Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

I`ll probably never know why I downloaded this film. It just accidentally happened that I saw its title in some users share in a P2P hub, and I thought: Hey, that`s one famous film, it`s certainly in the IMDB 250 greatest films of all time. Only later on I realized that it wasn`t there. I was mistaken and that was a bit of a surprise. Logically the most common reaction upon that would be deleting the film from my computer`s hard disk since after all it`s an illegal action to store films of illegitime source on your computer but I decided to watch it despite it not being as highly rated as I thought it would be. Hey, I never wrote that last sentence! Nor did I write the beginning! I never, I repeat never download films from the Internet! I saw this film on TV one Sunday morning, since it`s one of those films that Latvian television tends to repeat and repeat once again. So this is a story about an Arabian king who`s turned into a blind man by an evil wizard and he`ll remain that way until the wizard lays arms upon that fellows fiancee (if you can call her that since their relationship wasn`t exactly like that). And the wizard has also turned a thieving little boy into a dog who`s now the only friend of the blind king. The film is intended for children of course, therefore apart from the quite discussable the girls agreement to let the wizard lay his hands around her (which probably meant that a lot more was involved but this is 1940 and not the porn era after all). As a film for children "The thief of Bagdad" is quite good and even the special effects seem to be quite decent for its age. Nowadays you`ll still most likely watch this film just as a historical curiosity because advancements in the field of technology have been beyond imagination in those 65 years therefore the film has undoubtely lost some of its original attractions. Still - not bad at all. Just to give some names - June Duprez is the princess (quite good looking knowing how much tastes for beauty have changed over time), John Justin is the leading man (I`d probably like him if I was a woman or a gay man) and Alexander Korda is the producer of this film. The latter seems to be quite a legendary figure, for even I had heard his name somewhere. Still I have absolutely no idea - where.