Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

TheLittleSongbird While the 1940 The Thief of Bagdad is one of my favourite films, this silent film from 1924 is every bit as memorable and has much to offer. Visually, it is spectacular especially in the splendid cinematography and the colourful sets. The story is still as magical as ever, with the action witty and cleverly choreographed with Fairbanks doing his own stunts and doing it so energetically, and the fantasy elements from the magic rope and the winged horse to the underwater sea monsters and the valley battle are enough to enchant you. True, the film is lengthy and may contain a couple of lulls in the pacing, but when Fairbanks, the visuals and the adventure and fantasy elements of the story were so good, this was hardly a problem for me. The characters could be seen as genre clichés, but fun and likable ones at that as well as endearingly performed. Of the performances, faring weakest was Julanne Johnston, beautiful but on the bland side. The rest of the cast more than make amends, with Douglas Faribanks really the epitome of dashing, heroic and charming(made even more so with his trademark smile), Sojin deliciously malevolent and Anna May Wong entrancing. Overall, there are a couple of debits, but the great things overshadow those completely and make for a sensational film. 9.5/10 Bethany Cox

Michael Neumann The acrobatic skill and charisma of Douglas Fairbanks fits well with the magnificent sets and magical special effects of this timeless romantic fantasy, but all the histrionic mugging and florid over-emoting only makes the silent epic look sadly dated when seen today. Thankfully the title role of the penniless thief who becomes a prince doesn't demand much acting prowess, allowing Fairbanks plenty of opportunities to express himself physically: jumping over walls, battling fierce supernatural creatures, riding his valiant steed over desert sands, and so forth. To win the hand of a beautiful princess he must embark on a quest to find the most wondrous object on Earth, and after triumphing over every adversity the two lovers are last seen floating away into the Arabian night on their flying carpet. The moral of story is spelled out in the twinkling stars overhead: Happiness Must Be Earned, and who can argue with that?

DKosty123 For those who have not seen a silent film, try this one. Douglas Fairbanks shows off great silent acting & fantastic stunt work in a very entertaining film. This is the type of film that should be pulled out when someone wants to do a theater organ score with a silent movie.There is a very good reason this film is great visually and clever with special effects. The Director is Raoul Walsh who is one of the great Directors who has gotten more recognition in recent years because of his great body of directing work. This version has been overshadowed by the 1940 version done in Technicolor with Sabu, but once you look at this film, you will realize this film is great in its own right.Julanne Johnson, a very busy actress in films until she retired in 1934 does pretty well here in the female lead. This is Raoul Walsh's 49th film directing & it shows in how well the cameras are used in this film. Anna May Wong is a great actress in a featured role in this one too.

Steffi_P Cinema creates its own legends. Among the greatest of them was Douglas Fairbanks, in his incarnation as the eternal swashbuckler, a romantic hero who could only exist in the golden days of the silent era. Thief of Bagdad is his finest moment, the greatest tale he ever told.Although Fairbanks wore many different hats in his swashbucklers – exchanging the mask of Zorro for the cap of Robin Hood and so forth – each of these characters was just the same persona in a different time and place. His previous two efforts, The Three Musketeers and Robin Hood, spend a lot of time laying down back-story before allowing the hero to emerge, and this made them very profound but a little slow at times. In contrast, Thief of Bagdad begins with the introduction of the titular rascal, sweeping us straight into his escapades, and then building the wider plot and story-world outwards from there.Fairbanks's style was always extremely athletic and rhythmic, but the action of this one is almost akin to ballet. Doug dances his way through the role, and much of the movement seems literally choreographed, such as the three fat guards' heads popping up one after the other. The dance even carries through to the serene and tender love scenes. This balletic feel is made appropriate by the fantasy setting, which allows a more abstract approach, unlike all the other Fairbanks pictures which were rip-roaring adventures, but were grounded in (fairly) realistic worlds. The fantastical tone also makes acceptable the pantomime acting, such as the exaggerated yawn and stretch of the guard falling asleep, or Fairbanks's palms literally itching when he spies a precious jewel.As his director for this project Fairbanks selected Raoul Walsh. Walsh is now best remembered for the gritty action pictures he would later make at Warner Brothers, but perhaps the most important aspect he brought to his pictures was a romantic spirit of adventure. The fabulous sets were already built and the script locked down by the time Walsh came on board, but he adds his adventuresome touch in a number of ways. Walsh was very much an outdoors man, and many of his pictures emphasise the openness of plains and mountains, making them places of freedom, contrasting them with a stifling atmosphere for interiors. Thief of Bagdad, with its elaborate street sets and cavernous halls, has a less clear distinction between indoors and outdoors, but Walsh makes those very streets the equivalent of the open plain, keeping his camera back to show Fairbanks dancing freely through them. In the final half hour, notice how places such as the bazaar or the harbour where the bad princes seek their treasures are photographed as crowded or confined, with actors framed through doorways or amongst the clutter of the set. When we cut back to Fairbanks, he is in long shot in a wide-open space.It's also very like Walsh to make us feel as if we are there with the hero, taking part in his adventure. While those long shots rightly show of the magnificent sets and the hero's athletics, at crucial times Walsh brings us in close, often with the camera just behind Fairbanks, as if we were following him. Perhaps the most effective of these is in the fight with the lizard monster, in which we are literally brought in for the kill. We also get to see Walsh's sensitive side (rarely acknowledged, least of all by himself) in the romantic meetings between Fairbanks and his lady fair, embodied in this case by Julanne Johnson. These scenes are both tentative and passionate, with the most beautiful moment after he scales her balcony. We cut between two separate shots, one of Fairbanks kissing her arm, the other of her looking away. Their contact is slight, but filled with deep emotion.Thief of Bagdad comes from an era in which the walls between cinema and forms of expression such as ballet, opera and fine art were at their thinnest. Title cards are kept to a minimum, and yet this is not a collection of technical tricks like Murnau's Der Letzte Mann. Neither is it confusing or pretentiously highbrow. It tells its story visually, but still manages to be engaging and earthily human. It is the very essence of silent cinema.