Review for Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves

An invading army run roughshod through Bagdad, indigenous captors are brutally tortured, and 'never surrender' insurgents pose a deadly threat to the occupying forces. Amazingly, this isn't a recap over recent world history but actually a summation of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, a film made a good 50+ years before Iraq was a twinkle in George W's eye. And rather than political foresight the film is instead a slice of exotic escapism, served up to distract 1940s audiences from Hitler's marching war machine. Loosely based on the Arabic folktale, the film forgoes the macabre brutality of its source (in which men are flayed alive in boiling oil) and instead borrows the plot from 1939s The Adventures of Robin Hood. In this case it is nobleman Ali (John Hall) who turns outlaw and leads a band of thieves to liberate his country from barbaric invaders (here the Mongols). They even find time to sing songs about, "robbing the rich [and] feeding the poor".

Also borrowed from Hood is a lavish Technicolor palette, with pink, green and gold emphasising the unreality. Indeed Bagdad itself, with its shimmering glow looks more like the Emerald City of Oz than anywhere in the Middle East. Less vivid is Arthur Lubin's direction which goes through the motions and in scenes of daring-do (such as Ali's swashbuckling duel with the dastardly Kahn) fails to raise the pulse. As the romantic leads John Hall comes across as the poor man's Errol Flynn and though Maria Montez brings her mischievous Latin American sexuality to the role as Ali's betrothed (flirting with him while she bathes, seeming naked) she is reduced to a stereotypical damsel come the climax. Better films of this sort have been made (see 1940s The Thief of Bagdad) but this is never-the-less and easy way to spend 90 minutes. And while the film is fiercely apolitical it is interesting to note that today, as Bagdad struggles to regain stability, the American occupiers have given a name to the insurgent - they call them Ali Babas. Strange how life mirrors art, and vice versa.