Donkey Skin (1970)

Donkey Skin is a 1970 fairy tale adaptation written and directed by Jacques Demy. The original French title of the film is Peau d’âne. It was released in English-speaking markets with a variety of different titles including Once Upon a Time and The Magic Donkey. Demy emerged as a director at the time when the Nouvelle Vague or New Wave was becoming a thing in French cinema. Demy’s movies do not however feel very much like the contemporary movies of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.

Demy is best-known for Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort). Demy took a decidedly offbeat approach to the musical genre. Rather than actual songs there is dialogue which is sung, by actors and actresses who are not actual singers. It’s sounds like a catastrophically bad idea but weirdly it works and these two movies were international hits.

He uses a similar approach in Donkey Skin.

Donkey Skin is based on the fairy tale Donkeyskin, from Charles Perrault’s 1697 fairy tale collection which contained the original versions of so many of the most famous fairy tales.

Jean Marais plays the king and he is the happiest king of the happiest kingdom in the world. His queen is the most beautiful queen in the world, and they have a lovely charming daughter (played by Catherine Deneuve).

Then disaster strikes. The queen dies. On her deathbed she forces the king to promise that he will remarry (for the kingdom’s sake he needs a male heir) but only if he can find a princess more beautiful than his dying queen.

There is no princess in all the world who would qualify. None, except one. His daughter.

The king decides that therefore he should marry her.

The princess decides that maybe she likes this idea.

At this point her fairy godmother, the Lilac Fairy (Delphine Seyrig), decides that she needs to take steps to prevent this marriage. She suggests that the princess should stall by demanding impossible wedding presents, but the king manages to provide them. The Lilac Fairy then suggests that the princess should demand the skin of the king’s magic donkey.

Using the donkey skin to disguise her beauty the princess flees to a neighbouring kingdom. The young prince of that kingdom falls in love with her but then cannot recognise he. But he has her ring. No-one else can wear that ring, so if he finds a maiden who can wear it then he has found his princess.

There are a lot of things to like about this movie. The visuals are gorgeous and they’re gorgeous in interesting ways.

I like the fact that Demy does not succumb to the temptation to add an anachronistic modern political subtext.

I like the fact that he was not tempted to transpose the story to a more modern setting. This is a fairy tale world that mostly looks the way Charles Perrault’s readers in 1697 would have imagined it.

There are some clever moments referencing various poets and filmmaker, such as Cocteau.

But there are things that, for me, just don’t work. Having some of the dialogue sung is a gimmick he’d used before. It’s a gimmick that left me cold.

The big problem is that for all the visual splendours, it’s just a bit lifeless. The characters have all the vitality of wooden dolls. Perhaps, given his association with the New Wave, Demy was deliberately aiming for this and for extreme emotional distance. It doesn’t work for me.

And I hate to say this since I’m a fan of hers but Catherine Deneuve’s performance is a major weakness. She’s flat, lifeless, cold and charmless.

Before making this movie Demy should have sat down and watched Ernst Lubitch’s early masterpieces such as The Doll (Die Puppe, 1919) and The Wildcat (1921). Lubitsch shows how it should be done. Storybook characters come to life, but Lubitsch actually does bring them to life.

Donkey Skin does have some striking images but for me it was a movie to admire rather than a movie to love. There is however enough of interest here to make it worth a watch. Recommended.

Ladyhawke (1985)

Ladyhawke is a 1985 fantasy film and it really is a bit of an oddity. I think it’s a wonderful movie but I can see why it flopped at the box office. It’s totally out of step with other movies of that genre of that era. It’s also to some extent out of step with the mainstream filmmaking approaches of the 80s.

It was produced and directed by Richard Donner.

The setting is northern Italy. The time period is not specified precisely but references to the exploits of the hero’s grandfather during the Crusades might suggest the 13th or 14th centuries.

A young thief, Phillipe Gaston (Matthew Broderick), escapes from an escape-proof dungeon.

Local authority is vested in the Bishop of Aquila (played by John Wood) and the bishop wants Phillipe recaptured. He sees the young thief’s escape as a challenge to his prestige and authority. The bishop is something of a tyrant and seems to rule mostly by fear.

Phillipe encounters Etienne of Navarre (Rutger Hauer). Navarre is a rather brooding figure, obviously a man in the grip of some obsession, but in his own way he seems to be a decent man who can even be almost kindly at times. Navarre has a hawk, an impressive bird of which he is inordinately proud. There is clearly a bond between the man and the hawk.

But at nightfall Navarre disappears completely and a beautiful lady appears. She is Isabeau of Anjou (Michelle Pfeiffer). She has an animal companion as well, a wolf. There is clearly a bond between the woman and the wolf.

In fact Navarre and Isabeau are the victims of an awful curse. They were lovers, until they aroused the ire of the bishop who called on the powers of darkness to afflict with a cruel and ingenious curse. During the day Isabeau is transformed into the hawk. At night Navarre is transformed into the wolf. They can never be together in human form. They are in fact doomed to be forever together and forever apart.

A nice touch is that in their animal forms they have no knowledge of their human natures. All the wolf knows is that for some reason he must protect this woman. All the hawk knows is that somehow she belongs to this man. They can never communicate. They can only communicate very indirectly, through Phillipe.

Another very nice touch is that Phillipe is a likeable pleasant resourceful young man but he is a chronic liar. That turns out to be useful. Whenever Isabeau asks if Navarre has spoken of her Phillipe assures her that Navarre speaks constantly of the strength of his love for her. That isn’t true. Navarre is a man of few words who could never articulate his feelings in this way. Phillipe tells Isabeau lies, but they are true lies. They are the things that are in Navarre’s heart. When Navarre asks if Isabeau has spoken of him Phillipe tells him the same sorts of true lies. There are things Isabeau cannot bring herself to say but Phillipe has survived as long as he has by being extremely astute. He knows how Isabeau feels about Navarre.

When the hawk is wounded crazy old monk Imperius (Leo McKern) enters the picture. He knows something very very important, but he doesn’t know how to make Navarre and Isabeau believe it.

By the mid-80s the established formula for adventure or fantasy movies was non-stop action, spectacle, some humour and a dash of romance. When the sword-and-sorcery genre emerged the formula remained the same but with a slightly tongue-in-cheek edge.

Ladyhawke ignores this formula completely. The focus is entirely on the love story. There’s some action and some excitement but it’s handled in a low-key way and there are no spectacular action set-pieces. This is a movie that relies on mood rather than spectacle. It’s a beautiful movie but it’s beautiful in a subtle slightly dreamy way.

This is a movie that seems to be aiming for the tone of 19th century medievalism - the romantic harkening back to the days of chivalry of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and of Pre-Raphaelite painting. I think it does this very successfully.

The casting is perfect. Rutger Hauer was a guy who could wear medieval garb and make you think that he’d been dressing that way all his life. He plays Navarre as a brooding but very sympathetic figure. Nothing matters to him except for the woman he loves. It’s an obsession, but a noble obsession. Hauer does not give a conventional action hero performance. He’s much more subtle than that. We feel Navarre’s pain, but the pain is not on the surface. It’s deep within Navarre’s soul. He simply cannot live with Isabeau.

Michelle Pfeiffer is just right. The first time we see her we are struck by her fragile ethereal beauty. And we know that this is a high-born lady. There’s nothing arrogant about Isabeau, just the placid assurance of a woman who has known since childhood what it means to be a lady. Isabeau is definitely not a kickass action heroine or a feisty girl heroine. She has courage, but it is a woman’s courage.

When Phillipe meets her he knows that he is going to devote himself to the service of this lady without any hope of reward. To serve such a lady is an honour. What’s extraordinary is that Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer make this devotion totally convincing. Somehow all three leads are able to make us believe that this world of fairy-tale romance and chivalry is real.

The Bishop of Aquila is not a conventional adventure movie larger-than-life villain. He is a man in the grip of an obession. It has lewd him to do great evil, but the obsession started as love.

Ladyhawke never really had a chance at the box office. It’s a very uncommercial movie. It goes its own way. It’s a beautiful fairy-tale romance and I adored it. Very highly recommended.

Xanadu (1980)

Xanadu may be the most 80s movie ever made. This is maximum 80s overload. This is a Gene Kelly-Olivia Newton-John roller-skating fantasy musical romance with goddesses. Goddesses on roller skates.

Although everything is explained eventually it does help if you know that this is a remake of a 1947 Rita Hayworth musical, Down to Earth. This is one of Hayworth’s least admired movies but I actually love it.

In the 1947 movie one of the muses, Terpsichore, takes the form of a human woman and comes to Earth, and puts on a Broadway musical. Terpsichore is the muse of dance. The muses were of course demi-goddesses and their role was to inspire the arts and sciences. It’s a crazy idea for a movie but Xanadu takes that craziness and ups it by about twelve notches.

Sonny Malone (Michael Beck) paints enlarged versions of album covers as promotions for record stores. There’s a cute blonde girl on one of the album covers. She looks just like a girl he just saw. A girl who appeared and then disappeared. The guy who took the original photo doesn’t know who she is - she was just suddenly there in the shot and then vanished.

Of course the reason she keeps appearing and disappearing is that although she calls herself Kira she is indeed Terpsichore, and demi-goddesses can do stuff like that. She’s been sent to Earth on a vital mission - to inspire the ultimate 80s nightclub.

Sonny and Kira make the acquaintance of Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly). He’s a construction tycoon but in the 40s he was a band leader, and had his own nightclub. He got his start with Glenn Miller. He gave up music after a disappointment in love. She was a lovely girl. She looked just like Kira. The audience of course knows that it really was Kira, or rather it was Terpsichore on a previous visit to Earth.

Danny admits that for 35 years he has daydreamed about opening another nightclub. Sonny persuades him to follow his dream. He knows the right place. It’s a derelict art deco wrestling auditorium. Danny has the money and the construction know-how to turn it into the ultimate nightclub. It will be called Xanadu. The name is Kira’s idea. It is of course quite possible that she was the one who inspired Coleridge to write his famous 1797 poem.

Two years earlier Olivia Newton-John had starred in the smash hit Grease. These two movies are very different but they do have one thing in common - a sense of total temporal dislocation. Grease is about teenagers in the 50s, or maybe in the 70s. Or even at times the 40s. Nothing fits into a coherent time period, and that’s why Grease works. It exists in its own fantasy teenage universe. There’s quite a bit of that in Xanadu. It’s the 80s meets the 40s, but with a goddess from a couple of millennia ago thrown in. Nothing fits. That’s what’s so great about it.

I have no idea if the people making this movie were getting into the Bolivian marching powder but this was Hollywood in 1980 and people in Hollywood in 1980 were certainly doing a lot of coke. And Xanadu does have an 80s cocaine-fuelled vibe. When you watch Xanadu the first word that will pop into your head is cocaine.

The casting of Olivia Newton-John works. Her Australian accent helps - it makes her seem out of place in California and of course she is out of place in California. She also has that ability to be adorable and wholesome without being cloying.

Michael Beck makes a forgettable male lead.

Gene Kelly does not make a mere cameo appearance. He’s one of the stars. This is a leading role. He’s out of place here, but he’s supposed to be. He’s a guy who still lives in the 1940s. It works. He’s excellent.

And Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John get to do a romantic dance number together. Miss Newton-John also gets to sport a very nice 40s hairdo.

Visually Xanadu is brash, garish, vulgar and overblown. This is 80s style taken to extremes, but with added art deco elements. And Danny lives in a mansion that once belonged to a silent film star and the mansion belongs to the Edwardian era. This is bad taste elevated into an art form.

Every single thing about Xanadu is just so wrong, but it’s so wrong in ways that make it just so bizarrely fascinating. Don’t try to make sense of it. Just go with it. She’s a goddess, and goddesses enjoy roller-skating as much as other girls do.

The dance sequences seem to have been shot by people who had never shot dance sequences before. The one dance sequence that works is the romantic dance sequence with Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John and I suspect it works because Gene Kelly took control and made sure it worked.

Xanadu was of course a flop. Xanadu is not a trainwreck. It’s beyond that. This is the cinematic equivalent of an earthquake that levels an entire city. It’s so bizarre that you can’t help feeling a sense of wonder that someone gave this movie the green light.

They don’t make movies like Xanadu any more. It’s one of those movies you really won’t believe until you see it. And yet it is weirdly enjoyable. Yes, I actually did enjoy Xanadu and I’m going to highly  recommend it.

I’ve reviewed the original 1947 movie Down to Earth and if you love Xanadu it’s worth checking out (plus you can’t lose with Rita Hayworth as a goddess).

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman stars James Mason and Ava Gardner. It is one of those movies that challenges easy genre classification. It’s certainly a romance movie, albeit an unconventional one. Is it also a fantasy movie? Whatever it is it’s strange and disturbing and very unusual.

This is a movie in which the ending is revealed right at the beginning but given people’s sensitivities about spoilers I will still try to avoid them.

This British movie takes place in Spain during the early 1930s, in the Mediterranean seaport of Esperanza. The story is mostly seen through the eyes of middle-aged literary-art historian/archaeologist Geoffrey Fielding (Harold Warrender). Pandora (Ava Gardner) is a singer, but mostly she breaks men’s hearts. Men have died for love of her. Literally died. It would be tempting to see her as a wicked temptress and her odd reactions to things lead many people to see her as a heartless bitch. Pandora is however more complicated than that.

She is a very complicated woman indeed. She has never loved a man but she is in love with love. She is also perhaps in love with death.

Stephen Cameron (Nigel Patrick) is in love with her. He is a racing car driver. He has built a car with which he hopes to break the world land speed record. His car means more to him than anything else in the world, except for Pandora.

Then a yacht arrives in the harbour. Pandora does what any normal woman would do. She takes off all her clothes and swims out to the yacht. She hasn’t been invited but is it likely that anyone will be annoyed to have a nude Ava Gardner suddenly emerge from the sea?

The strange thing is that there is no crew. Just the yacht’s skipper, a Dutchman named Hendrick van der Zee (James Mason). Hendrick is just completing a portrait of Pandora although he has never set eyes on her before. He almost seemed to be expecting her arrival, which is of course impossible.

Coincidentally Geoffrey has just come across a manuscript written in 17th century Dutch purporting to be the memoirs of the fabled Flying Dutchman. He can read Dutch but he is having trouble with this archaic form of the language. Oddly enough Hendrick can read it with ease. In fact it’s as if he doesn’t need to read it. He already knows what it contains. Which is impossible.

Geoffrey knows that Hendrick cannot possibly be the Flying Dutchman. That’s just a legend. But he is puzzled and disturbed.

Pandora accepts Stephen’s proposal of marriage. Stephen does have a rival, matador Juan Montalvo (Mario Cabré).

With Hendrick’s arrival there may be another rival on the scene. The attraction between Hendrick and Pandora is obvious, but it’s a mysterious sort of attraction. It’s as if they both have a destiny they cannot escape.

James Mason is excellent as the troubled rather tragic Hendrick, and playing troubled tragic romantic leads was certainly something Mason did well.

This picture however belongs to Ava Gardner. Hers is the standout performance and Pandora is the most interesting character. She perfectly captures the disturbing quality of Pandora. She is clearly attracted to men who flirt with death, such as racing car drivers and matadors. Whenever one of these men is in danger of sudden violent death Pandora is visibly excited. It’s obviously sexual excitement, but perhaps more than that.

There’s a wonderful scene early on in which she asks Stephen to make a sacrifice for her, a very big sacrifice. She doesn’t love the man. It is simply a test of the strength of his love. Or perhaps it is a test of the power of love. This is in fact the theme of the whole movie - how much will a person give up for love? Stephen makes the sacrifice. Pandora’s reaction is orgasmic. The scene is charged with dangerous unhealthy obsessive eroticism. Gardner handles it superbly. She makes her excitement obvious without being crass.

Do not get the idea that Pandora is evil or a femme fatale. It’s not that simple. She is the woman she is. She is perhaps driven by fate. She is driven by the need for love, and it has to be overwhelming love. She never loses our sympathy. We are unsettled by her, but fascinated.

Jack Cardiff did the cinematography which is, as you would expect, magnificent. He really brings out the feline quality in Ava Gardner.

The big question of course is whether there is really anything supernatural going on. Is Hendrick really the Flying Dutchman? That question is answered but obviously I’m not going to reveal the answer.

This is an insanely romantic love story but it’s a movie about death and fate as well as love.

This is a strange but brilliant movie. Very highly recommended.

The Screenbound Blu-Ray is barebones but looks pretty good.

The Doll (Die Puppe, 1919)

The Doll (Die Puppe) is a 1919 German silent fantasy/comedy directed and co-written by Ernst Lubitsch.

It was based on a story by the early 19th century German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann. If you haven’t read any of Hoffmann’s stories do so immediately. They’re a combination of Romantic, gothic, fantasy and weird elements and they’re exhilarating.

This is a kind of fairy tale and everything is made to look as artificial as possible - it’s like a children’s story book come to life, although it’s not really a story for children!

The Baron von Chauterelle does not want his distinguished family line to die out. His heir is his nephew Lancelot. He has decided that Lancelot must marry immediately. All the marriageable young maidens from the nearby village, forty of them in all, are instructed to present themselves at the baron’s castle so that Lancelot can pick his bride. The maidens are all desperately anxious to be chosen - marriage to Lancelot will mean wealth and a title.

There is one problem. Lancelot is terrified of women. He flees, with the maidens in hot pursuit. He takes refuge at an abbey. The monks make a big show of their poverty although in fact they live in luxury and dine in magnificent style.

The Baron von Chauterelle is devastated at the disappearance of his nephew. He makes a public offer - he will give Lancelot an immense sum of money if he marries.

The wily abbot comes up with a clever scheme. The famous dollmaker Hilarius makes lifelike life-size female dolls. The dolls are advertised as being suitable for bachelors and widowers. The dolls are operated by clockwork and can perform all kinds of lifelike action such as dancing.

Now another problem arises. Lancelot thinks these dolls are a bit too lascivious. He thinks their dancing is positively indecent. There is a solution at hand. Hilarius has just completed a new doll, made in the image of his daughter Ossi (played by Ossi Oswalda). He assures Lancelot that this doll is of good character.

Fate steps in when Hilarius’s fifteen-year-old apprentice accidentally breaks the new doll. To save the apprentice from punishment Ossi will pretend to be the doll, until the apprentice can repair the actual doll. Ossi, pretending to be the doll, is shown to Lancelot. Lancelot is so delighted that he not only immediately buys her, he decides to take her with him on the spot. He sets off for his uncle’s castle, in a carriage drawn by two horses that are clearly men in horse costumes, which adds further to the fairy tale feel.

So we have an actress named Ossi playing the part of a girl named Ossi who is masquerading as a doll which is masquerading as a real girl. That’s the sort of movie this is - everything is multiple layers of artificiality and the artificiality is all clearly on view.

Much amusement ensues for the viewer as Ossi keeps reverting to her real self when Lancelot isn’t looking and then reverts to her masquerade as a doll when he is looking.

Much of that amusement is somewhat risqué. At times very risqué. And of course interesting things are going to happen on Lancelot’s wedding night, given that he thinks that his bride is simply a mechanical doll.

Parts of the sets are simply painted backdrops. When the sun rises it’s a cartoon sun with a smiley face. Some of the humour is broad and some is sharp and witty. Grasping monks and greedy relatives (waiting for the old baron to die) come in for some rough treatment.

The apprentice is a hoot. It’s like he’s fifteen going on thirty-five, and a cynical world-weary thirty-five. The characters are not the least bit realistic and yet weirdly we believe in them. Lancelot could have come across as a fool and a milksop but somehow he manages to engage our sympathies. Ossi Oswalda gives a bravura comic performance.

This movie is a mix of cleverness and good-natured fun. It’s bizarre, but in a good way. Unlike most fairy tale moves it does not make a single concession to realism at any point. It revels in its artificiality.

I can’t think of any other movie that pushes deliberate artificiality as far as this but it works. Highly recommended.

Medea (1969)

To describe Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea (1969) as an adaptation of the 5th century BC play of Euripides would be a bit misleading. Pasolini uses the play as a jumping-off point. Pasolini was making a movie and movies being a visual medium he eliminated most of the dialogue, choosing to tell the story visually.

It’s the story of Jason (as in Jason and the Argonauts) and Medea. Jason’s kingdom was stolen from him. To retrieve his kingdom he has to bring back the Golden Fleece. It doesn’t enable him to regain his kingdom but he does acquire a wife, a princess (and sorceress) of Colchis named Medea.

The ambitious Jason heads for Corinth and his ambitions are about to be realised. He is to marry a second time, to the daughter of the king of Corinth. A very advantageous match from Jason’s point of view. At which point Medea takes her revenge.

This is not a story of a woman scorned. There is much more going on here.

Jason was raised by a centaur who told him that there is nothing natural in nature. This is the key to understanding the society from which both Jason and Medea come, and Pasolini spends much of the early part of the movie world-building, immersing us in an extraordinarily alien world. This is a world in which everything is understood in terms of myth and ritual and magic. There is not even the slightest hint of rationality in this world. In this world reason explains nothing; myth and ritual and magic explain everything.

If we do not understand just how alien this society is we cannot understand Medea’s later actions and we might make the mistake of regarding her as a madwoman. She is not mad. She simply views the whole of life in terms of her own culture and religion, and from her point of view her actions are not merely justified but necessary.

Medea has certainly suffered a grievous insult in being discarded in favour of a much younger woman but it is a double betrayal. By taking her to Corinth Jason tempted Medea to abandon her culture and religion and her thoroughly pre-modern pre-civilised view of the world.

There is an interesting scene that takes place shortly after Jason’s theft of the Golden Fleece. Jason’s sailors make camp for the night. Medea is terrified, horrified and bewildered when they fail to perform the necessary rituals (or what she considers to be the necessary rituals).

It’s possible that Pasolini is trying to make a point about the alienating nature of civilisation and the way it strips life of its magic and its meaning. Not every viewer is necessarily going to be in sympathy with this. It doesn’t really matter whether you agree with such a view or not. What matters is that there is a very real and profound clash of cultures and beliefs and that Medea certainly feels alienated from the more modern more civilised cultures and beliefs of Corinth. The movie still works whether you agree with the message or not.

Pasolini’s own views on culture, politics, religion and cinema seem to have been constantly changing and also seem to have been contradictory and confused. That’s not necessarily a fatal flaw in a film-maker. He can use the opportunity to work though his ideas.

Maria Callas was the world’s most famous soprano at the time but she had the reputation of being an opera singer who didn’t just sing her parts but acted them powerfully as well. She was an inspired choice to play Medea. No-one else in the movie can act at all, but that works in a way. This is not a realist movie. Pasolini’s cinematic roots may have been in realism but Medea makes no concessions to realism. The stiff artificial performances of the other cast members enhance the film’s artificiality, and also serve to focus our attention on Callas.

This is not a stagey film but that artificiality is constantly emphasised. Jason was raised by a centaur. The centaur does not look the slightest bit convincing. He looks like a stage centaur. In fact he probably looks the way a centaur would have looked in a fifth century BC theatrical performance.

The location shooting (in Turkey, Syria and Italy) is stunning. Pasolini uses locations and architecture to emphasise his points. In Colchis we do not see a single straight line. Every building, every habitations, looks like it grew out of the soil. In Corinth everything is ordered. Nothing looks organic. Everything is constructed according to perfect classical proportions.

Medea is a movie you’re either going to love or hate. It depends on whether you’re able to immerse yourself fully in its world. If you are able to do that then the film is a strange magic experience. I enjoyed it a great deal. Your mileage might well vary.

The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

The Thief of Bagdad, released in 1924, is the greatest of the 1920s Douglas Fairbanks swashbucklers. It’s one of the greatest swashbuckling adventure movies of all time, and in my opinion it’s the greatest Hollywood movie of the silent era. Fairbanks considered it to be his best movie, and he was right.

It was not the huge box-office bonanza that had been hoped for. It’s an ambitious demanding movie and audiences looking for pure escapist entertainment found it a little bewildering. It has long provoked conflicting critical assessments, but then great works of art tend to do that.

There have been many movies since that have been inspired by the Arabian Nights but none have surpassed the Fairbanks film.

By 1924, in the wake of box office blockbusters such as The Mark of Zorro (1920) and Robin Hood (1922) Fairbanks was a huge star. He had a great deal of creative control. He conceived, produced and wrote his 1920s swashbucklers and had major input into every aspect of these films. For The Thief of Bagdad he was also lucky to have very talented collaborators. Raoul Walsh directed and William Cameron Menzies was the art director. But there is no question that this is Fairbanks’ movie. The idea was his and the movie is his vision. He supervised every aspect of the production. Fairbanks was very much an auteur, possibly the outstanding example of a producer-star as auteur.

Fairbanks plays a thief in Bagdad. The Caliph’s daughter is to be married but her husband has not yet been chosen. Three of the greatest princes in the known world have arrived as suitors. They are not merely keen to marry a beautiful princess. Marriage to the princess will make the successful suitor master of Bagdad one day. One of the suitors, the Prince of the Mongols, intends to take Bagdad by force if his suit is unsuccessful.

The princess is superstitious and believes that the man who first touches the rose-tree beneath her window is the man she should marry, and she knows that her father will accept her choice of husband.

The thief sees an opportunity to enrich himself. He steals expensive clothing and presents himself as a fourth suitor, the prince of an entirely mythical land. Of course when he meets the princess he genuinely falls in love with her. And of course his imposture is revealed and he is whipped for his presumption.

A holy man tells him that he must earn the right to the princess’s hand by undergoing a series of quests. If he succeeds then he will surely be enable to marry the princess.

The princess, in order to buy herself time (she dislikes the other three suitors intensely) proposes a quest for the suitors as well. She says she will marry the man who bings her the most fabulously valuable gift. The suitors set out to find suitable gifts which naturally must have magical properties.

The princess has a spy in her midst, a treacherous slave-girl (played by Anna May Wong) who serves the Prince of the Mongols.

It’s a fine story but it’s the way Fairbanks unfolds the story which is entrancing.

In 1924 techniques for moving the camera did not yet exist. F.W. Murnau and his cinematographer Karl Freund are usually given the credit for inventing these techniques in Germany at around this time although the truth is slightly more complicated. In the case of The Thief of Bagdad it doesn’t matter. There are many ways of bringing a sense of movement and dynamism into shots without moving the camera and both Fairbanks and Walsh were keenly aware of the importance of avoiding a static feel. With a star like Fairbanks that was easy. The man was a human dynamo who never stopped moving. If he did stop moving he had the ability to make you think he was about to burst into action again any second.

All the cast members are constantly in movement. Also utilised is the very effective technique of having things happening simultaneously in different parts of the frame. The editing is also lively and very modern. While Walsh must be given some credit it is clear that his job as director was simply to help Fairbanks realise his vision.

One of the most impressive things about this movie is the extraordinary sense of scale that it achieves. You know the sets cannot possibly be that big and yet you find yourself believing that you’re seeing enormous palaces and vast caverns. And in fact the sets really were enormous - the biggest ever built in Hollywood. The movie is extraordinarily successful in achieving a genuine sense of a fantastic world of unreality, a world in which you believe even while acknowledging its unreality. This really is the Arabian Nights brought to life.

The look of the film was heavily influenced by Léon Bakst’s designs for Diaghilev’s ballets, especially Scheherazade.

When watching movies from this period you have to remind yourself just how new was the technology of motion pictures. Motion pictures were being made in the late 1890s but in 1924 the feature film as we know it was only a decade old. Taking this into account the special effects in The Thief of Bagdad work pretty well. How well the special effects work is unimportant. It is the beauty and grandeur of the images and the soaring imagination required to create those images that is breathtaking.

It’s interesting to compare this movie to Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen (1924), made in Germany the same year. Fairbanks had been impressed by Lang’s films, especially Destiny. Fairbanks set out to surpass the German masters, and to a certain extent he succeeded.

Fairbanks brings power and manic energy to the rôle of the thief but also extraordinary grace. He is like an athlete and a dancer rolled into one. Julanne Johnston is both sweet and clever as the Princess. Most reviewers focus quite a bit on Anna May Wong but while she’s fine she has no more than a minor supporting rôle.

The Eureka Masters of Cinema release includes the movie on both Blu-Ray and DVD, with various extras. The transfer is excellent and most importantly it preserves the tinting. Tinting was an important technique is silent film and Fairbanks used it to perfection.

Fairbanks was one of the grand masters of cinema. The Thief of Bagdad is very highly recommended indeed.

Repeat Performance (1947)

Repeat Performance is a 1947 Hollywood adaptation of William O’Farrell’s quirky 1942 novel of the same name, which as it happens I read just recently. It’s an extremely interesting book but when I read it I remember thinking that there were so many ways in which Hollywood could make an unholy mess of a film adaptation.

It turns out my fears were well grounded. They really did make a mess of it. Everything that made the book so intriguing is lacking in the movie.

The basic idea is exactly the same in both book and movie. In the book a man’s life has ended in disaster and he’s facing a murder charge. But, by means which are never explicitly explained, he gets the chance to live the previous year all over again. He gets the chance to avoid the mistakes which led him to disaster. For some wholly unexplained reason the decision was made to make the protagonist of the movie rather than a man. Which in itself is no problem.

The movie opens with Sheila Page (Joan Leslie) shooting her husband Barney (Louis Hayward). Sheila is in a mess but she is given a chance to escape from the mess. By some mysterious means she is transported back in time for one year. She knows what it was that led to that shooting so it should be easy to make sure that this time it doesn’t happen. This time she will do things differently.

Sheila is a very successful actress and a major star on Broadway. Barney was at one time a successful playwright. Now he’s a self-pitying drunk.

Since Sheila is living the past year of her life all over again she knows what is going to happen. Barney will meet English playwright Paula Costello (Virginia Field). He will have an affair. That affair will lead to catastrophe. All Sheila has to do is to keep Barney and Paula apart.

That turns out to be less easy than it sounds. Sheila does do things differently, but somehow Barney and Paula meet anyway. And sure enough Barney and Paula start drifting into an affair. Sheila knows that she has to find a way to put a stop to this affair but she has no idea how to do it.

What makes the book interesting is that the protagonist isn’t entirely a bad guy but he’s very far from perfect. He’s human. He has plenty of human weaknesses. He finds it difficult to avoid temptations. He is impulsive and selfish. The question is, what is it that leads him to ruin? Is it just sheer bad luck? Is it fate? Is it poor judgment? Self-indulgence? Or is it his own personality flaws? We neither entirely despise him nor admire him but he’s human enough that we do care what happens to him. He’s a classic noir protagonist.

Unfortunately the decision was made to make the protagonist of the movie, Sheila, squeaky clean. She’s a regular Little Miss Goody Two Shoes. Which makes her totally uninteresting and makes it difficult to care about her fate. It also means that she doesn’t have the chance, reliving that fateful year, to learn anything about herself, to understand why she made bad decisions. Sheila in the movie is such a good girl that she never does anything wrong. It’s a fatal weakness in the movie. The movie entirely misses the point of the book, and as a result the movie ends up drifting aimlessly.

All the subtlety and cleverness and irony and ambiguity that was in the novel is missing from the movie. It’s been sanitised and dumbed down and made bland and innocuous. The feeling of impending doom in the novel, as the protagonist tries to avoid making the same mistakes and makes new ones instead, is gone. And the movie just doesn’t make any worthwhile use of its promising central idea.

It’s hard to judge Joan Leslie’s performance since Sheila is such a nothing character. Louis Hayward overacts but there’s not much he can do to distract us from the fact that Barney is a more simplistic character than any of the characters in the book.

Richard Basehart as Sheila’s poet friend William fares much better than the other cast members. Tom Conway gives his standard performance as theatrical producer John Friday, another character who has been made less interesting than his counterpart in the novel.

While the book is definitely noir fiction, the movie is not by any stretch of the imagination a film noir. The decision to make Sheila into Little Miss Perfect effectively removes all the noirness from the story.

The script apparently went through many changes and as so often happens in such cases the focus was lost. What we’re left with is a routine crime/romantic melodrama with a clumsy gimmick. As a crime/romantic melodrama Repeat Performance is not a truly bad movie, it’s just very disappointing. It’s a story with so much potential, which makes the disappointment all the more bitter.

Repeat Performance is a moderately entertaining movie that could have been something special. Recommended, with reservations.

I've reviewed William O’Farrell’s novel on Vintage Pop Fictions.

Sudan (1945)

Sudan is another frothy Maria Montez/Jon Hall Technicolor adventure romance from Universal. This time they’re in ancient Egypt.

Montez plays Naila, an Egyptian princess. When her father is murdered she becomes queen and she is determined to avenge her father. Her father was murdered by the bandit followers of an escaped slave named Herua (Turhan Bey).

Naila has a habit of mingling incognito among her people. At the beginning of the movie she has disguised herself as a dancing girl and puts on a show in a wine shop. She decides that this habit of hers might be a useful way to gather the information she needs to find her father’s killers. She heads off into the desert on her way to the horse fair.

What Naila doesn’t know is that she herself is a target. Not for murder. The plan is to capture her and sell her as a slave girl. She does indeed get captured by slavers, and branded as a slave girl. She escapes, gets captured again, escapes again. She gets some help from two good-natured wandering petty criminals, Merab (Jon Hall) and Nebka (Andy Devine). She also gets help from a handsome mysterious stranger and he’s the sort of man with whom she could easily fall in love. Maybe she has fallen in love with him. What she doesn’t know is that this man is Herua, the man responsible for her father’s death.

Naila also does some horse racing. When she set off on her adventure she took with her her prize golden stallion and no horse can beat him in any kind of race. The horse race is where Herua first noticed her.

There are plenty of romantic complications, with two men hopelessly in love with the queen. There are devious plots afoot. Naila is in more danger than she realises.

It’s all rather melodramatic but this isn’t a movie you’re supposed to take seriously and the screenplay by Edmund L. Hartmann has just enough twists to keep things reasonably entertaining. John Rawlins was no more than a journeyman director but he keeps things moving at a good clip and handles the action scenes well enough (although they are very much low-budget action scenes). He also directed Maria Montez and Jon Hall in the rather wonderful Arabian Nights a few years earlier.

There’s quite a bit of rear projection and some obvious matte paintings. Since we were told in the opening voiceover that this is a fantasy tale those things don’t really matter. And the process shots are fairly well done.

There’s not too much spectacle. The budget wasn’t going to stretch that far. The sets are however pretty OK and the costumes are nice. It looks like what it was, a modestly budgeted movie that relies on some lovely Technicolor cinematography.

Maria Montez looks stunning dressed as an Egyptian queen. You can almost overlook the fact that she’s an Egyptian queen with a Spanish accent.

The acting is what you expect. No-one was going to win an Oscar for a movie such as this but all the players are lively and competent. Turhan Bey gives the closest thing to a standout performance as the dashing Herua although he has some competition from George Zucco as the queen’s chief advisor Harodef. Andy Devine is there to provide comic relief but he’s a lot less annoying than usual.

Sudan is included in the new three-movie Maria Montez Blu-Ray set from Kino Lorber. The transfer is excellent.

Sudan is feelgood entertainment. We can see most of the plot twists coming. We don’t mind. We never feel that any of the sympathetic characters are in any great danger but again we don’t mind. It’s a fairy tale. It’s silly and light and fluffy. I just can’t bring myself to dislike a Maria Montez movie. She made better movies than this but it’s still recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Siren of Atlantis (1949) with is Maria Montez’s best movie by far, a movie in which she does some fairly creditable acting.

The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

At least five directors (including Michael Powell) worked on the 1940 British production The Thief of Bagdad but this movie is like Gone With the Wind - it’s an example of a movie made by a producer as auteur. The producer in this case being Alexander Korda, and there was no more colourful and ambitious figure in the British film industry than the Hungarian-born Korda.

This movie is of course an Arabian Nights adventure/fantasy/romance.

We start with events that offer hints of strangeness and that leave us a little uneasy. A woman from the imperial palace is talking to a man about a princess, a princess who sleeps. We get the impression that this sleep is not a natural one. The woman is Halima (Mary Morris). The man is Jaffar (Conrad Veidt) and we will soon learn that he is the Grand Vizier. Halima invites a blind beggar to accompany her to the palace.

The blind beggar tells his story in flashback. He was not always a beggar. Once he was a king. And his faithful dog was not always a dog, but a small boy and an inveterate thief. The boy’s name was Abu.

The beggar had been King Ahmad, and he ruled Bagdad. He was served by his Grand Vizier Jaffar, but he was not well served by him. Jaffar in fact was the real ruler. It was a brutal unpopular rule but the people blamed King Ahmad rather than Jaffar.

Jaffar devised a fiendish plot to get Ahmad out of the way but it was more than just a power grab. There is also a princess, the daughter of the Sultan of Basra. Ahmad and Jaffar both love the princess. The princess of course loves Ahmad. There are three magical spells at work. One spell has put the princess to sleep. She can only be awakened by the man she loves. The other spell, cast by Jaffar, robs Ahmad of his eyesight. His sight will be restored when Jaffar holds the princess in his arms. Ahmad does not want his sight restored if that will be the price. The third spell turned Abu into a dog.

This is a movie with lots of magical elements and they’re handled in an interesting way. The princess’s father, a kindly but foolish old man, loves mechanical toys. He has a huge collection of amazingly clever toys. They’re so clever you could easily mistake them for magic. Jaffar is a genuine sorcerer and his specialty is creating mechanical toys that are actually magical rather than mechanical. Such as an amazing flying horse. And a much more devious toy which he will employ in a very sinister manner.

Ahmad is determined to save the princess from a fate worse than death (marriage to Jaffar) but he’s not really sure how to go about it. He and Abu tend to blunder about, but fate lends a hand. There is a prophecy. Of course the prophecy can’t possibly have anything to do with a mere young ragamuffin of a thief like Abu, or can it? And Abu has a stroke of luck. He discovers a bottle washed up on the beach, a bottle that contains a genie. Discovering a genie can be very good luck but you have to be very very careful with genies. The genie does offer to help Abu steal the All-Seeing Eye from a gigantic statue of a goddess, and that will certainly help.

And naturally there’s a magic carpet.

This is a movie that is very special effects-driven, which was still pretty unusual in 1940. Some of the effects work superbly, others not so well, but what Korda was attempting with this movie was something very ambitious indeed, in fact more ambitious than anything done in movies up to that point. Even when the effects are a bit iffy they’re still fun.

The settings, the props, the costumes, are all spectacular. It looks like a very very expensive movie which is exactly what it was. Alexander Korda was always prepared to spend real money on his movies.

John Justin as Ahmad is the ostensible hero of the movie with June Duprez as the princess being the leading lady but in fact it’s Conrad Veidt as the villain and Sabu as the hero’s sidekick who get top billing. Which is absolutely just. The movie belongs to them. Conrad Veidt is a marvellous villain. He’s suitably ruthless and sinister but he is also human. He is motivated by the desire for power but most of all he is motivated by love. His love for the princess is genuine. It’s the kind of love that could redeem a man, but the princess does not reciprocate his love. Jaffar is perhaps to some extent a tragic villain. He gains everything that he thought he wanted but without the love of the princess it ends up meaning nothing.

Sabu is bursting with vitality without ever becoming irritating. You can see how a genuine friendship developed between Ahmad and Abu.

This is not just a remake of the 1924 Douglas Fairbanks movie of the same name. Both are great movies, both are visually stupendous, but each can stand on its own merits.

The 1940 Korda version combines adventure, fantasy, humour, romance and even horror (the giant spider) and it gets the mix just right. You can find holes in the plot, some of the special effects don’t quite come off, but there’s so much movie magic here that minor flaws can be overlooked. It’s a movie with energy and charm, and heart.

The 1940 version has had a number of DVD releases (my copy is the Region 4 release from Madman) and Network in the UK have released it on Blu-Ray.

The Thief of Bagdad is a real feelgood movie. Highly recommended.