A Blockbuster Sensibility This Arabian Nights Tale From 1944

Following The Thief of Bagdad (1940) and Arabian Nights (1942) came Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves from the book One Thousand and One Nights.

That is one thousand and one stories written during the period known as the Islamic Golden Age. The stories were set in the medieval Middle East.

There is a lot of material here for movies and for quite a while Hollywood produced films based on the stories. Hollywood liked the tales as they were exotic, action-packed, and contained magic and therefore special effects.

One does not have to be Islamic to appreciate the stories at some level of engagement. I personally don’t endorse the magic contained in the stories. However, the magic is a plot device for an exotic good versus evil tale whether they believed in the power of magic or not.

The 1940s and 1950s produced several movies based on the tales. In 1940 The Thief of Bagdad was released followed by Arabian Nights and in 1944 Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves came to the cinema.

It’s a romantic style film. I would like to see a Christian film with the same premise, where an Arabian Tales paced-epic is transplanted to a Christian-based romantic adventure. The mind boggles.

Story

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is set in the days of Mongol invasions. Hulagu Kahn (Kurt Katch) and his army invade Bagdad, but a band of thieves resist and seek to overthrow the army and bring Bagdad back to peace.

Along with the thieves, a young Ali Baba joins the thieves to avenge the killer of his father, the King of Bagdad.

While it is a story of revenge, which is not ideal, on a higher level it is also about freedom from tyranny, which can be related to the modern world.

Revenge is not good, yet one does not want to live in a world beset by fear and oppression if that were possible non-violently. Ideally freedom from tyranny should not come through revenge as revenge is never the proper answer to conflict and problems. In other ways, the film offers nods to traditional style love and honour.

Arabian Tales Blockbusters Were a Template for Modern Blockbusters

The salient feature of Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves is that modern filmmakers might have drawn on the elements of this old-style blockbuster for their own modern blockbusters. There is a hint of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and when Ali Baba (Jon Hall) tries to save the princess or ‘damsel in distress’ as they called it back then it foreshadows Krull’s saving the princess from marrying a tyrannical “Beast”.

Technically, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves foreshadowed the average modern-day blockbuster with a template of shots, pacing, melo dialogue, lavish look, and plotting.

Aesthetic Qualities

The film is quite wholesome though looks a little too old technically to attract overwhelming positive reception these days, but there is a sense of nostalgia here, as the film is of its time. It is also an old-style romantic film. In this classic Hollywood production, one sees plenty of classical style action, adventure, love, and honour, but I have found the film lacking in dramatic power. You would expect dramatic power though. The tales promise involving action and adventure on an emotional level. Sadly, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves lacks real fight.