Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
About Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Seven titled scenes tell the tale. Ali Baba, gathering wood with his donkey, hides and hears the thieves open their cave with "Open sesame." He takes gold home. His wife sees it, and Cassim learns the secret and goes to the cave, where the thieves find him and cut off his head. The gang later hides in oil jars at Ali Baba's house. The servant pours boiling oil into the jars. At dinner she stabs the chief, who has come disguised as an oil merchant. The last shot is an apotheosis: Ali Baba and his wife posed with dancers in front of a painted backdrop.
Cast & crew
More about Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Ferdinand Zecca is the director named by the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé. Some accounts put Albert Capellani as director under Zecca's supervision. The tale is the one Antoine Galland added to the Thousand and One Nights in the eighteenth century, from the storyteller Hanna Diyab. Segundo de Chomón hand-colored prints with a stencil process later patented as Pathécolor. Pathé sold the film in France and also in Germany, Brazil, Mexico, the United States, and Colombia.
Themes
Background
Galland's French text, not an Arabic manuscript, is the source European stages and this film were using.
Making
Pathé built the story as seven stage pictures. Coloring was applied afterward, frame by frame, through Chomón's stencil system.
Look
Each of the seven scenes is a fixed tableau. Color comes from stencil tinting, not from photography in color.
Technique
Chomón's stencil coloring, later sold as Pathécolor, puts stable hues on the costumes and the cave set.
Preservation
A hand-colored print of about nine minutes survives.
Notes
- A surviving copy runs 9 minutes 18 seconds.
- It is the first film version of Ali Baba.
- The scenes are separated by intertitles, including "Open sesame!" and "Rich at last!
- The oil-jar sequence and the beheading are staged as separate tableaux.
- The finish is a posed apotheosis, a curtain-call shot rather than another plot turn.
Scenes
- Ali Baba hears the thieves open the cave.
- The servant fills the oil jars, and the men inside them, with boiling oil.
- She stabs the chief at dinner while he is dressed as an oil merchant.
Influenced by
- The Ali Baba tale as published by Antoine Galland from Hanna Diyab
Quotes
Open sesame!
