Customer Reviews

Thousand and One Nights [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a super film. I bought it because Carole Mathews plays a handmaiden, but her part is so small you could blink and miss it. Instead I was lucky enough to see the rare double act of matinee idol Cornel Wilde and Phil Silvers turn the traditional tale of Aladdin into the nearest a cinema can get to pantomime.

There are a few things which might be considered dodgy by today's standards, a Persian princess with blonde hair, and the racial references are all muddled, but this is to some extent a spoof on the European "Arabian Nights" take on Persian legend, so it is not wholly incompatible. The most stunning thing is the art direction, which was Oscar nominated, and this manifests itself in the great sets and also the costumes. Technicolor was made for films like this and give a quality that is almost more than real. The script seems very contemporary and not at all 1940s, and Silvers seems like an American Frankie Howerd, placed in the period setting to give modern audiences some point of identification. He and Wilde sparkle throughout the movie, as do panto villains Hoey and Van Zandt and the two beautiful ladies playing the Princess and the Genie.

Even if you don't spot Carole Mathews, try to see Shelly Winters, also playing a handmaiden!

Hollywood unfortunately don't do harem hokum any more. I suppose that we know too much about Baghdad these days, but this movie delivers and then some.
They do it to the point where they spread linguistic anacronisms all over the place, and the hero's sidekick wears hornrimmed spectacles and somebody has introduced gin rummy and modern plastic coated playing cards in the 8'th century. Of course there are all the usual suspects: The beautiful princess, the evil sorceror and the ditto royal brother and we have the jinnee who sees absolutely no reason why the princesses should grab all the heroes.
Besides the story is well plotted and well written.

No words can describe this movie, it needs to be seen, several times to be completely appreciated in the way it deserves. First of all it should be clarified that this is an "Arabian Hollywood Fantasy" movie that has nothing whatsoever to do with the original tales of the Arabian Nights, or with anything Arabian or middle-Eastern in the historical sense. This is a stage-set, 100% artificial, pure plastic-polyester-formica production that can only evoke the phenomenon of post war pop and kitsch suburban culture that only arrived to American reality in full splendor a full decade later in the 50's, so in a sense it can be considered under the category of "Accidentally Prophetic". This is the kind of movie that is forseeing a reality that much later Diane Arbus was going to be able to record with her camera and projecting the right amount of ironic social visual commentary, but that is here present in a much richer, extravagant version of exquisite nightmarish bad taste to a degree that coud never be surpassed and is only slightly challenged in Hollywood productions such as "The Prodigal" (1955). It easily leaves "Kismet" (1944) in the dust when it gets to impossible costumes and totally absurd hairdos, not to mention the overwhelming presence of perfectly caucasian, whitest, blondest women that are suppossed to be harem odalisques.
Adele Jergens plays Princess Armina, and her exagerated hair contorsions are beyond the realm of what can be possible, even in an "Arabian" fantasy. There are curls in such profussion around her head that it sometimes has the effect of a fountain in Vegas frozen by the magic of hairspray. In one of her ealry scenes she wears a hair adornment that is suppossed to be a miniature jeweled pagoda, but is actually off-center and gives the impression that Princess Armina may well be the first human unicorn in the East. Through the entire film Ms. Jergens floats in and out of remarkable costumes that spike her breasts like rockets, emphasize her Aryan skin and hair, ultra-red mouth and cheeks and help disguise her rotund shape under clouds of polyesterama chiffon and blazing, trailing veils. It is also remarkable that she came out with these features when her father the sultan, who is played by Dennis Hoey, who also plays her "evil" uncle who stages a take over, is as swarthy and hairy as an Arabian camel. But never mind, the fact is she is the "Princess" of the movie, and aside from the fact that every word out of her mouth sounds like she has just been chewing on an onion bagel in Flatbush Avenue, she manages to capture the heart of everyman she meets, including the hero of the story, Aladdin, here played by Cornel Wilde, king of B-movies swashbuckling a 'beef cake' of the time that may well be the first one I've ever seen on film without enough beef anywhere to justify the title. The first time we see him he is singing away trying to sell some beauties in the slave market, but we know from the go that he is dubbing a second rate tenor so we right away understand the scope of the movie's special effects, which by the way, earned it an Oscar nomination.
Phil Silvers as Abdullah plays Aladdin's side kick. He looks like Rosalind Rusell undergoing an agressive sex change with the same exact glasses she wore for "The Women". He is suppossed to be comical but instead takes obnoxiousness to a new level and has the charm of a leaded bell on a constant, unstoppable swing. Evelyn Keyes plays the Genie and does a similar treatmet to her role. Her reddish-toned-super curled hairdo is as silly as her dialogue and she has the sensuality of a tea table even when wearing the brightest green harem pants that can be seen without burning the human retina.
All these characters go through the motions of an adventure movie, but the true star of this movie is Jean-Louis, the designer of the impossibly amazing outfits and accroutements that truly make the film an unforgettable experience of the ridiculous. At one point Princess Armina is wearing a blue cape, with a gold dress amidst two mustard curtain treatments, richly cascading from the most plastic architectural pseudo Arabian walls that can be imagined, all of which is more than enough to garantee an instant headache,on first sight. But it does not stop there. Who can forget the purple gazebo where the princess sleeps?? If the entire conclave of bishops in Rome had been stripped of their capes they still could not achieve this purple intensity and excess of fabric. The green capes on all the excessivily staunch guards makes it looks like they are a collection of human salad elements awaiting a sense of direction into a bowl, while the gold lamé boots that the sultan puts on for the wedding would make Nancy Sinatra roll over with jealousy for they far surpass her white booties, or any others for that matter in pure, unbridled tackiness.
All throughout the interior scenes one can see a collection of all the hideous shapes and colors of furniture that were to ruin interior decoration into a travesty of nightmarish proportions that can only be described as a style as "Long Island Glitter" and historically lasted from the 50's all the way into the 1970's, but which clearly had its roots here: Abundantly stuffed, huge sofas in maroon or mustard tones, plastic torcheres in pure formica white that masquerades as plaster, imitating sprouting branches or grass, huge mirrors of the same branch-like material, with accompanying side lamps. Emerald green car-paint to decorate the interior of the extreme white entranceways in pseudo moorish style, to achieve the effect of entering or leaving a 1950's Ford that has magically morphed into a wall, glass bottles that look like small plastic rockets from the Flash Gordon sets, doors decorated with mosaic flower pattern that look like they have been stenciled from Macy's shopping bags with colored sugar, and everywhere weapons that look like enlarged hair pins, shields that can be easily transformed into casseroles....just divine, unprecedented depths of brutality in decorating that could have never been achieved in any prior form of Barbaric culture.
The visual impact of this movie is so rich and detailed that it needs close attention and several viewings to be fully appreciated and enjoyed. The complete lack of connection with the Arabian Nights story or cultural setting was not a problem for me, I enjoyed it as a unique cultural phenomenon that is not only interesting, but hilarious.