Raoul Walsh's "The Thief of Bagdad" is magnificent entertainment! Douglas Fairbanks steals from the rich, resurrects a tree god, rides a flying carpet and battles a giant underwater spider in this silent epic. The man was never better than he is here. A masterpiece.

The greatest of the 1920s swashbucklers, Raoul Walsh’s adventure epic stars Douglas Fairbanks as a thief who falls hopelessly in love with the daughter of the Caliph of Bagdad. In order to win her hand, the thief endeavors to best her other suitors by bringing back the rarest treasure before “the seventh moon.” This allows Walsh, one of the most astute directors of action ever, to execute the narrative as a series of exciting, self-contained set pieces, the elaborate special effects of which still impress and charm today.

It’s a solid adventure yarn, and quite a bit of fun, and does a lot to reinforce its moral that “Happiness must be earned”. But it has to be noted that this is also a very long movie, especially for a silent film. Its run time is 2 hours, 20 minutes, and when you don’t have sound effects or frequent dialogue — and what dialogue there is has to interrupt the action with a title card — it’s hard not to notice just how long it is. Nevertheless, it’s still fun, and very artistic, and worth it if you have the endurance for a 140 minute silent film. Read version comparison review.

Please look past the overt and covert racism, the ogling of women, etc. and enjoy Fairbanks' epic tale. The movie opens with the aphorism "Happiness must be earned" and Fairbanks sure as hell earns it here. Spectacle, humor, and physical feats abound as Fairbanks' simple thief gets involved in larger and larger problems. Most of the visual aspects still hold up today - the huge sets, crowds of extras and a lot of the special effects still work. Made 15 years before The Wizard of Oz, but has a similar feel (although no color or sound).

One of the wonders of silent cinema, actually forget the word silent, one of the wonders of cinema. Nothing is real in this film the actors are over the top, Doug almost dances through the film, in fact given his performance it's nearly a ballet, the sets bare no resemblance to reality but they're just so immense and beautiful and grand that they work perfectly, some of the monsters and the winged horse in particular don't quite work, you do perhaps have to forgive a bit for the film being released in 1924, but by the end things crank up to such a breathless point that the film is overwhelming.

Visually this film is simply stunning; the sets and costumes are lavishly designed and the special effects are amazing in how well they hold up today. The magic carpet ride at the end and the various monsters Ahmed must face in his quest are particularly stunning. The story here is perhaps a bit over-long though for what is essentially a basic hero's journey/win the girl narrative. Also, while the effects are quite good, the fights with the monsters are too brief to build any sort of real tension (often they are dispatched with a single stab of the sword). There are also some racial problems with the film, particularly in its portrayal of the asian villains; that is to be expected from the time period but it's still hard to ignore.

Raoul Walsh's "The Thief of Bagdad" is magnificent entertainment! Douglas Fairbanks steals from the rich, resurrects a tree god, rides a flying carpet and battles a giant underwater spider in this silent epic. The man was never better than he is here. A masterpiece.

Fairbank's devilish charm and increasingly imaginative setpieces work wonders. Shame about all the racism.

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD is early Hollywood escapism at its best. Raul Walsh's quickly paced direction evens out the epic, if emotionally slight, scope of the film. Douglas Fairbanks jumps, swims, soars and falls in love with equal skill; his longing come-hither spirit fingers are especially wonderful. One major issue, which grinds hundreds of hero's journeys to a halt, is that the blaspheming burgling bastard introduced in the beginning is transformed into a bland boring beau by the middle. In an alternate universe, the greatest movie ever made exists in which Fairbanks starts to fall for the beautiful Princess, until he meets the even more beautiful, and infinitely more intriguing, Anna May Wong who joins him on heists down through the valley of fire and up to the Citadel of the Moon. Until the multiverse collides making that version available though, what we're left with remains one of the most astounding cinematic adventures in the century long history of cinema.

Douglas Fairbanks was the first great swashbuckling action star, and this is surely one of the greatest adventure films of all time, tailor-made for his robust athleticism and sense of whimsy and fun. The scale of the thing beggars the imagination, and I know of no clearer example that demonstrates how film had matured from the previous decade. The giant, opulent sets dwarf the actors, and Fairbanks seems to have refused to allow anything to limit his vision, no matter how fantastical. The result is two and a half hours positively packed with battles, acrobatics, monsters, and magic.

This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.