The Thief of Bagdad (1924) 7.7
A recalcitrant thief vies with a duplicitous Mongol ruler for the hand of a beautiful princess. Director:Raoul Walsh |
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The Thief of Bagdad (1924) 7.7
A recalcitrant thief vies with a duplicitous Mongol ruler for the hand of a beautiful princess. Director:Raoul Walsh |
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| 0Share... |
| Complete credited cast: | |||
| Douglas Fairbanks | ... |
The Thief of Bagdad
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Snitz Edwards | ... |
His Evil Associate
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Charles Belcher | ... |
The Holy Man
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Julanne Johnston | ... |
The Princess
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Kamiyama Sôjin | ... |
The Mongol Prince
(as Sojin)
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| Anna May Wong | ... |
The Mongol Slave
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Brandon Hurst | ... |
The Caliph
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Tote Du Crow | ... |
The Soothsayer
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Noble Johnson | ... |
The Indian Prince
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A thief falls in love with the Caliph of Bagdad's daughter. The Caliph will give her hand to the suitor that brings back the rarest treasure after seven moons. The thief sets off on a magical journey while, unbeknownst to him, another suitor, the Prince of the Mongols, is not playing by the rules... Written by Erik Gregersen <erik@astro.as.utexas.edu>
This movie is great fun to watch, like you would expect from a genre movie such as this one. It has all the typical adventurous, action and comedy elements present to make this a great swashbuckling movie. Add to that Douglas Fairbanks in good shape and you have a classic unforgettable genre movie!
Douglas Fairbanks is totally great in this one. He looks, acts, breaths, eats like a real superstar. He handles all of the athletic action in the movie really well. It's not hard to see why this man was THE swashbuckling hero of the '20's.
The movie is really great looking, with many grand looking sets. Really great looking stuff! (though obviously all fake.) Something you would normally expect to see in a D.W. Griffith movie. The movie also has some silly looking but yet great early special effects, toward the ending of the movie.
The story has all the ingredients needed for such a genre movie as this one; an heroic main character, a love interest, stereotypical villains and lots of fun and action. Especially toward the ending the movie starts to become greatly adventurous after a sort of slower middle and good first part. It's of course all rather simple and formulaic but this is also what makes the genre so great. You just always know what to expect. It's good simple fun that's professionally and well made, that's also beautiful to look at.
Also definitely fun to see how much of this movie was later used again in Disney's "Aladdin". Some, mostly action sequences, are obviously almost directly copied.
A great fun movie, from swashbuckling-specialist director Raoul Walsh.
9/10
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