Bagdad (1949)

Director: Charles Lamont
Writer: Robert Hardy Andrews, based on a story by Tamara Hovey
Stars: Maureen O’Hara, Paul Christian and Vincent Price

Index: The First Thirty.

OK, so this wasn’t as bad as I remembered it from a previous viewing in 2007, but it’s not a good film by any standards and it has to rank alongside Brigham Young and Up in Central Park as the worst of Vincent Price’s First Thirty.

Of course, he’s easily the best thing about it, though he really didn’t need his right eye to be glued shut to make him seem sinister and corrupt as Pasha Ali Nadim. He also narrates the film, because, of all the stars in Hollywood at the time, he was surely the one best suited to pronounce Scheherezade correctly.

The biggest problem with the film is that it isn’t the Arabian Nights fantasy that it might be mistaken for. It’s a generic story of intrigue in an exotic locale, Bagdad, the largest city in the world during the Islamic Golden Age, and here somewhere where “all unbelievable things are possible”, apparently including the overt rear projection. It might have worked as an indie distraction on a B-movie budget and in black and white, but it doesn’t have the substance to work as a Technicolor blockbuster.

The star is Maureen O’Hara, who was loaned to Universal by Fox, and she’s a Bedouin with fiery red hair and a pristine British accent. At least the latter is explained, because she’s back in Bagdad after being educated in England, as a princess of the Aramlak might be. However, no attempt is made to explain away her hair, which is on full display even when in disguise, making her instantly recognisable even from a distance, anywhere in Bagdad.

Princess Marjan is also the romantic lead, a foil quickly provided in the form of a prince in a succession of disguises. When she first meets him, he’s Hassan the camel driver, part of the caravan that’s bringing her home after many years away. Then he’s Hassan the Cairo jewel merchant. Later he’s a bunch of other Hassans, but he’s Prince Hassan underneath them all.

I liked O’Hara, because she’s as fiery as her hair, as she needs to be given that she gets to Bagdad only to find her father murdered and her tribe in disarray. So much for living it up as a princess! Now she gets to take the reins to lead her tribe back to relevance, even though they don’t seem to want to be led.

To highlight that, she accepts an invitation to dinner with the Pasha at the Cafe Infranji, a European style restaurant whose entertainers are local until she gets up to sing light opera in someone else’s voice. She does well out of it, landing a ruby, a necklace and a job, the first two of which she promptly gives to her tribe. Mohammed Jao, the dumbass, refuses them, so she has to tell him what’s what. That’s fun.

I liked Swiss actor Paul Hubschmid more as Hassan, though, acting as Paul Christian in his American debut. He isn’t Douglas Fairbanks, or indeed Errol Flynn, but he’s highly capable as a middle eastern man of action, who spends all his time figuring out who’s leading the Black Robes, the local gang of baddies, given that he knows it’s not him, even if the rest of Bagdad believes is is. He ought to feel claustrophobic and confined, given that a batch of assassins are trying to kill him for multiple people and he’s wanted for what counts as terrorism. He feels vibrant and confident instead, breezing through every scene with relish.

In fact, among all the many things that are wrong with this movie, my favourite moments all revolved around Prince Hassan outwitting his naysayers, chief among them Price’s Pasha. While the dialogue is an annoying mixture of modern American and Olde English, complete with a smattering of Arabic sounding curses, I thoroughly enjoyed the back and forth verbal jousting between Hubschmid and Price.

What I should have liked but ended up not appreciating much at all is the romance. If we happen to be female, we surely fell for Prince Hassan, and, if we’re male, it’s not hard to lust for Princess Marjan. However, we’ve been let in on secrets that they haven’t figured out yet and we know that’s going to put a serious dent in whatever romantic chemistry they generate early in the film.

Put simply, the Black Robes killed her father and Prince Hassan is alleged to be the leader of the Black Robes. He knows he isn’t. Eventually she’s told he is. Let the sparks fly! Except that this angle ought to have been worked so much better than it is, a couple of fair clashes having to suffice. Many opportunities are squandered in the name of more needless intrigue.

Even with his eye glued shut and shockingly few costume changes, Price does his job. He’s introduced early, on horseback in full official uniform, and he quotes the Koran as a Turkish military governor should. While he’s clearly a bad guy, he’s not only a bad guy and, in some instances, he could be considered a good guy. He’s really an effective ruler who has to treat people in accordance with their official status at the time. He exudes bureaucracy, elegance and contradiction. The worst aspect to his role is that he doesn’t get a good end, or indeed a bad one either. He doesn’t get an end at all, as the film simply decides not to bother.

And Bagdad is frustratingly full of that sort of thing. Things happen because someone had a vague idea that they ought to. Then further things happen that aren’t remotely consistent with the first things. While Price and Christian are given sparkling dialogue, everyone else is annoyingly stupid. Nobody can do their job in even a basic sense. This works on the level of cheap TV action, where token guards leap into dangerous rooms without even drawing their swords first. The central mystery is obvious to us almost from the outset, even if it can’t be to anyone in the story. And everything is layered in intrigue until we just don’t care any more. It gets so that we start to think people betray each other for the sake of it, not for any actual gain. It’s just how things are in Bagdad!

And if that last line sounded like it ought to have been delivered in song, you’re not alone. This often feels like a musical with the songs removed. We don’t tend to watch musicals for the plots, right? The songs are bright colourful distractions that will sweep us away from that and we won’t care. Well, without those songs, at least except whoever dubs Maureen O’Hara singing anomalous opera at the Cafe Infranji, we’re not distracted and we do care.

Eventually it all ends and we each go about our day, trying to forget. I can’t honestly say I didn’t enjoy some of Bagdad, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t leave it thinking about time lost. Like the Pasha’s right eye, even Vincent Price can’t save this one.