No Plough-boy, Tinker, Tailor’s Any Fun To Be… August 13, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : Film & DVD Reviews, British Film, Fantasy , trackback(Previously published in another form at The DVD Forums )
There’s a great Michael Powell story, but I can’t for the life of me remember who told it. It goes something like this; in the 1980s our hero goes to Hollywood for the first time, he’s on the lot for an appointment, goes into a lift and a small, dapper, elderly gent is in there with him. Our hero obviously recognises him and is beside himself - he’s with a movie God. In Hollywood. In a lift. What does he - what can he - say?
Before he can say anything, Powell starts to hum a little ditty…and it’s Abu’s theme from the beautiful The Thief of Bagdad an early Rosza score: ‘I want to be a sailor, sailing out to sea…’. Our man smiles. He’s in a lift with Michael Powell. In Hollywood. And this genius of British cinema is humming, absent-mindedly, a tune from decades previously. The door opens, Powell leaves…no words were exchanged…and our hero is left with a golden moment he’ll treasure forever.
MGM, before they were swallowed whole by Sony, were quite rightly derided for the treatment of their back catalogue of classics; sadly, since the takeover, we are still all too used to poor prints and transfers, movies in the wrong aspect ratios or presented non-anamorphically. Things have gone from bad to worse.
But the Lion was perfectly capable of some good work, and their presentation of the 66-year-old fantasy masterpiece, The Thief of Bagdad, is quite excellent.
Filmed at Denham Studios, and using locations around the Grand Canyon to substitute for parts of the world that were, at the time, made inaccesible (there was a war on, you know…), The Thief of Bagdad was a special effects spectacular. Indeed, at the following years Oscar ceremony, it scooped three statuettes, for William Cameron Menzies & Vincent Korda’s Art Direction (colour), Georges Périnal’s beautiful Technicolor cinematography and special effects (Lawrence W. Butler, photographic / Jack Whitney, sound). Miklos Roza’s wonderful score (a dry run for Ben Hur) was nominated but, unbelievably, lost out to Pinocchio.
A film of this scale boasted company credits equally as grandiose; the titles tells us that Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell & Tim Whelan directed the movies but they were, apparently, joined by Alexander & Zoltan Korda, plus William Cameron Menzies (the legendary art director who also worked on the 1924 version) all uncredited. Korda was very clearly a demanding taskmaster, as the production turned into a game of musical (directors) chairs.
The cast is spot-on. Sabu, with just the right amount of thespian artlessness as the little thief Abu, John Justin, the blighted Ahmad, June Duprez, subsituting for first choice Vivien Leigh, as the Princess and the superb Conrad Veight as an evil, and quintessential, Jaffar. The always delightful Miles Malleson not only starred as the Sultan of Basra, but wrote the screenplay, and, in the editing room, was Charlie Crichton, later of Ealing but probably as famous today for directing A Fish Called Wanda.
In short, what we are looking at is the grandaddy of today’s special effects blockbusters, a film that has a great story, heroes you can cheer for, villains you can hiss at and which stands up as a piece of timeless entertainment that will surely go on entertaining for generations to come. And it’s British.
MGM rather hustled this out on to the market at the back end of 2002 in R1, with little or no fanfare. It cartainly passed me by and I was surprised to see it available when a (computer Luddite) friend asked me to buy it for him. When he told me it was stunning, I didn’t know whether to believe him or not - can you trust a chap without a computer about anything?
Well, now having seen it myself, he’s wrong. It’s not stunning. Well, not simply stunning; it’s a (very nearly) magnificent piece of work from MGM, from the moment a perfectly preserved - and colour - London Films logo hits the screen you know you are in for a treat. The Lion must have worked from a nigh perfect print to get this pensioner of a film looking so spritely. Three strip Technicolor looks absolutely gorgeous when reproduced well on DVD; it looks horrendous when handled badly. Thank God this is the former.
The colours are vivid and true, skin tones, the sumputous sets and magnificent costumes look as if you could reach out and touch them. No, it’s not absolutely perfect, there are some compression artefacts on show, and one brief passage of colour misregistration, but it is, with that stupendous production design, for the greater percentage of the running time, genuine eye candy, parts of it on a par with Warner’s miraculous The Adventures of Robin Hood. The sound, produced from elements that obviously were not quite in such good condition, is a little dull and could do with some work, but it is not a major problem.
Perhaps the biggest problem, ironically, is those special effects, the sheer clarity of the presentation rather blunting their effect; the mattes are visible if you look close enough as are the wires holding the magic carpet, and if Rex Ingram had realised his bald cap would look so amateur hour in the 21st century, he’d have probably shaved his head. Ah, suspend your belief just a touch more and forget it, let yourself be swept up by the sheer wonderous, panto-like naivete of it - The Thief of Bagdad is a terrific, wonderfully crafted, film, beautifully presented on DVD - the lack of any kind of extras notwithstanding - and deserves a place in any serious enthusiasts collection.
I’m aware that there are now three PAL versions of the film on the market, an R4 disc (no information sadly - anyone?), a recently released version from Network in the UK (again, any opinions would be welcome - though I suspect the print MGM worked with came from the same vault, courtesy of Carlton, now Granada Ventures) and what looks to be one at least as good as the R1 on the German market - Der Dieb von Bagdad - with a few more extras than the MGM disc (which only boasts a trailer), including a 10 minute black-and-white silent movie parody Grief in Bagdad. Take your pick…
If ever a film cried out for a special edtion, it’s this. I had high hopes when Network announced this, plus two other films featuring Sabu, Elephant Boy and Jungle Book, sadly, all bereft of any kind of extras. We should, I suppose, be thankful for small mercies, that it exists in the digital arena at all, and in such good condition.
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