mark.waltz Even though Joy Ann Page sings a song as Marsinah, this film sadly lacks the poetry of the 1950's musical version. It is beautiful to look at, but like a statue of ice, it leaves a puddle behind it which needs mopping up. Ronald Colman is excellent as Haji, the beggar, and when he is on screen, the film is filled with amusement, yet never reaches the romantic potential it strives for. The movie has an interesting opening sequence, explaining who all the major characters are, from Colman and Page, to James Craig's Caliph (being under-minded by Edward Arnold's evil but easy going Wazir) and the Wazir's beautiful but scheming wife, played with the ten veils that Salome never received by Marlene Dietrich. This is famous for a dance that Dietrich does with gold paint on her legs, but while her face is certainly beautiful and youthful, the paint only indicates that the rest of her is aging.Hugh Herbert brings his inappropriate use of "Woo Woo's" to one of Colman's sidekicks, and Florence Bates in dark make-up and shrouds is comically imperious and insulting. The set seems to go on forever, as if MGM opened the walls between sound stages, bought every can of colored paint in Los Angeles and let the art director go haywire. The magic acts Colman performs are certainly amusing and the final scene has him bouncing around the set much like Douglas Fairbanks Sr. did in "The Thief of Bagdad". There's certainly a lot to like in this movie, but it lacks the fun of the same type of film that Maria Montez was doing at Universal or Dorothy Lamour had been doing at Paramount.

Charles Herold (cherold) When I was younger I might have had the patience for this dumb thing. I used to watch every 1940s movie I could find and enjoyed most of them. I rarely gave up on a movie unless it was wretched, but now I'm older, more impatient and have more stuff to do so if I'm not feeling it I usually bail pretty quickly.This is why I only watched perhaps 20-25 minutes of this movie, which struck me as very dumb Hollywood hokum. The movie seems to start in the middle, with a text intro that describes what has lead up to the present circumstances. Perhaps there's a good reason for this, but it gives the film an odd start. There were a couple of songs in the movie that were utterly tedious, one of them sung by Marlene, who seemed like an odd choice for this film (Marlene should be in a smoky bar or a brothel, not a palace). Everything about this movie just seemed dumb and false.Still, I won't rate it because I haven't seen it all and don't want to unfairly lower its average rating. But I certainly wouldn't give it more than a 5 based on what I saw.

NYLux This story about the king of the beggars of Baghdad marrying off his daughter off to royalty is certainly popular in film. There are several silent versions: 1914, 1916, 1920, and of course the 1955 musical. However the only competition for this masterpiece was made in 1930, featuring that great queen of camp, Loretta Young, but is now a 'lost' film, so until a copy is found this one remains the undisputed masterpiece of the genre. Ronald Colman plays Hafiz the great thief to perfection, including the extremely difficult task of balancing a turban the size of a small cupola on his head for the audience with the Grand Vizier that would have annihilated a less hardy specimen. As a matter of fact the costumes in this film are important enough to merit the treatment of a main character: They are so exquisitely ridiculous and the material so obviously synthetic, overwrought, clashing in color and style and so overwhelmingly kitsch that it is the DEFINITIVE example for the period and genre. Nothing like this has been since before or since, thank God. Although the film is in color you could swear they had color blind designers working you will see dangerous combinations of color never since surpassed; emerald green and magenta, scarlet and deep blue, saffron orange and mustard yellow....these are just some samplings but you have to add the swimming pools/fountains in every corner shining in acid-sapphire, the elaborate Formica lattice work of the harem walls, the spectacular shine of gold plated plastic jewelry....it is a thousand nightmares of design wrapped neatly into one movie, to be treasured forever. This is not a movie to rent, you have to BUY this film and watch it several times to appreciate it in detail. The most outstanding performance is of course, Marlene Dietrich as Jamilla, the 'Macedonian' wife and queen of the grand Vizier (Edward Arnold) who by the way is the closest I have ever seen to a slab of prosciutto in the shape of a human, stuffed into severe velour's-metal embroidered tunics that could asphyxiate an elephant in an Indian wedding. But back to Jamilla: Her dance sequence is one of those moments in Hollywood history for which there are simply no superlatives or adjectives that can approximate the exhilaration of watching it. It would be like trying to describe the explosion of an atomic bomb at sunset in the Sahara. I will just say that never has a human being been capable of moving so gracefully with so much hair piled up in a complex ziggurat on her head while heavily burdened with a solid gold embroidered camisole, gold painted limbs, and enough bracelet weight to sink the titanic. There is not a moment in which she is not batting away three pairs of false eyelashes per eye, while holding an inane conversation with utmost interest, maintaining a dangerous cleavage line in place and holding a completely transparent veil to her chin. One half of this coordinated effort would have killed Ms.Paltrow and her tepid generation of clone-blonds, they certainly don't make them like that anymore! James Craig is the very handsome Caliph who plays at being the gardener's son to romance Hafiz's child, the demure Marsinah ( Joy Ann Page) he even manages to be pretty normally dressed except for the severe crown he puts on in the morning to write letters which would have crushed any skull for karat weight in diamonds. Marsinah always looks plain and innocent, even while dancing and chanting, then she is taken away to the palace in a litter that looks like a plasticized, enlarged fabergé egg and when we see her again she is always crying because she is being forced to marry the Grand Vizier by her father, but I thought it was because she could not stand her violet outfit and her hideous tiara that was crushing her brains with a small hill of diamonds and a cataract to boot, falling down her forehead. The excitement of watching the scenes is not so much out of the plot development as it is to see what they could possibly wear next. I will not detail Marlene's last outfit, in which she rides away with her true love into happily ever after because I am still blinded by the impact. Run, don't walk to get this movie! There is no way anyone can be disappointed with so many colors in every scene, this is the ultimate Ali Baba, Thief of Baghdad movie!

MartinHafer Despite the full Hollywood treatment (the best sets, color cinematography and actors available), this movie was amazingly ordinary AT BEST. Much of it might be the extreme silliness of the plot and terrible miscasting of Coleman and ESPECIALLY Dietrich as Arabs! If you want to see BETTER similar films of the era, try Kim (with Dean Stockwell and Errol Flynn) or the superlative Thief of Bagdad (with Sabu). Both these movies are MUCH better written and succeed in sweeping the viewer away to a magical world of adventure, while Kismet just seems pretty but dopey--in fact, REALLY dopey. If you don't believe me, look at the pictures of Dietrich and her ridiculous hair styles in the IMDb gallery. This is one of the few Ronald Coleman films I dislike (the other being the VERY dull Story of Mankind).