THE CINEMA
" The Thief of Baghdad." At the Odeon--- All This and Heaven Too." At the Warner.
The Thief of Baghdad was so long in the making that it had to be very good in order to live up to the expectations fed by the frequent publicity statements about the magnificence of the colouring and the ingenuity of the trick-work. Fortunately for all concerned, it is certainly the finest Technicolor effort so far achieved, and the tricks, with a few exceptions, are convincing and exciting. The film is, in fact, a gigantic and extravagant Christmas pantomime, and, like all good pantomimes, it has points of appeal for children as well as for grown-ups.
For the children there is Sabu as the thief who, among other things, is turned into a dog and back again by the wicked Vizier (Conrad Veidt), releases the enormous djinn from the bottle and is taken by him to a vast palace on the roof of the world, fights a deadly combat with a giant spider whose web is as big as the roof of Waterloo Station, and finally saves everybody's life by a last-minute rescue on the flying carpet. For the grown-ups there is the course of true love running anything but smoothly for the dispossessed King Achmed (John Justin) and the beauteous princess (June Duprez) ; there is Conrad Veidt as the aforesaid Vizier, muffled in a sinister burnous and up to no good ; there is a beautiful study by Miles Malleson as a doddering old Sultan with a passion for mechanical toys ; and, of course, masses of dancing girls, swirling crowds, torturers, Nubian slaves, palan- quins, and all the other trappings which made Hassan and Chu Chin Chow so successful.
Throughout the film colour is used effectively and nearly always with taste. Vincent Korda, the art director, surrounded himself with a galaxy of well-known designers such as John Armstrong and Oliver Messel, with the result that even the most colourful scenes have a sense of space and design which Hollywood pro- ducts have never yet achieved. The opening shots of the film are specially exciting—a huge galley with rust-red sails plunging majestically through a blue-green sea.
The magical scenes are very satisfactory. The enormous djinn trying to stamp on the diminutive form of Sabu, who is no bigger than his big toe, the sudden storm summoned by the Vizier to wreck the hero's boat, and the terrifying toy which does a Siva-like dance before stabbing the Sultan to death—all these are the true stuff of fairy-tale. Only the scenes of the flying horse fail to come off ; the superimposition of a cartoon figure on a realistic background is here too palpably obvious to achieve the magical touch which is needed.
With All This and Heaven Too we return to the now fashionable three-decker film. Presumably, people like their films to run for hours and hours, even when, as in this case, the story hardly warrants it. Based on a real event in the 1840's, the story tells of the tragic amour between an aristocrat and his children's governess. It is delicately directed, Bette Davis registers pathos and resignation, and Charles Boyer quivers with sensitivity ; but it really does not merit its enormous length, despite the fact that it is said faithfully to reproduce the novel of the same name. If this sort of thing goes on we shall soon be sitting through a thirty-reel transcription of Charles Morgan's novels with not a word omitted, and praying for the return of the two-reel slapstick comedy.
BASIL WRIGHT.
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