Thousand and One Nights and Ali Baba and Forty Thieves

Abstract

This article is going to study the adaptation of Thousand and One Nights in the movie Ali Baba and Forty Thieves directed by Arthur Lubin in 1944 through the lens of adaptation theory. The movie departs heavily from the text of Thousand and one Nights to the point that it is a whole different story and owes a great deal to the imagination of Universal Pictures. Since the movie represents the Orient it is a fertile ground for the study of the Orient in the movie. First we study the relationship of the text with the image and second we will study the images of the Orient. Of course the image the movie presents of the Orient is innocent and mild. The movie turns the text on its head in that the movie is the reverse of the text. The plot of the movie is the opposite of the text, whereas in the text it is the forty thieves who are the villains in the movie it is the other way round, the forty thieves befriend Ali Baba and grow him up and they form a resistance against the Mongols.