It's a good thing someone played by Fairbanks is around to save the day, dodging all sorts of dangers like a human-hating monkey, a giant underwater spider and more along the way.įairbanks was more than a handsome star with a knack for choosing sleek, effective vehicles. The story's main gimmick is a standard fairy-tale situation: the beautiful princess will marry the man who proves himself the bravest and cleverest, but a tubby little prince has somehow gotten into the running, and an even darker threat comes from a sinister Mongol who will stop at nothing to win. The eponymous hero is the kind of devil-may-care rascal who watches a fellow thief get flogged for stealing a jewel, and then immediately steals a jewel to show how unflappable he is.
The plot is episodic, geared more to flamboyant escapades than to narrative logic. This said, the freewheeling Arabian Nights adaptation has lots of atmospheric charm and silent-movie spectacle, and looking for hidden wires in rope-trick, flying-horse, and magic-carpet scenes is a good part of the fun. Douglas Fairbanks has been called the first celebrity, which is probably correct, and his 1924 epic The Thief of Bagdad: An Arabian Nights Fantasy holds a special place in his sizable body of work - not because it was his best picture, but because it capped a phase in his career so grandly and excessively that afterward he looked for less humongous productions that better suited both his talent and his audience.
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