icet2004 This movie is a masterpiece.This was movie,but i enjoyed it as much as any modern film.Douglas Fairbanks made a wonderful role.The whole movie was so interesting.effects and everything.i like everything about this movie.this is a silent movie masterpiece.In the scenes with the giant ape, the guards are played by children. When the ape is out of sight the guards are played by adults. It was done to make the normal-sized ape appear bigger,this was funny scene too.For the scenes in the underwater mermaid kingdom, Douglas Fairbanks had the cameras shoot through a curtain of thin gauze, to give the illusion that the Thief was swimming underwater. The mermaid kingdom scenes were then tinted blue in post-production.One of best movies,i recommend it to everyone.

MissSimonetta I like this one, but I do not feel it represents Doug Fairbanks at his best or even at his most entertaining.Of course, the production is gorgeous, an art deco dream of the Arabian Nights fairy tales. But lush costumes and sets are not enough.My score would be higher were this film one hour shorter, because the paper-thin plot and characters at play in The Thief of Bagdad do not warrant a two and a half hour run-time. The stunts and gags are great fun until 90 minutes roll by. By 100 minutes, you'll already be checking your watch and sick of it.If you want prime Fairbanks, go for The Mark of Zorro or The Black Pirate.

tomgillespie2002 Having made his name primarily in the comedy genre, silent superstar Douglas Fairbanks continued his transformation into swashbuckler with this lavish fantasy epic. Made on grand sets that rivalled the likes of Cabiria (1914), thanks to some spectacular set design by William Cameron Menzies, and featuring some ground-breaking visual effects, the real attraction of The Thief of Bagdad is Fairbanks himself, who compensates for some quite outlandish over-acting with an irresistibly athletic performance. The 1940 remake (for which Menzies was once of a few uncredited directors) cast Sabu as the titular thief, but relegated him to the sidekick of John Justin's Prince Ahmad. Perhaps the makers felt that making a petty thief the hero was a little more than the audience could accept, and so this works as a testament to the effortless likability of Fairbanks.The Thief (Fairbanks) roams Bagdad, taking what he pleases and going wherever his legs will take him. Unmoved by religion, he seeks any opportunity to steal, telling a holy man "What I want, I take!". Seeking the ultimate treasure, he and his associate (Snitz Edwards) break into the palace of the Caliph (Brandon Hurst), where he discovers the Caliph's beautiful daughter (Julanne Johnston) laying asleep. Yet when the guards are alerted, the Thief flees. With the Princess' birthday the next day, Bagdad awaits the mighty rulers and Prince's of other kingdom who will pay tribute to the Princess in the hope of winning her heart. The Thief plans on stealing her, yet when a twist of fate causes the Princess to love him back, he must embark on a mighty quest to bring her the rarest gift he can find, in the hope of winning the favour of her father.With a hefty running time of 150 minutes, The Thief of Bagdad naturally suffers from some lengthy un-eventful periods, occasionally shifting its focus to the plans of the Mongol Prince (Sojin) to win the Princess by force and take over the city of Bagdad. But this is fantasy in its purest form, with magic ropes and carpets, various giant monsters, and a winged horse, all giving the opportunity for some dazzling and charming special effects that prove to be quite spectacular retrospectively. The film is an absolute visual delight, with the grand sets simply blowing my mind in an age of lazy CGI work. But like I said before, the true star is Fairbanks, failing to convince as an Arab but giving a performance of wonderful athleticism that pose no question as to why he was an absolute superstar in his day. The 1940 remake is certainly better remembered, especially for its glorious Technicolour cinematography, but Raoul Walsh's 1924 effort is simply beautiful, with some genuinely thrilling moments during it's climatic final third.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Steffi_P Cinema creates its own legends. Among the greatest of them was Douglas Fairbanks, in his incarnation as the eternal swashbuckler, a romantic hero who could only exist in the golden days of the silent era. Thief of Bagdad is his finest moment, the greatest tale he ever told.Although Fairbanks wore many different hats in his swashbucklers – exchanging the mask of Zorro for the cap of Robin Hood and so forth – each of these characters was just the same persona in a different time and place. His previous two efforts, The Three Musketeers and Robin Hood, spend a lot of time laying down back-story before allowing the hero to emerge, and this made them very profound but a little slow at times. In contrast, Thief of Bagdad begins with the introduction of the titular rascal, sweeping us straight into his escapades, and then building the wider plot and story-world outwards from there.Fairbanks's style was always extremely athletic and rhythmic, but the action of this one is almost akin to ballet. Doug dances his way through the role, and much of the movement seems literally choreographed, such as the three fat guards' heads popping up one after the other. The dance even carries through to the serene and tender love scenes. This balletic feel is made appropriate by the fantasy setting, which allows a more abstract approach, unlike all the other Fairbanks pictures which were rip-roaring adventures, but were grounded in (fairly) realistic worlds. The fantastical tone also makes acceptable the pantomime acting, such as the exaggerated yawn and stretch of the guard falling asleep, or Fairbanks's palms literally itching when he spies a precious jewel.As his director for this project Fairbanks selected Raoul Walsh. Walsh is now best remembered for the gritty action pictures he would later make at Warner Brothers, but perhaps the most important aspect he brought to his pictures was a romantic spirit of adventure. The fabulous sets were already built and the script locked down by the time Walsh came on board, but he adds his adventuresome touch in a number of ways. Walsh was very much an outdoors man, and many of his pictures emphasise the openness of plains and mountains, making them places of freedom, contrasting them with a stifling atmosphere for interiors. Thief of Bagdad, with its elaborate street sets and cavernous halls, has a less clear distinction between indoors and outdoors, but Walsh makes those very streets the equivalent of the open plain, keeping his camera back to show Fairbanks dancing freely through them. In the final half hour, notice how places such as the bazaar or the harbour where the bad princes seek their treasures are photographed as crowded or confined, with actors framed through doorways or amongst the clutter of the set. When we cut back to Fairbanks, he is in long shot in a wide-open space.It's also very like Walsh to make us feel as if we are there with the hero, taking part in his adventure. While those long shots rightly show of the magnificent sets and the hero's athletics, at crucial times Walsh brings us in close, often with the camera just behind Fairbanks, as if we were following him. Perhaps the most effective of these is in the fight with the lizard monster, in which we are literally brought in for the kill. We also get to see Walsh's sensitive side (rarely acknowledged, least of all by himself) in the romantic meetings between Fairbanks and his lady fair, embodied in this case by Julanne Johnson. These scenes are both tentative and passionate, with the most beautiful moment after he scales her balcony. We cut between two separate shots, one of Fairbanks kissing her arm, the other of her looking away. Their contact is slight, but filled with deep emotion.Thief of Bagdad comes from an era in which the walls between cinema and forms of expression such as ballet, opera and fine art were at their thinnest. Title cards are kept to a minimum, and yet this is not a collection of technical tricks like Murnau's Der Letzte Mann. Neither is it confusing or pretentiously highbrow. It tells its story visually, but still manages to be engaging and earthily human. It is the very essence of silent cinema.