The collection of stories One Thousand and One Nights has left a significant literature legacy in its wake. Hoh (2017) states that “one would be hard-pressed to find anyone not familiar with the stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba, or Sindbad, or with such terms as genie and ghoul” (pp. 1). There are a lot of today’s well-known movies which are based on that book, especially Disney films. For example, the most popular story from One Thousand and One Night is the tale about Aladdin and the magic lamp. It was brought onto the screen as an animated movie in 1992 and remade into a live-action film in 2019.
However, even before Disney’s adaptations, the cunning story of Aladdin and his adventures was displayed with much more reverence than the original. There were two movies under the name The Thief of Bagdad – one was filmed in 1924 by Raul Walsh, and the second – in 1940 by Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, and Tim Whelan.
Another popular plot from One Thousand and One Nights is the story of Sinbad – a pirate who roamed the seven seas. Nowadays, it is more known as another Disney movie that came out in 2003. It is less known, however, that the legendary fairytale navigator was a hero of Hollywood during the grandiose post-war productions. Still, it was not until the early 1970s that the duo of producer Charles Schneier and special effects genius Ray Harrihausen reached a kind of perfection in the second film of the Sinbad trilogy. As the classic films of New Hollywood have already been released, the Cultural Revolution and the Vietnam War have died down, Columbia Pictures dreamed of films about stately heroes, beautiful maidens, and magical travels. It is safe to say that the tales of both Sinbad and Aladdin addressed these dreams the best.
References
Hoh, A. (2017). A Thousand and One Nights: Arabian story-telling in world literature. A Thousand and One Nights: Arabian Story-telling in World Literature | 4 Corners of the World: International Collections and Studies at the Library of Congress. Web.