Summer Under the Stars 2011 -- Day Twenty-Three Review: The Thief of Bagdad

I've already talked about how TCM has their quintet of actors they always feature during any of their special movie programming, but one of the nice things about Summer Under the Stars is that they also feature lesser-known (or simply less popular) actors, particularly silent screen stars who have faded from the public consciousness, like Lon Chaney and the actor I'm focusing on today, Conrad Veidt. Chaney at least has some name recognition because of his innovative makeup work and the fact that he shares his name with his son, The Wolfman, but prior to this August I had never heard of Veidt, a German actor who spent most of his career in Europe and only settled in Hollywood during the last three years of his life. And that's why I appreciate Summer Under the Stars, because as I found out, Veidt was an extremely interesting man who deserves to be better known outside of silent movie circles.



The Man Who Laughs

One of Veidt's most famous roles came early in his career, as the sleepwalking murderer in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), where he is virtually unrecognizable under heavy makeup and jet black hair. Like Chaney, many of his movies throughout the twenties required him to obscure his features to play men existing on the fringe of society, whether as Ivan the Terrible in Waxworks or the tragic Gwynplaine in The Man Who Laughs, whose mutilated smile was allegedly the inspiration for The Joker in the original Batman comics. Despite being a big star in Germany, Veidt was virulently anti-Nazi, and after marrying a Jewish woman in the early thirties he left Germany and took up residence in Britain, where, among other films, he made the 1937 spy thriller Dark Journey with Vivien Leigh. It wasn't until 1940 that he moved to Hollywood to shoot The Thief of Bagdad (which, despite being a British film, was produced in California because of World War II); ironically, he spent much of his time thereafter playing Nazis, most famously as Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942).

Different From the Others

Veidt was characteristic of the liberal Weimar Republic that preceded the Nazi regime in Germany, during which time many of the masterpieces of German film were produced: Robert Weine's Caligari; Fritz Lang's Metropolis; G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box; and Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel, among others. These films dealt with social issues that the Nazi government would later denounce as debauched or insubordinate, including the plight of the working class under capitalism and homosexuality: Veidt himself played one of the first gay characters ever put on screen (and certainly one of the first sympathetic gay characters ever put on screen) in Different From the Others (1919). He was supportive of the Jewish people and in 1934, after moving to Britain, made the anti-persecution film Jew Suss (the title of which unfortunately later gained infamy as an anti-Semitic propaganda film released by the Nazis in 1940), and like his compatriot Marlene Dietrich, he dedicated a good amount of his own time and money to helping the Allied cause during the war. He died in 1943, two years before the end of the war in Europe, making it impossible to know what his relationship would have been with his native country in the post-War period, or whether he would have moved on to playing non-German roles in Hollywood films.

With his varied life in consideration, then, it's disappointing that TCM chose to focus primarily on his work playing Nazis in war-time films, rather than exploring his work in Germany during the silent era. I almost chose to watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari because it was one of his few German films they did include, but in the end I went with The Thief of Bagdad because its buoyant storyline seemed more appropriate for a summer movie festival, and because it was directed by Michael Powell, who, along with Emeric Pressburger, created two classics of post-War British cinema: Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes. Like those films, The Thief of Bagdad is full of bright colors and exotic cinematography, translating parts of the Arabian Nights into a story about a king, ousted from his kingdom by an evil vizier, who teams up with a petty thief before falling in love with a princess and losing his sight to a magical curse. Veidt plays the vizier, Jaffar, while John Justin plays the ousted king and the Indian actor Sabu plays the thief Abu (and, in probably the most famous sequence from the film, Rex Ingram plays a giant genie who grants Abu three wishes in return for freeing him from his bottle; the similarities between this story and Disney's Aladdin are very much intentional, right down to the way Jafar in Aladdin greatly resembles Veidt).

The Thief of Bagdad really is, in effect, a perfect summer movie, high on beautiful scenery, visual effects, and action, but pretty skimpy when it comes to acting and character development. Veidt is far and away the best actor of the bunch; John Justin is serviceable as the king, kind of like a thinner, less charming version of Errol Flynn, but June Duprez lacks any personality at all as the Princess. (Alexander Korda, who produced the film, reportedly wanted Vivien Leigh to play the Princess, and I would have loved to see what she could have done with the part -- if anything could have been done with it.) The acting isn't really important in a film like this, though, and it's well worth watching for the vibrant photography and levity of the story lines -- as well as the chance to see Veidt in the role that kicked off the final stage of his career. My hope, however, is that TCM will highlight Veidt again in the future, with more of a focus on the work that first made him a star.

Grade: A