Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Nature of the Exile: Discourse and Power in The Thief of Bagdad

2012; Edinburgh University Press; Volume: 9; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3366/jbctv.2012.0077

1755-1714

Gábor Gergely,

Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

The Thief of Bagdad was a spectacular Technicolor production by Alexander Korda's London Films studio.It was one of Korda's biggest successes, matching the very profitable The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), which made £500,000 in its first world-wide release (Christie 1985: 44), and 'was UA's top-grossing film out of twenty released in 1940, earning just over a million dollars in domestic rentals' (Street 2002: 58).The film tells the story of Ahmad (John Justin), the King of Bagdad, whose throne is usurped by his Grand Vizier, Jaffar (Conrad Veidt).Jaffar hopes to marry the daughter of the Sultan of Basra, the most beautiful woman in the world.The dispossessed Ahmad is joined by the lowly thief Abu (Sabu), who helps him in his quest to recover his throne and his love, the Princess of Basra (June Duprez).After a series of fantastic adventures, Abu and Ahmad succeed in finding their way back to Bagdad and rescue the Princess.Ahmad then confronts Jaffar, who escapes on the back of a flying horse.Abu shoots him in the head with an arrow-gun and Ahmad, reunited with his love, takes his rightful place on the throne of Bagdad.What is interesting in relation to critical readings of The Thief of Bagdad is that they tend to favour an exploration of representations of the East in Western culture over any other approach.