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Arabian Nights

Arabian Nights
Rating: **
Origin: USA,1942
Director: : John Rawlins
Source: Universal Cinema Classics DVD

Arabian Nights

In the 1940s Universal was a modest-sized studio whose business was cranking out low-budget adventure pictures in every genre. After he starred in the 1940 British Thief of Bagdad, Indian teen star Sabu moved to Hollywood and signed a contract with Universal. They cast him in some jungle adventures, but also decided to try him in their own Arabian Nights fantasy, titled, er, Arabian Nights. The studio splurged on fancy costumes, big sets, and shot it all in Technicolor, but relied on their usual stable of B- and C-listers to round out the cast.

The movie’s title notwithstanding, it doesn’t seem like anyone involved with this story read The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment beyond the list of characters, cherry-picking the ones that sounded familiar. Haroun-al-Raschid (Jon Hall), Caliph of Bagdad, is betrayed by his Grand Vizier in favor of his evil half-brother, Kamar, who is determined to steal the throne because it’s the only way he can win the love of the ambitious dancing girl Sherazade (Maria Montez). Yeah, that’s how dumb this is. Sherazade is part of a troupe of “humorous” traveling entertainers that includes an acrobat, Ali (Sabu), a doofus named Aladdin whose shtick is always searching for his lost lamp, and another doofus who tells boring sea stories and goes by the name Sinbad (Shemp Howard!, wearing brownface). Haroun, wounded in the vizier’s coup but saved by Ali and disguised (they shave him), falls in with this troupe; Haroun and Sherazade make eyes at each other, guards with scimitars appear, and gags and pursuits ensue.

So evil Kamar openly wants the throne and the love of Sherazade; the evil vizier secretly wants the throne and the love of Sherazade; disguised caliph Haroun wants the throne and … well, you get it. Despite the references to magic lamps, it’s a conventional dynastic struggle with no fantasy elements to it, unless you count the male fantasy in which Ali hides among the caliph’s scantily-clad harem girls while two of them distract the eunuch guards with a hair-pulling cat-fight. (Yup.) We get ornery camels, and shiny turbans, and scenic sand dunes, but the story doesn’t make a lick of sense, the acting is uniformly terrible, and all the scimitar-clashing fights are at the level of community-theater stage combat. So naturally it was a big hit, and henceforth Hollywood had a new ongoing adventure genre, the Arabian Fantasy. Allah preserve us.

By |2018-01-02T21:06:18-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off on Arabian Nights
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Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Rating: ***
Origin: USA,1944
Director: : Arthur Lubin
Source: Universal DVD

Ali Baba

After the success of the dumb Arabian Nights, Universal decided to give the genre another go with substantially the same cast—and we’re glad they did, because the second movie is 100% less dumb than the first. It starts out with an actual historical event, the 1258 siege and sacking of Bagdad by the Mongols of Hulagu Khan, and scenes of the massacre of the Bagdadis immediately set this film’s more serious tone. The Caliph is betrayed by his Grand Vizier and killed in a Mongol ambush (note to self: if Sultan or Caliph, do not have Grand Vizier), but the Caliph’s only son, Ali, escapes. Though historically the boy was captured by the Khan, here he gets away into the desert, where he stumbles upon the secret hideout of a band of forty thieves. And yes, the magic words “Open, sesame,” do open the lair’s stone doors, the only fantasy element in this film. To the bandits, Ali reveals his identity as the Caliph’s son, and their leader, Old Baba, adopts him as his own, hiding him under the new name Ali Baba. Old Baba appoints his aide, Abdullah—squeaky-voiced Andy Devine, here in brownface, best known for playing comic sidekicks in Westerns—to be Ali’s guardian and also, inevitably, his comic sidekick.

Ten years pass, and Ali, now grown (and henceforth played by Jon Hall), has emerged as the leader of the gang, which he’s re-forged into a band of freedom fighters conducting a guerilla war against the occupying Mongols. The Forty Thieves now wear red and blue uniform robes, and they even have a theme song they sing while galloping across the desert! “We riiiiide … plundering sons, thundering sons, forty and one for all, and all for one.” Hmm, that part sounds familiar. Wait, so does the next part: “Robbing the rich, feeding the poor….” Okay, got it: the Forty Thieves are the Merrie Men. Robin, I mean Ali, is scouting a Mongol camp when he meets Lady Amara (Maria Montez) swimming fetchingly in the water of the oasis. The daughter of the treacherous vizier, she’s on her way to Bagdad to be married to Hulagu Khan—but as a little girl, she had been the boy Ali’s childhood sweetheart, so this marriage must be stopped! Swashbuckling ensues, with raids, abductions, and captures, in all of which Amara is aided by her loyal knife-throwing servant, young Jamiel (Turhan Bey—the rôle had been written for Sabu, but having become a naturalized citizen, the teen star had joined the Army Air Force to serve as a tail gunner in B-24s). Ali decides it’s time for full-scale revolt against the Mongols, but gets captured himself, and to save him the thieves have to get smuggled into the palace inside forty man-sized oil jars—the only other nod, besides the cave doors, to the original Ali Baba story in The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment. In the end the uprising rises up in the nick of time, and—spoiler!—Lady Amara doesn’t have to marry Hulagu Khan. It’s not bad.

By |2018-01-02T21:06:18-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
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Alexander Nevsky

Alexander Nevsky
Rating: ****
Origin: Russia,1938
Director: : Sergei Eisenstein
Source: Criterion Collection DVD

Criterion Collection DVD

Alexander Nevsky is a towering achievement, an enduring classic of world cinema, except for the parts where it’s goofy and awful. Director Sergei Eisenstein, who’d made his name in the silent era with Battleship Potemkin (1925), had been trying ever since the advent of sound in film to get another movie made, but under the strictures of Stalin’s Russia it was nigh impossible. Finally, by selecting as subject a historical tale of Russian resistance to German aggression (Hitler was saber-rattling at Stalin), and by collaborating on the script with a Communist Party bigwig, Eisenstein was able to bring Nevsky to the screen.

It’s set in the 13th century, when the lands of the Kievan Rus, already plundered by the Mongols from the east, are beset by a new threat from the Teutonic Knights to the west. To counter the German assault, the boyars of Novgorod turn to the war hero who’d staved off the Swedes from the north, Prince Alexander Nevsky (Nikolai Cherkasov). From a story standpoint, this isn’t a complicated film: there’s the main, heroic plot, in which Alexander rallies the Russians to resist the heinous Germans, plus a goofy romantic subplot in which two cartoonish would-be heroes vie for the affections of a glorious Russian war maiden. But ignore all that and just look at this movie, because the matchless visuals are what we’re here for.

After a run-in with some Mongols from the Golden Horde—who look perfect—Alexander is off to Novgorod to start building a coalition to fight the Germans. The reconstruction of Novgorod is painstaking and beautiful: this is Old Russia, built of wood and earth and complete in every lovely detail. And the Germans are coming to destroy it.

Cut to the city of Pskov, newly conquered, and the Teutonic Knights, its conquerors. Here history has been augmented by art to depict a truly evil enemy. The knights are armored automatons, faceless and inhuman in their full helms, dealing death with cold, fanatical zeal. Even their foot soldiers’ heads are enveloped in coal-scuttle helms that deliberately evoke the helmets of the German Wehrmacht. Imperial Stormtroopers? Here’s where they come from, Star Wars fans. Only the knights’ robed and hooded priests have faces—but their visages are the cadaverous faces of vultures, Emperor Palpatine in the medieval flesh.

These Germans are bad. How bad are these Germans? They burn babies, and throw live children right into bonfires. That’s how bad.

On to the arousing-the-Russian-people-to-fight montage, and high time to mention the stirring orchestral and choral soundtrack by Sergei Prokofiev. Eisenstein worked closely with Prokofiev to fully integrate the music with the moving images. The director had distinct ideas about how to do this, because he’d been studying the recent revolutionary synchronization of music and film by its undisputed master: Walt Disney.

The last half of the movie is pretty much all medieval war and its aftermath, as Alexander maneuvers the Teutonic Knights into a final confrontation on the ice of frozen Lake Chudskoye. The climactic battle is justly famous for its setup and onset. The advance and charge of the Teutonic Knights established the look and feel for medieval warfare on film for everything to follow, from Laurence Olivier’s Henry V all the way to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. It must be said, this is one long-ass battle, but it’s organized into several clear and distinct phases, so the viewer never loses track of what’s going on. The goofy romantic rivals get too much screen time, and Prokofiev’s pursuit theme is shrill, frenetic, and overwrought, but the climax on the icy lake, as the surface cracks and disintegrates under the heavily-armored Germans, pays for all.

Victory, however, leads to deep melancholy and extended brooding over the carnage, because Russians. “I kiss your sightless eyes and caress your cold forehead,” the chorus sings. But at least the romantic subplot ends happily. (Duh.) There’s even a parade! Hats are waved, babies are kissed, and all is well again in Mother Russia.

By |2018-01-02T21:06:18-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off on Alexander Nevsky
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Adventures of Robin Hood

Adventures of Robin Hood
Rating: ***** (Essential)
Origin: USA,1938
Director: Michael Curtiz and William Keighley
Source: Warner Bros. DVD

Robin Hood

This is a nigh-perfect film—as you know, because you’ve seen it (and if you haven’t, then I’m very sorry, but we can no longer be friends). Let’s just allude in passing to some of the many reasons why you’ll want to watch it again sometime soon:

—The matchless and heart-uplifting romantic chemistry between Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.
—The rich and vivid look of this many-hued Technicolor fairy tale of the Middle Ages.
—The edgy interplay between the unforgettable villains, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, and Melville Cooper.
—The best Merrie Men ever assembled on screen, most memorably Eugene Pallette as Friar Tuck.
—The brilliant script, witty, terse, thoughtful, romantic, and inspiring.
—The rousing, Oscar-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
—That final climactic battle and duel in Nottingham Castle.

Many 55-gallon drums of ink have been spilled praising, analyzing, dissecting, and interpreting this film, for which the word “classic” almost seems to have been invented. I’ll just mention a few things you might not have heard or considered. For a film that was perfectly cast, it’s curious that the initial choice of director was not as on-target (archery reference intentional). William Keighley, who had directed Flynn in The Prince and the Pauper, sat in the director’s chair for the first half of the movie’s extensive shoot, but he turned out not have a knack for handling large-scale action scenes, which were necessary in a film intended to evoke the spirit of predecessor Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. So halfway through production Keighley was replaced by the more versatile Michael Curtiz, who had also directed Flynn before (in Captain Blood). It was Curtiz who helmed the fights and chase scenes, the arboreal antics in Sherwood Forest, and the battle in the castle.

Then there’s Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s personal tale of involvement with the film. An Austrian Jew, the famous composer and his family were natives of Vienna, where in early 1938 he was engrossed with completing a new opera for performance later in the year. But the opera was postponed, so when the call came from Warner Bros. asking him to do the music for Robin Hood, Korngold was unexpectedly available. Shortly after he arrived in Hollywood the news came from Vienna that Anschluss was imminent, Hitler’s merger of Austria into Germany. Korngold instantly sent for his family to join him, and they got out of Austria on the very last train before travel for Jews was interdicted. It was a daring escape for his family, and poetically appropriate for the composer to a film about resistance to tyranny. Thereafter Korngold always said that his and his family’s lives had been saved by Robin Hood.

Back to the movie: you know those guys who looked like they got shot in the chest with arrows? They got shot in the chest with arrows. Each wore a chest plate of metal to stop the arrow, covered with a slab of balsa wood so the arrow would stick. A $150 bonus compensated for the risk, pain, and shock.

Our final fun factoid involves “Golden Cloud,” the horse ridden in the film by Lady Marian. Another Hollywood character, Roy Rogers, was so taken with Golden Cloud’s looks and obvious intelligence that he made inquiries, and eventually bought the horse from Warner Bros. Rogers took Golden Cloud over to the Republic Pictures lot, renamed him Trigger, and made him the most famous horse in Hollywood.

Now go watch it again. You know you want to.

By |2018-02-11T17:21:29-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off on Adventures of Robin Hood
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