Kismet (1944)
(On Cable TV, April 2022) Lavish and expansive, the 1940s version of Kismet nonetheless fails to take off. Clearly meant to be a big-budget colour production (it was eventually nominated for four technical Academy Awards) and act as a late-career showcase for MGM’s beloved Marlene Dietrich as a harem queen supporting role (alongside Ronald Coleman playing a “King of the Beggars”), the film nonetheless feels ungainly and ineffective. Set against a non-fantastic Arabian-Night-style backdrop of long-ago Bagdad, the film will strike many twenty-first century viewers as a proto-Aladdin, and as pure cultural appropriation with little regard as to accuracy or respect for the other culture. It’s not terrible, but once again – for all of the big-budget care given to the production’s technical qualities and its escapist intentions in the middle of World War II, Kismet isn’t that much fun to watch. As much as I don’t like to highlight it, the one part of the film worth watching has Dietrich “dancing” (with a body double) with gold-painted legs. Otherwise, well, Kismet does the bare minimum that could be expected of a Hollywood-style Arabian epic (especially considering its pedigree as the fourth movie adaptation of the same original story), but fails to impress as much as earlier or later productions in the same ballpark. (It’s no Thief of Baghdad, for instance – although the thought of having Dietrich in that other film is interesting enough.) This 1944 Kismet even pales in comparison to its own musical 1955 remake… but that’s another review.