10 Reasons You Should See The Thief of Bagdad:

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10. This is a new digital restoration of The Thief of Bagdad (1924).  It was restored from two 35mm negatives and contains the color tints from the original release prints. This is not a public domain dvd you will be viewing!

9. The costume design by Mitchell Leisen: “We had 3,000 extras a day for The Thief, and I had to design different costumes for all of them… We had a hundred Chinese soldiers’ uniforms, all identical and very intricate.” If there was one costume designer in Hollywood who could make leading lady Julanne Johnston look like a princess, it was Leisen. It was Leisen who also designed the final version of what Fairbanks wore through most of the film. Author Jeffrey Vance writes, “Fairbanks’s thief appears in his early scenes bronzed and bare-chested, wearing large golden hoop earrings, a pencil-slim moustache, and a head scarf (which also served to conceal and anchor the actor’s wig), his right biceps adorned with a silver crescent-and-star design. Fairbanks’s sheer pantaloons were suggested by the trousers worn in the Diaghilev-Bakst ballet Scheherazade. These diaphanous drawers, particularly in the sequence depicting him the morning after the thief’s flogging, are revealing enough to still evoke comment from audiences in the twenty-first century.”

8. Our screening, like all the films in our classic film series, will be seen in the main auditorium of the most beautiful theatre in the suburbs: The Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge. The theatre was still four years away from opening its doors when The Thief of Bagdad premiered in 1924. After showing the cult classic The Blob on Halloween, I thought we should come back with a prestige film. We’d love to see a big turnout. Your attendance helps support this new film series. (NOTE: There is plenty of free parking in the Library lot across the street from the theatre.)

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7. Anna May Wong! The first Chinese-American movie star plays the Princess’ villainous Mongol slave and is the most memorable female character in the film. Her fame would grow after Thief, and in the 1930s she’d appear in such films as The Shanghai Express (1932) with Marlene Dietrich.

6. The special effects. In the days before CG effects made everything easy– and, ironically, more artificial– simple tricks such as piano wire could work wonders in silent cinema. The famous magic carpet scene, for instance, was accomplished with sixteen piano wires attached to the four corners of the carpet (a 3/4 inch of steel, in fact) and then connected to a 100 foot crane above. The carpet was raised 35 feet in the air… The artiface of some of the effects in these scenes adds to the haunting, dream-like quality of the film. For instance, a sequence that comes to mind is the thief Ahmed’s dive into the Midnight Sea. Yes, we know that he’s not really underwater– and that the sea spider is not “real” by today’s special effects standards– but the design fits the other-worldly quality of the film. The effects truly are magical. One of my favorite sequences is the underworld “Realm of Glass.” Today it would be done on a computer, but back then this effect was accomplished by a family of artisans who took three months to hand-blow the various glass pieces that we see on the screen.

5. The set design by William Cameron Menzies. Menzies was one of cinema’s great set designers responsible for the look of such films as Things To Come, Gone With the Wind, and Invaders From Mars. The Thief of Bagdad was one of Menzies’ first assignments. He got the job only after Douglas Fairbanks saw his amazing pen-and-ink set drawings: “Menzies created one of the most superb fairytale worlds ever seen on the screen. The minarets reflected in the shining streets of Bagdad, the princess’s bedroom with its staircase sweeping round the domed and canopied bed, the giant’s cavern, the dragon’s lair and the superbly executed glass shots of the undersea scenes are brilliantly conceived. Menzies’ personal vision of this world can be traced from the first rough sketches, through his beautiful paintings and drawings, right onto the screen.” What audiences will appreciate is the sheer size, scope, and stylization of Bagdad. The sets were heavily influenced by the ornate Art Nouveau decor then popular at the time– a precursor to Art Deco. Fairbanks had stressed that he wanted this imaginary Bagdad of a thousand years ago to have a weightless quality– as though the city floated in the clouds. To accomplish this, Fairbanks and his team used “a somewhat weird design, by painting trees and branches black even where we had real ones, by the use of light backgrounds instead of the customary dark tones which are thought to bring out the figures more clearly, by confining our colors to gray, silver, black and white for everything except the actual costumes, we obtained an unusual effect; but sets built on the ground will look as if they were. To get away from this solidity, we painted our buildings darker at the top than at the bottom. This seemed to make them less solid and heavy at the bottom. We also built upon a highly polished black floor that had reflections…”

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4. It’s a screen classic for the whole family. Film historian Jeanine Basinger wrote: “On the one hand, The Thief of Bagdad is a movie you want to have seen as a kid, when its wonderful special effects can work their best magic. On the other hand, its magnificent design, its sophisticated sense of Arabian Nights fantasies, and its tongue-in-cheek star may be best appreciated by adults. It’s a film for all ages and for all decades. It’s a feast for the eyes, a humor-filled adventure story and a great star vehicle.”…  Thief of Bagdad is rooted in the tradition of the Arabian Nights tales. The theme of the film is presented to us by way of the wise man who bookends the story. He is telling this tale of adventure to the next generation. Thief is a fable with a meaning to it: We’re not entitled to anything in life– happiness must be earned. Through hard work and sacrifice, our own kingdom– whatever form it takes– awaits. It’s this storytelling purity that I admire. So much of what defines us as a culture is handed down through our own storytelling tradition. But in our society, that tradition of passing down stories from generation to generation (specifically through the film medium) has become fragmented by so many other media distractions. Entertainment now comes easily to the individual viewer through things like Netflix. And we can control the film and play-pause-stop our way through it. People have forgotten how to watch movies, and what they watch now is often disposable entertainment (see your nearest Red Box). We believe in an altogether different philosophy. You have to make the effort to find the reward– the effort to come to the theatre to discover the reward contained in those shadows on the screen. Bring your kids. Take them out of the video game/comic book universe and give them a visual education in things cinematic. Take them to something that will leave a permanent impression for the rest of their lives– something that will shape them in a positive way.

3. Jay Warren of the Silent Film Society of Chicago will be performing a live organ accompaniment. There are a number of ways you can see this film with home viewing. The worst injustice is to watch it on youtube or off your iPad. But even if you had the largest screen in your home theatre refuge– you still wouldn’t have Jay Warren performing in it– unless of course he makes house calls and you have a Mighty Wurlitzer in the parlor. This is a one-night only performance at the Pickwick. An opportunity to see it with a large audience and with one of Chicago’s best musicians! And you won’t see Jay coming into our lobby with pages and pages of sheet music tucked under his jacket– no, this is all from memory, and considering what an epic The Thief of Bagdad is, that is no small feat! NOTE: This is the original 1928 organ, and there are very few of these types of theatre organs still in existence. Except for the panels which were repainted white, few things on it have changed. It is always a pleasure to hear this instrument played during a silent film.

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2. Douglas Fairbanks. He was the movies’ first superstar– a multi-talented personality who authored and produced his own films to astonishing effect. All his swashbucklers hold up today. Films like The Mark of Zorro, The Black Pirate, and The Iron Mask, are some of the greatest films of the era. The Thief of Bagdad was produced by Fairbanks, and he had a hand in every aspect of the film’s production. But what can we say of the Doug that audiences will see on the screen– this well-tanned Thief with the iconic smile? You’ll certainly see his athleticism and his graceful stunts and dancer-like movements. And the natural charm. But there’s more to what draws us to him. I think in our age there are too few people– if any– in the entertainment business who can genuinely inspire us onscreen. We live in an age that is inundated by things made to depress us and to make us lose hope in humanity. Movie screens today market violence and vulgarity… But 90 years ago, watching a Douglas Fairbanks film was bound to put you in a better frame of mind. His productions were beautiful films to look at, and his enthusiasm and optimism and genuine love for life was infectious. It inspired because audiences knew it wasn’t faked. The screen Doug, though seen in various historical guises from one film to the next, was really a projection of the man himself. So when we go back to these films now, it’s a refuge, at least for this viewer. Doug was, to put it simply, a legend, and his values reflect a clarity that have become lost in our over-complicated and redefined world.

1. The Thief of Bagdad is regarded as Fairbanks’ masterpiece. He appeared in many great films throughout his career, but he was at his creative peak in The Thief of Bagdad. He would never again make a fantasy film like this, which is unfortunate. It’s a film of ethereal beauty. There is always something new to appreciate with every viewing. The Thief of Bagdad is a monument that still stands above the sands of time. To quote Jeffrey Vance in his superb bio on Douglas Fairbanks: “An epic romantic fantasy-adventure inspired by several of the Arabian Nights tales, The Thief of Bagdad is the greatest artistic triumph of Fairbanks’s career. The superb visual design, spectacle, imaginative splendor, and visual effects, along with his bravura performance (leading a cast of literally thousands), all contribute to making this his masterpiece.”

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