The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

“This is the Land of Legend, where everything is possible
when seen through the eyes of youth.”

Many of the films I tend to want to watch are gloomy affairs: dark, cynical, semi-realistic. It’s not that I don’t like light-hearted films, it’s just that those tend to be of questionable quality nowadays — the last really great (non-animated) historical adventure film was The Mask of Zorro (1998), and I’d probably have to go back to the eighties to find another one of similar quality (one that holds up, at any rate).
But it was a popular – and respected – genre once upon a time, one that many accomplished filmmakers tried their hand at at least once in their career. One of the most lauded of these films is the 71-year-old The Thief of Bagdad. For good reason, as I had occasion to find out.

This film could not have been made today. Not just because of the setting (there are certain sensitivities toward that geographical area at the moment), but also because Hollywood has mostly forgotten how to make truly fun movies: movies that don’t take themselves too seriously, but also don’t wink at the camera all the time, don’t feel the need to compensate with explosions for a lack of cleverness, and which are innocent of the kind of cynicism and ironic detachment all too common in modern films.
That’s not to say that there is no humour or spectacle in Thief, there’s plenty of that, and a probably at the time record-breaking amount of special effects. But it’s the right kind of spectacle: magical creatures and objects and locations that tickle the sense of wonder in the audience, and in the characters as well, who react appropriately awed. That’s real movie magic.