The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
Directed by Michael Powell
When Prince Ahmad is blinded and cast out of Bagdad by the nefarious Jaffar, he joins forces with the scrappy thief Abu to win back his royal place, as well as the heart of a beautiful princess.
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What critics compared The Thief of Bagdad to
I like the film much more when it's content to steal unashamedly from the 1940 The Thief of Bagdad : adventure, spectacle, good humor and adventure, leading me to suppose that if Aladdin wasn't going to commit to being a dramedy like Beauty and the Beast, it should at least have gone for being a straight-up comedy swashbuckler that didn't take its romantic subplot seriously at all; as it stands, it's awfully close to being a great story, but it keeps having to settle for pretty damn good.
A lot of early exposition time is also used to explain the chicanery of Jafar (voice by Jonathan Freeman), the Sultan's evil vizier, whose chilling, bony features suggest a composite of Nancy Reagan (the animators have mentioned this as a deliberate reference, along with a more pointed one to Conrad Veidt in "The Thief of Bagdad") and Captain Hook.
Families today will note how heavily Disney’s Aladdin borrowed from this version of The Thief of Bagdad: Disney’s treacherous grand vizier Jafar is overtly modeled on Veidt’s Jaffar, who similarly plots to marry a princess who is in love with a beggar who claims to be a prince, and whose dwarfish, childlike sultan father (Miles Malleson) is the archetype for Jasmine’s father.
The same low-flame romance was mirrored in Disney's " Aladdin " (1992), greatly influenced by both versions of the "Thief," combining Abu and Ahmad as "Aladdin."
Anticipating the swashbuckling fare of Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power, not to mention the Disney-ride silliness of Pirates of the Caribbean (and an animated Aladdin that seems to lift whole segments from Thief) this star vehicle for Douglas Fairbanks was a sensation in 1924.
Aladdin this is not.
To both my surprise and relief, Lee’s 3-D version of Martel’s novel has moments so magical, they recall the splendid imagery of bygone classics such as The Thief of Bagdad.
And not only is Serkis's work surprisingly sensitive and nuanced given the technological wall between him and the rest of the movie, the effects work itself is deservedly legendary: Gollum was easily the best visual effects work in CGI history at his '02 debut, and while he's been surpassed a few times since then ( Avatar , the recent Life of Pi , the Jackson/Serkis collaboration King Kong ), it's shocking how much better Gollum has aged than pretty much any other 10-year-old CGI you could think of - compare, for example, Spider-Man from the same year, which looks absolutely rinky-dink now - not just because his realism remains largely intact, but because of the care and detail put into his visual personality by a very talented roster of effects artists, visual effects made with love that will, for that reason, still look good fifty years on, just like Ray Harryhausen's skeleton warriors in Jason and the Argonauts do today, or going even further back, the parade of wonders in Alexander Korda's production of…
Lee’s Bori Khan exudes some of the same bad-guy, scene-stealing star power as Conrad Veidt’s Jaffar from the magnificent 1940 version of “The Thief of Bagdad.” a character Disney co-opted and made the villain in “Aladdin” (creatively dropping an F from his name).
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It’s worth reiterating that Gods of Egypt is about as authentic a recreation of Ancient Egypt as The Thief of Bagdad is of Ancient Persia…which is to say, not very.
A conglomeration of tropes derived from the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the “Clash of the Titans” reboot, the 1940 version of “The Thief of Bagdad” and “The Ten Commandments,” “Gods of Egypt,” whose gods can transform themselves into gold-plated, robotic flying avatars, is as thieving as one of its protagonists.
There are echoes of influence of Powell-Pressburger (“The Thief of Bagdad,” “The Red Shoes”) but Spielberg would never be as neurotic as that filmmaking duo.
The BFG has some of the visual magic that you find in old Powell and Pressburger movies or in films like The Thief Of Bagdad .
Even unassailable classics of the genre such as The Thief of Bagdad , Excalibur , and The Lord of the Rings feel unmistakably like features made in 1940, 1981, and the early 2000s, respectively.
Even in the silent era, with Douglas Fairbanks playing every legendary hero from Zorro to Robin Hood to D’Artagnan, seeking adventure everywhere from the Spanish Main ( The Black Pirate ) to Arabian Nights territory (The Thief of Bagdad) to South America (The Gaucho), King Arthur was overlooked.
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The promise of three stories—and multiple visitations—echoes Dickens’s A Christmas Carol , and the three wishes the genie grants Aladdin in The Thief of Bagdad , and even the three wishes in “The Monkey’s Paw.”