Double Feature: The Thief of Bagdad (1924) x The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

A silent blockbuster loosely inspired by the One Thousand and One Nights folktales. Douglas Fairbanks, the biggest star of adventure films at the time, plays Ahmed, a thief who’s living large in Baghdad. His picaresque life changes when he falls in love with a calif’s daughter and becomes entangled in an international palatine affair. The movie was directed by a valued Hollywood professional Raoul Walsh, but The Thief of Bagdad is considered mostly an original Fairbanks project.

Even though the film turns 100 this year, it’s scale and grandeur are still surprising today. The city which combines Middle Eastern influences with the popular art déco trend, thousands of extras, special effects such as flying carpets and magical ropes as well as flamboyant costumes, all make up a visionary spectacle. In a supporting role we can admire Anna May Wong, Hollywood’s first Chinese American star. The film will be shown along with an orchestrated soundtrack composed by Carl Davis and inspired by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade.

Sebastian Smoliński

Raoul Walsh (1887–1980) was one of the most unpretentious and proficient directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, with a career spanning practically the entire studio era. He started out as an assistant director to D. W. Griffith in 1912 and made his last film, A Distant Trumpet, in 1964. His other films include The Roaring Twenties (1939), High Sierra (1941) and White Heat (1949).

2K reconstruction made in 2012 by the Cohen Film Collection.