THE THIEF 0f BAGDAD (Le voleur de
Bagdad).
| Grande-Bretagne. Réal. :
Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan. Non
crédités : Zolten Korda, William Cameron
Meules, Alexandre Korda. Cie de Prod. :
London Film Productions. Prod. : Alexandre
Korda. Prod. Ass.: Zolten Korda, William
Cameron Menzies. Prod. exéc. : David
Cunynghame. Prod. asst. : André de Toth. Réal.
asst. : Geoffrey Boothby, Charles David. Scén,:
Lajos Biro. Adapt./dial. : Miles
Malleson. Dir. photo. : Georges Perinal. Coul.
: Technicolor. Photo ext. : Osmond Borrodaile.
Op. Cam. : Robert Krasker. Eff. spéc.
photo. : Lawrence Butler. Réal.
Technicolor : Natalie Kaimus. Mont. sup. :
William Hombeck. Mont. : Charles
Crichton. Dir. art. : Vincent Korda. Dir.
art. ass. : W. Percy Day, William Cameron
Menzies, Frederick Pusey, Ferdinand Bellan. Mus.
: Miklos Rozsa. Dir. mus. : Muir
Mathieson. Cost. : Oliver Messel, John
Armstrong, Marcel Vertes. Son A.W.
Watkins. |
 |
Int. : Conrad Veidt (Jaffar), Sabu
(Abu), June Duprez (La Princesse), John Justin (Ahmad),
Rex Ingram (Djinni), Miles Malleson (Le
Sultan), Morton Selten (Le Roi), Mary Morris (Halima),
Bruce Winston (Un Marchand), Hay Patrie (L'Astrologue),
Roy Emmerton (Le Geôlier), Allan Jeayes (Le
Conteur), Adelaide Hall (La Chanteuse).
Durée : 106 mn. Prés. : 24 décembre.
Sort. GB/US : 25 décembre. Dist. GB/US : United Artists.
Prix : Oscar de la photo couleur, de la décoration et
des effets spéciaux. Sort. France avril 1946. Dist.:
Regina.
Le tournage, interrompu en sept. 1939
à cause de l'entrée en guerre de la Grande-Bretagne,
est achevé en Californie en 1940.
Comment Abu, le petit voleur, devient
l'ami du prince Ahmad. Comment il va l’aider à
reconquérir la princesse enlevée par le grand Vizir
Jaffar et à s'opposer à cet usurpateur cruel et doué
de pouvoirs magiques. Comment Abu s'adjoint l'aide du
génie et de l'OEil-Qui-Voit-Tout, et comment, une fois
le traître confondu, les amoureux réunis et le pays
libéré, le tapis volant lui permet d'échapper à une
ultime menace : l'école.
|
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" Personne n'avait de contrôle
sur le scénario, on a beaucoup inventé sur le plateau,
je ne m'en souviens pas, mais je crois que je n'ai jamais
eu un scénario complet en tout cas. Peut-être quelques
feuilles. J'étais très sûr de moi, les autres aussi,
nous nous concertions. Moi, j'avais plutôt des décors
en extérieur, d'autres scènes se tournaient sur
d'autres plateaux en même temps. Quand on était en
train de préparer quelque chose, on laissait l'équipe,
on prenait une bicyclette et on allait voir à côté, ce
n'était pas plus compliqué que cela ! J'ai fait presque toutes les scènes avec Conrad
Veidt et la plupart de celles avec Sabu. Mais il y avait
des trucages, de grandes scènes spectaculaires avec les
gardes, le château. Naturellement n'importe qui peut
faire cela : c'est simplement une question de figuration
et de grands décors. Parfois Alex Korda venait sur le
plateau quand je n'étais pas là et il disait : "Faites
ça beaucoup plus grand ! " Un jour il a
dit à son frère : "Change la couleur, fais tout
en bleu. " A mon retour, c'était un autre
décor !
Ce film aurait un rapport avec le
Voyeur ? à cause du thème de
l’œeil et du regard ? oui ... dans ce cas tout
le cinéma est précurseur du Voyeur.
Mais Conrad Veidt avait de tels yeux et quel
masque ! " (Michael Powell)
Retour
filmographie
|
On watching The Thief of Bagdad,
it is not at all difficult to understand why it is so lauded. Not
only is this Arabian Nights fantasy full of wondrous effects and
objects (a flying mechanical horse, amnesia-inducing flowers, and
the obligatory magic carpet and genie in a bottle), it has
bigger-than-Ben-Hur sets, and 'beautiful people' (not to mention
a gorgeous canine, who, though hard to believe, rivals Cane the
Daewoo dog). Moreover, it is one of the greatest British
Technicolor films.
From the moment the camera cranes towards and
away from a gaily coloured eye painted on an old sailing ship, The
Thief of Bagdad promises an unforgettably spectacular
journey. Both the confronting close-ups of Jaffar (Conrad Veidt)
the stereotypically squinting, mustashioed, tanned, black-cladded
bad-guy and the imposing backdrop of a strange, dreamy yet
familiarly Disney-like Ottoman palace, lead one to expect an
age-old folkloric premise. Also, there's the royal
Dudley-Do-Right avenging betrayal by his right-hand man, in an
effort to regain his divine claim to fame, fortune and the
beautiful gal.
Needless to say, Sabu, the child actor from The
Elephant Boy (1937), is an imported (no pun intended)
story element very much integral to the success of this version
of the tale. As Powell himself claims in his autobiography A Life
In Movies: "It was because the leading part was played
by such a wonderful, graceful, frank, intelligent child, that the
film delighted audiences around the world. Magical tricks and
colour and vivid spectacle help to make fantasy work, but it is
the human beings in the fantasy who make it immortal."
The proof, according to Scorsese, is that Francis Ford Coppola
often wonders around singing Rozsa's song "I Want to be a
Sailor"!
| This is the film that also
finally begot Alexander Korda his belated fame and
fortune as a producer in the US, and Michael Powell his
reputation as one of Britain's finest directors. Besides
the utilisation of the Technicolor process and the onset
of World War Two, Korda faced numerous headaches in
making this film. Firstly, the British government deemed
that all film production during the war years had to be
for the purposes of propaganda only. This pushed the
remaining shooting and post-production of the film
off-shore to America. Secondly, Prudential Assurance,
London films' financiers, had withdrawn their funding
from any future films due to Korda's previous
unremunerative extravagances (no doubt helped along by
the sumptuous in-house meals from Claridge's for cast and
crew, and his own plush hotel life). Understandably,
Korda wanted The Thief of Bagdad to be
an unforgettable swansong for London films, [Swansong
? London Films were still churning them out in the 1950's
- Steve] a veritably mesmerising experience of
excitement, mystery, colour and movement. It was little
wonder then that the contracted director, Ludwig Berger,
who strongly advocated a highly stylised, Expressionistic
black and white version of the tale, was deemed by Korda
a regrettably inappropriate choice. |
|
Luckily, Michael Powell was waiting in the
wings and was roped by Korda himself into directing. He claims
credit for the sequences with Sabu and the Djinni (except for the
Grand Canyon shots which were shot in America by Alexander
Korda), the arrival of the princess, and the morphing of Viscount
the dog (who although selected for his alertness, beauty, and
resemblance in close-ups to Sabu, was in real life a rotter with
a nasty nip long live Cane!!). Despite his collaborative
directorial effort on the film, these scenes are obviously imbued
with Powell's infamous impish nature. The scenes with Sabu are
particularly indicative. His delightful quick wit and his
wonderment at the magical world around him, facilitates the
film's harking back to the fantastic trick cinema of Méliès and
Ingram (Powell's former mentor) a time of arguably unsurpassed
(cinematic) naiveté, excess, and hedonism.
Thus, upon its timely release on Christmas Eve
in 1940, The Thief of Bagdad heralded for British cinema " a
decade of astonishing achievement, violently and triumphantly set
against the grain of war, austerity, and rationing in Britain,
sublimely indifferent to that respectable national illness known
as 'documentary'... no-one else made the cinema such an Ali
Baba's cave in such gloomy, cautious years."
Karli Lukas - Original at
http://cs.art.rmit.edu.au/projects/media/cteq/v1/Thiefof_Bagdad.html