The Thief of Bagdad (1924) on

The grandest production of Douglas Fairbanks’ career, The Thief of Bagdad (1924) is first and foremost a love story. It is also one of the greatest spectacles of the silent era. The film’s legendary production design is a striking part of this Arabian Nights fantasy.

Fairbanks is a street thief who falls in love with a princess who is about to marry. He impersonates a prince to gain access to the princess and becomes involved in a competition for her hand in marriage. Faced with three unsavory royal suitors, the princess falls for the thief in his disguise.

Character actor Sojin makes an excellent villain as Khan, the Mongol prince, who would rather steal the princess’ heart than win it. Anna May Wong is the young handmaiden who is secretly in league with Khan. And Snitz Edwards lends able comedic support as the thief’s cohort. — Carl Bennett

This new edition of Fairbanks’ fantasy masterpiece includes a new stereo music score based on the 1924 cue sheets and performed by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. The disc also features a supplementary section that includes 19 minutes of outtakes, an introduction by Orson Welles, and exerpts from Méliès’ Arabian Nights and Paul Leni’s Waxworks (1924).

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.
This Region 1 NTSC DVD is also available directly from Kino International.

This early DVD edition may show its age a bit, with its older video transfer, its early disc pressing, and its mono sound. We do not know whether the transfer has been prepared by home video producer David Shepard from a 35mm or 16mm print, and therefore cannot advise readers as to the visual quality.

The musical accompaniment was arranged from the original 1924 music cue sheets and performed by Gaylord Carter on a Wurlitzer theater pipe organ, and is presented here in mono sound. Carter always turned in an exciting performance, capturing the essence of musical accompaniment in silent era theaters.

This is likely a quality edition of The Thief of Bagdad on DVD. But, beware, several readers have noted that a portion of the pivotal rose bush scene is missing from this edition.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

This budget edition of The Thief of Bagdad has been transferred from a Blackhawk Films 16mm reduction print and, therefore, has many of the shortcomings of that older print. The picture is slightly contrasty, with loss of detail in highlight areas. The print used for the transfer has some minor emulsion damage, several sections of exposure fluctuations throughout, splices, long vertical scratches, dust, and frame jitters. The original print has cropped the original print framing slightly, and the video transfer has not been windowboxed, with the result that some of the film’s intertitles with be cropped to the point of difficult reading on some televisions.

The mono audio is lifted directly from the 16mm print soundtrack, an orchestral soundtrack with (sometimes silly) sound effects. The music is serviceable, but hardly pleasing.

This disc should not be your first experience of The Thief of Bagdad, since the film has survived in very good to excellent 35mm prints that have been utilized for other home video editions (notably the out-of-print HBO Video laserdisc and VHS editions). Sight unseen, we feel that the earlier Image DVD edition has to be far better than this Alpha Video edition, and we recommend the Image disc until a better DVD edition is published.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.co.uk.

This edition has been mastered from a good 16mm reduction print, grayed-out in its tonal range and flecked with a typical amount of speckling and dust, but with a few print tears, long vertical scratches, and some serious emulsion scrapes. The image detail is very soft, almost to the point of distraction.

The video transfer runs at sound speed — which is a bit too fast — because the film is accompanied by a music score, with sound effects, from the monaural optical soundtrack of the source print. All of which begs the question why St. Clair Vision thinks that 5.1 surround sound is justified, other than to dupe an unknowing consumer into thinking they are getting a disc of value. Don’t bother.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

Other silent era Anna May Wong films available on DVD home video:
Mr. Wu (1927)
Peter Pan (1924)
Piccadilly (1929)
The Toll of the Sea (1922)