Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

calvinnme Amara (Yvette Duguay) and Ali (Scotty Beckett) exchange blood as children, to symbolize their love. They are separated, and Alis' father, Caliph of Baghdad, is murdered. Ali gets away, finds the Forty Thieves' lair, and falls asleep. He is discovered, but allowed to live. Ten years go by. Ali (Hall) finds Amara (Montez) bathing. The delirious plot goes from there, making brief stops in the land of operetta and mis-choreographed musical numbers.The person in charge of Technicolor went wild in this film. The characters' clothes are color coordinated with their surroundings (the escaped prince is wearing pink and white--the boulders surrounding him are white and pink, etc). There is one main castle--it changes color depending on whether it's day or night, and according to what colors Montez is wearing. The insides of the castle change color from shot to shot, from green to beige to pink. William Fritzsche, Universal's Associate Technicolor consultant, created a dream world where the sky can be green (literally) and anything can happen.The actors' looks are more important than their performances. Jon Hall is predictably heroic and dim. Maria Montez is drop dead gorgeous; her accent is thicker than usual, and she rolls her r's for some reason, making it hard to guess what some of her lines are. Turhan Bey is good in a bad guy/good guy role. Andy Devine has a relatively small role, so he doesn't do much damage.This blissfully silly romp is worth seeking out.

bkoganbing When Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves came out in 1944 we and most of the rest of the world were waging war against tyranny. Although this retelling of the famous Arabian Nights tale about as far removed from the current situation as you could get, still the folks at Universal Pictures definitely had the current war in mind.The Mongols are bent on world conquest and they've reached the Caliphate of Bagdad and as the Caliph Moroni Olsen is preparing to counterattack he's betrayed by one of his key noble allies Frank Puglia. Olsen is killed but his son escapes and lives. The boy Scotty Beckett grows up to be Jon Hall and seeks refuge among the band of thieves who have that legendary magic cave where they hide out and stash their loot that opens with the words 'open sesame'. Their leader Fortunio Bonanova adopts the boy and the young prince becomes a thief.At the palace the young girl he played with as a kid is Puglia's daughter and she grows up to be Maria Montez. Puglia has big plans for her, he wants Montez to marry the great Hulagu Khan himself played by Kurt Katch.The casting of Katch who incidentally in real life was Jewish played any number of Nazi thug types during and after the war. The casting here was by no means an accident. And Puglia could be taken for any number of collaborator figures like Quisling or Laval. The meaning was quite clear to World War II audiences.Jon Hall and Maria Montez made any number of these kinds of exotic adventure films for Universal Pictures and became a popular screen team. They look as Middle Eastern as Barry Fitzgerald, but they were good looking and the movie-going public ate it up.The film is easy to take with clear cut heroes and villains. Which in 1944 no one could mistake.

DavidW1947 All in all, one of the best, if not thee best, of the Universal American Arabian Nights fantasies made during the 1940's, with rousing action; glorious early Technicolor and a wonderful music score by the little known, but obviously very talented, Edward Ward that captures the atmosphere of the film superbly. Even Miklos Rozsa himself couldn't have done a better job on it. Scotty Beckett's performance as young Ali throughout fourteen minutes of the first reel (seventeen minutes) of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" is totally mesmerising and wonderful. If only he could have played Ali throughout the whole film. From the start of the second reel, with Jon Hall playing Ali as a grown up, the film seems to change mood abruptly. It's still very good and entertaining, but never regains the heights it achieved in the first reel. In turn, Scotty looks so proud: "I will never fail you or Baghdad, father!", he says, with his head held high. Genuinely afraid (the murder of his father in the ambush and the burning of the boats and his first encounter with the magic stone doors in the mountain wall) and touched by magic and an incredible childlike sense of wonder as he discovers the treasures of the thieves' cave. You are there with him and feel just as he feels. It's an incredible performance for a boy of 12, going on 13.I love watching him in this first reel and he is what you see on the screen and what you see is what you get. He must have been wonderful to know and to have as a friend in those days and it's obvious that after that, as he grew into his teenage years, something terrible must have happened to him. Why? Perhaps he was let down and abandoned and betrayed by those he misguidedly loved and trusted. The same thing happened to the likes of Bobby Driscoll and Darren Burn. A human tragedy of immense proportions in all three cases. Nonetheless, it's still wonderful to see what a fine and unique young boy and child actor Scotty Beckett was, before his world came crashing down around him. Wherever he is now, in some heavenly world of spirit, I hope and pray he has found contentment and happiness. His portrayal of young Ali in this film was, in my opinion, his crowning achievement and it's worth buying the DVD of this film just to see him in it.I highly recommend this film, which has been so beautifully restored from the original Technicolor negatives, that it looks marvellous and both sound and picture are as clear as the proverbial bell and the film looks like it was made yesterday, although it is, in fact, sixty-seven years old, having been made in 1943 and released in 1944. In fact, the image quality is so good that the film has also been released on a Blue Ray disc.

john-2448 I'm mostly commenting just to double the number of comments on this film. The film has a nice brisk pace and attractive leads. It's mostly a fun light-hearted piece of escapist entertainment, with the only problems being that the sets, costumes, and Andy Devine all keep reminding us that it is a Hollywood film being staged for the cameras. The sets often look horribly fake, the costumes look brand new and freshly dry-cleaned, in order to look good in Technicolor one supposes. The back projections are just awful, and absurdly fake.There's one scene when the 40 thieves are riding off furiously in a cloud of dust, as seen from a distance. Then we get a close up of the three leaders, each in turn, wearing bright clean clothes, and apparently sitting on coin-operated horses in front of some grainy back projection. It's unintentionally funny. And Andy Devine is the least convincing Arab thief ever. He's supposed to be comic relief, akin to Friar Tuck in many versions of Robin Hood. However, his line readings are awful, with his voice cracking most of the time, apparently in an attempt at humor. It's as if he strolled on to the wrong set, grabbed a freshly laundered costume and misguidedly decided to join in.If you watch Ali Baba today, it can be viewed as a commentary on the US presence in Iraq. An outside invader (here the Mongols) has sacked and overtaken Baghdad. A popular insurrection boils in the countryside, but is dismissed by the invaders as merely the work of thieves and troublemakers. The occupier goes in for torture and bullying of the opposition, etc. The film does date from the middle of WWII, so it is unsurprising if some references to war and then-current events seeps through.If you want to see a better film on this theme, I'd recommend Douglass Fairbanks in The Thief of Baghdad. (I haven't seen the 1940 Sabu re-make yet). Or for those more adventurous in their cinematic tastes, Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed is an amazing silhouette animation film from 1926, which is stunningly beautiful.