Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

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When Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves came out in 1944 we and most of the rest of the world were waging war against tyranny. Although this retelling of the famous Arabian Nights tale about as far removed from the current situation as you could get, still the folks at Universal Pictures definitely had the current war in mind. The Mongols are bent on world conquest and they've reached the Caliphate of Bagdad and as the Caliph Moroni Olsen is preparing to counterattack he's betrayed by one of his key noble allies Frank Puglia. Olsen is killed but his son escapes and lives. The boy Scotty Beckett grows up to be Jon Hall and seeks refuge among the band of thieves who have that legendary magic cave where they hide out and stash their loot that opens with the words 'open sesame'. Their leader Fortunio Bonanova adopts the boy and the young prince becomes a thief. At the palace the young girl he played with as a kid is Puglia's daughter and she grows up to be Maria Montez. Puglia has big plans for her, he wants Montez to marry the great Hulagu Khan himself played by Kurt Katch. The casting of Katch who incidentally in real life was Jewish played any number of Nazi thug types during and after the war. The casting here was by no means an accident. And Puglia could be taken for any number of collaborator figures like Quisling or Laval. The meaning was quite clear to World War II audiences. Jon Hall and Maria Montez made any number of these kinds of exotic adventure films for Universal Pictures and became a popular screen team. They look as Middle Eastern as Barry Fitzgerald, but they were good looking and the movie-going public ate it up. The film is easy to take with clear cut heroes and villains. Which in 1944 no one could mistake.

Producer: Paul Malvern. Copyright 31 December 1943 by Universal Pictures Co., Inc. New York release at the Palace: 15 March 1944. U.S. release: 14 January 1944. U.K. release: 13 March 1944. Australian release: 14 August 1944. Sydney release at the State: 9 August 1944. 10 reels. 87 minutes. SYNOPSIS: The patriots of old Bagdad, under the leadership of Ali Baba Junior, throw off the Mongol yoke. COMMENT: Maria Montez was a unique personality. Fortunately, Universal soon realized this. For her 9th film, "Arabian Nights", the studio opened its door to three-step Technicolor for the first time. The experiment was such a success there followed White Savage, Ali Baba, Cobra Woman, Gypsy Wildcat, Sudan and Pirates of Monterey in rapid succession. Ali Baba is one of the best of these — a carefully crafted, expansive production that does full justice to her talents and her appeal. Filmed on a fairly lavish scale, with vast sets and on-location lensing with lots of colorfully costumed extras milling around, "Ali Baba" features plenty of action, directed at a nifty pace with agreeable camera angles and an occasionally (yet very effective) fluid camera style, underscored by loads of Universal-type "B" music. It all adds up to a movie buff's — and especially a Maria Montez buff's — delight. Maria also has the opportunity to do her famous impersonating-her- servant-girl turn as well as her usual royal princess bit. My one and only criticism is that the plot prevents her making an early entrance. We have to wait almost two whole reels! Quite apart from Miss Montez, the superb sets and superlative exquisite color photography make Ali Baba a visual delight. Oddly enough, the cave itself with its obvious paper-mâché opening rocks and its disappointing lack of all the interior opulence we might expect, is the one real let-down. All other sets are as richly dressed as are the opulent costumes, while the attractive presence of Miss Montez herself is made even more entrancing by skillful make-up, costuming and hair styles. And all are rapturously, ravishingly photographed in rich, pastel-toned colors. The support players are not much — Mr. Hall is obviously too mature for his part, and he's a second-rate swashbuckler at that; Frank Puglia and Kurt Katch are hardly the most crafty or charismatic pair of villains; Andy Devine is a most unlikely thief (though at least we are spared his customary over-indulgence in low comedy relief); Turhan Bey makes a lackluster accomplice. But at least they don't detract too much attention from Miss Montez! (It is the juveniles who keep us waiting — though Master Beckett and Miss Duguay are presentable enough. Their footage was re-used in its entirety in the 1965 remake.) Stylishly directed by Universal contract director Arthur Lubin, this tale is now long on action, short on romance. In fact, Edmund L. Hartmann's script makes considerable changes in the original story, turning it into a routine desert adventure. Still, it is a spirited enough tale, directed with dash in vivid color against sumptuous sets, and zestfully played by a grand cast. Maria Montez makes a queenly heroine, Jon Hall a vigorous hero, Kurt Katch a wonderfully sinister villain, while Andy Devine and Chris- Pin Martin provide some mildly amusing comic relief.

If "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" isn't quite the camp classic it might have been it is, nevertheless, a spirited adventure yarn that young kids should get a buzz out of; (their parents won't find it too much of a chore either). It's probably the best known tale of the Arabian Nights, at least as far as children are concerned, and this version, directed by Arthur Lubin and gorgeously shot in Technicolour by W. Howard Greene and George Robinson, is an enjoyably painless entertainment. Conceived as another vehicle for its trio of 'stars', Maria Montez, an aging but reasonably nimble Jon Hall as Ali Baba and a boyish Turhan Bey cast, yet again, as a sidekick, it also features those stalwart supporting actors Andy Devine, Fortunio Bonanova and Frank Puglia lending sterling support. Hardly memorable but good matinée fare.

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.

I saw a high quality, restored color DVD the other day, and now I know how my career as an artist began. I saw this when I was almost 8 years old when it first came out in original technicolor. The scenes where young Ali Baba finds the thieves' ecave, opens it (Open oh sesame,), and then steps into thatwonderously colored cave of great treasures hooked me for life intodepicting explosions of whirling colors I might have seen a black and white version of this on TV in the inmterum, but this new DVD almost captures the gaudy vividness of the original. As for the rest of the film, well, just okay. You can sit back and enjoy it despite a juvenile plot, risible miscasting, and very obvious sets. But who cares! It is an advantage that Maria Montez has such a thick Dominican accent. Her struggle to get her lines out in a comprehensible manner gives her face some actual expression. John Hall looked silly with his thin mustache; he looked not only more authentic but much better when in disguise with a full beard. Andy Devine was okay for the kids.. Fortunio Bonavura did not have a decent line. But who cares. Once the forty thieves got to galloping and kicking, up sand riding in the desert, it becomes pure fun-even if they were wearing baby blue robes and shocking pink headdresses.

A boy prince, raised by forty thieves, takes revenge on the Mongol invaders who murdered his father and stole his kingdom. This blissfully silly romp , an adventure fantasy featuring a plot very different from the one in the fairy tale, is still worth seeking out thanks to the director Arthur Lubin, who was never a great artist, but very often a competent craftsman. I'd have stayed true, however, to the constant story told in Arabian Nights, as follows: Ali Baba, a poor Arab woodcutter, bumps into the treasure of a group of forty thieves in the forest, suddenly passing a cloud of dust with precisely 40 thieves. The treasure of thieves is in a cave, which is opened by magic. When the robbers leave, Ali Baba enters the cave, and takes part of the treasure home.

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 first saw this movie as a child when it ran every night for a week (and extras on the weekend) on something called Million Dollar MOvie that used to show the same film all week. I watched it over and over until I had the script practically memorized. I was fascinated by the location, the exotic story, the love interest and the gorgeous costumes, even though I originally only saw it in black and white. Years later, I saw it in color, as a full grown adult and realized that this movie is one that can take me instantly back to my childhood, into a wonderful world of a fantastic story that still holds my interest today. With the eyes of the adult, I can see that it's sort of a "B" picture, but it does have really nice production values. Maria Montez is breathtakingly lovely and I adore the fact that she's so tall and statuesque. No skinny little model type, but a real womanly presence. Jon Hall is the perfect leading man. Actually the dialog is rather good, a sort of stylized script that lends itself very well to the story. There is a glaring anachronism in it, which just shows that Hollywood wasn't too concerned with accuracy back then. All the talk of Allah, and they bury Old Babba under a cross! In our world today, when there is so much hatred between the western word and the Muslim countries, it's rather wistful to realize that these characters were all Muslims, even if that word wasn't mentioned. They do refer to Ramadan and Allah and to realize that the country involved is Iraq does give one pause. Isn't it a shame that this lovely ancient world has such an unfortunate connotation today? This movie, for all its flaws, shows the Muslim world in a very good light. I so wish it was available on DVD. I would buy it, if for no other reason than it's one of my childhood films. And besides, I still can practically recite the script!