the creative community, ''The Thief of Bagdad'' was acknowledged as the ninth best film in the fantasy genre.

Preservation status

The

George Eastman Museum The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as ''George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film'', the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in ...

has a 16mm triacetate positive print.

Remakes

The 1940 film of the same name made the title character, played by Sabu, a sidekick for a handsome prince rather than the leading man. Indian actor

M. G. Ramachandran Maruthur Gopalan Ramachandran (17 January 1917 24 December 1987), also popularly known as M.G.R., was an Indian politician, actor, philanthropist, and filmmaker who served as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu from 1977 until his death in 1987 ...

assumed the role of Ali, the thief of Baghdad in the 1960 film '' Baghdad Thirudan''. The 1924 film was directly remade in Europe in 1961 as '' Il Ladro di Bagdad'', with Steve Reeves in the lead, while a 1978 made-for-television film combined plot elements of these with others from the Sabu version. A number of Indian

Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

-language films, were made under the titles of: ''Baghdad Ka Chor'' (''The Thief of Baghdad'') in 1934, 1946, 1955; '' Baghdad Gaja Donga'' (''Thief of Baghdad'') in 1968; and ''Thief of Baghdad'' in 1969 and 1977. A television series, ''Thief of Baghdad'', was also made in India which aired on Zee TV between 2000–2001.

Home video

''The Thief of Bagdad'' is in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

and many cheap, unrestored black-and-white copies have been issued on VHS and DVD. A restored version first appeared on US DVD in 1998, distributed by Image Entertainment. It featured original color tinting and a musical accompaniment arranged from the original 1924 music cue sheets and performed in 1975 by

Gaylord Carter Gaylord Carter (August 3, 1905 – November 20, 2000) was an American organist and the composer of many film scores that were added to silent movies released on video tape or disks. He died from Parkinson disease. Early life and musical begin ...

on a

Wurlitzer The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...

theater pipe organ.

Kino International The Kino International is a film theater in Berlin, built from 1961 to 1963. It is located on Karl-Marx-Allee in former East Berlin. It hosted premieres of the DEFA film studios until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Today it is a protec ...

reissued the DVD in 2004, this time with a longer, improved print and chamber ensemble score. The film has also been released on Blu-ray by the Cohen Film Collection (US) in 2013 and Eureka! Entertainment (UK) in 2014. That version features a

Carl Davis Carl Davis, (born October 28, 1936) is an American-born conductor and composer who has lived in the United Kingdom since 1961. He has written music for more than 100 television programmes, but is best known for creating music to accompany si ...

orchestral score and an

audio commentary An audio commentary is an additional audio track, usually digital, consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with a video. Commentaries can be serious or entertaining in nature, and can add informatio ...

by Fairbanks biographer

References

;Bibliography * Finler, Joel W. (1975). ''All Time Movie Greats''. London: Cathay Books. . * Vance, Jeffrey (2008). ''Douglas Fairbanks''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. . * Whitford, Eileen (2007). ''Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood''. Lexington-Fayette, KY: The University Press of Kentucky. .

External links

* * ''The Thief of Bagdad'' essa

by

Joe Morgenstern Joe Morgenstern (born October 3, 1932) is an American writer and retired film critic. He wrote for ''Newsweek'' from 1965 to 1983, and then for ''The Wall Street Journal'' from 1995 to 2022. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2005. Morgen ...

* * * * * *
The Thief of Bagdad
' at

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

''The Thief of Bagdad''
at Virtual History {{DEFAULTSORT:Thief of Bagdad, The (1924) 1924 films 1920s fantasy films American fantasy adventure films American silent feature films American black-and-white films American epic films Fantasy adventure films Films directed by Raoul Walsh Films set in Baghdad United Artists films United States National Film Registry films Films based on The Thief of Bagdad Articles containing video clips Surviving American silent films American fantasy films 1920s American films Fictional caliphs Silent adventure films Silent horror films