KISMET (1920)

With Otis Skinner as Hajj, the wily Baghdad beggar seeking revenge for himself & marriage for his motherless daughter over the course of one eventful day, Edward Knoblock’s KISMET was for decades one of the great barnstorming companies crisscrossing America’s theaters.  Surprisingly, the play (and for that matter the even more successful musical version in the ‘50s) was never revived on Broadway.  Equally bad for its rep, all four film versions pricey disappointments: this stiff 1920 silent; 1930 in 70mm; 1944 with Ronald Colman, Marlene Dietrich and TechniColor; 1956 with CinemaScope, Vic Damone (!) and hit tunes deftly lifted from Russian classical composer Borodin.  And while the 1930 spectacular (still with Skinner after two decades in the role) is now lost, the three extant versions make for fascinating comparison as the old play gets progressively defanged of its bloodthirst and nasty tone.  Hajj, beggar/magician in 1920 has mellowed into beggar/poet/philosopher by 1956; his daughter no longer threatened with rape by an enormous half-dressed Black bodyguard; hand amputation for theft not repeated four times for comic effect, but merely serving as a song cue, and so on.  The unbowdlerized 1920 version, directed by Louis J. Gasnier (its surviving physical elements in poor shape) must have been seen as a high ticket item with elaborate trompe-l'œil backdrops and handsome practical sets.  But Gasnier, who shoots & edits in reasonable fashion for the period, gets stuck filming a lot of actors ‘mouthing’ play dialogue and sawing the air with wild hand gesticulation, like a parody of bad silent cinema mime.  Standards in screen naturalism had risen quite a lot by 1920 once Mary Pickford taught everyone how to act with your eyes rather than your hands.  A bit of stage history, but not much of a film.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  You can easily see what this ought to be by screening Douglas Fairbanks’ THE THIEF OF BAGDAD/’24 and future Hajj Ronald Colman in IF I WERE KING/’38.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/thief-of-bagdad-1924.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/05/if-i-were-king-1938.html