Details of the movie "Aladdin's Magic Lamp" that only adult viewers notice

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

"Aladdin's Magic Lamp" is one of the many incarnations of the famous fairy tale. It was filmed in the USSR in 1966. Of course, the scriptwriters have seriously changed the plot and characters of the characters, including for ideological reasons. And yet the film is loved and reviewed. And, having reviewed it by adults, they notice details that were not striking in childhood.

Why does the film take place in Baghdad, and in the Disney cartoon in Agrob? Who is closer to the original? In fact, nobody. The tale begins by clarifying that everything happened in China. And this despite the fact that the characters have Arabic names. No wonder - traditionally in the west of China there lived a large community of the so-called Uighurs, Muslims of predominantly Turkic origin. And in the Muslim world, at one time, Arabic names were widespread, crowding out names from their native language.

By the way, it's easy to guess why the action was moved to Baghdad. There were always difficult political relations with China, I did not want to touch it. And in Baghdad, a part of the fairy tales from "A Thousand and One Nights" takes place - a collection to which the story about Aladdin also belongs.

If you look closely, the sorcerer in the film has very dark skin. Sometimes he assumes that this is a sign - he, they say, is engaged in the dark arts, so that it is always as if in the shadows. In fact, the creators of the image relied on the original fairy tale, which says that the sorcerer came from the Maghreb. The Maghreb is North Africa, a place where you can meet almost black people with European features. The filmmakers just wanted to visually highlight the wizard's origins. In this, by the way, the film differs from the Hollywood fairy tales of the same period, where the phenotypic diversity of the Arab world was very reluctantly conveyed.

Many viewers admit that in the scene with the spell at the beginning of the film, as a child, they saw a Ferris wheel behind the sorcerer's back. In fact, it is the "celestial spheres" that rotate, represented in the form of the signs of the zodiac. In the Arab Middle Ages, astrology was incredibly popular, and any magic was tied to it, so here the filmmakers showed their erudition. And at the end of the spell, the sorcerer turns to the celestial star Suhail. This is one of the guiding stars of Arab sailors - and in a way, she shows the sorcerer the way.

But what is unusual is the female voice that the star responds to. After all, Suhail is also a once popular male name! By the way, neither the star nor anyone else in the film explains why Aladdin is the chosen one and can get the lamp. But in the USSR, almost everyone has read The Thousand and One Nights and knows that they often explain everything in the world as follows: it is, they say, written in the book of his fate. That is, it is just fate for Aladdin to get the lamp, there are no other explanations and is not needed in the context of the fairy-tale world.

As for the skin color of the characters, it is selected for each separately (which you will not see in modern cinema). So, men who work a lot in the sun walk around with tanned faces. Princess Budur and Aladdin have rather light skin. This is no coincidence. According to custom, the princess should be protected from the sun's rays, and Aladdin sits all day with his face in a book - he has little chance of getting a tan. In addition, the combination of their bright faces leads to a strong effect - they seem to shine among the rest of the people. After all, they are still young and dreamy, and then they are also in love.

Why the ruler is so attentive to the mood and desires of his daughter, it becomes clear, it is worth revising the movie with an adult look. The ruler has no more children and no wife. It seems that he loved Budur's mother unusually deeply and after the death of the woman he no longer married and did not have concubines - which means that Budur remained his only precious child. This is not very typical for the Muslim culture of that time, although stories of this kind are really known. It was believed that men behave this way at the same time, very romantic and melancholic. It is difficult to say something about the romanticism of the ruler, but in all his manners he is truly melancholic. And the fact that Budur is his only child means that he will be inherited by a grandson or son-in-law.

When the princess Will enter the city, many people pass in front of her, a real procession. Including - a man with some kind of smoking vessel in the form of a peacock. Although cities like Baghdad were kept clean, a large number of men (if you look at it, you can see that women do not walk around the city - they did) in the hot sun, they could emit not very sophisticated aromas, no matter how clean they were in the morning. In order not to offend the princess's nose, fragrant incense smoke is left on her way. And in childhood, few people thought to wonder why some uncle with a beard was waving a bronze peacock.

In the fairy tale, Princess Budur goes to the bathhouse. She could wash every day at home - they went to the bathhouse for additional procedures and for the sake of communicating with women from other homes. The film played this moment amusingly, forcing the princess to be capricious: "I don't want to wash!" By the way, this moment and the rope game tell us how young she is.

Father Budur has an unnatural red beard, and his eyebrows are not red at all. As a child, this might have been surprising, but in fact, in the countries of the East, there was a custom to tint the beard with henna. If the beard was already starting to turn gray, the color turned out brighter, emphasizing the age of its owner (and therefore the fact that it must be respected). In addition, natural gray hair sometimes turned ugly yellow. Dyeing the beard made it look more aesthetically pleasing.

Aladdin, seeing the princess, speaks with words that give out with his head, what kind of books he reads so enthusiastically: these, of course, are stories with adventures, at the end of which the hero marries some princess he saved. He himself becomes the hero of the same story, but so far he does not know this - unlike the viewer. It makes the scene cute and funny.

If you look closely, even those men who do not cover their faces at the sight of the princess on the city street, fenced off from her with their palm. Still - after all, her face is not covered. Her honor is guarded by the power of her father, who can kill anyone who dares to look at her. But how, then, does the guard boldly rush towards Aladdin, who is standing next to the princess? After all, then they will inevitably look at the girl? Why aren't they executed after that? Be careful: just before the order is given, the princess's face will be covered with a veil, shifted by the wind. So her dad doesn't have to first think about telling her to shut down. The strange thing is that later, everyone forgets about whether Budur's face should be closed or open.

Why does a red genie appear in a Soviet film, and a blue one in a Hollywood film? In fact, blue is more logical, this is how calm civilized gins looked like, who, by the way, belonged to the elite. They are all Muslims. But the red genie is a pagan and must be evil. However, in Soviet cinema, his character was greatly softened, making him simply sullen and wild.

Father Budur, who married his daughter "to the first who got hit," is not so cruel. He examined the courtiers for a long time, until one of the youngest, the vizier's son, entered. And on their wedding night, the groom, in a very Freudian way, began to touch the dagger on his belt. This funny gesture can only be appreciated by adult viewers. Basically, the film does without adult jokes.

If we compare a Soviet film with a Hollywood cartoon, one more circumstance catches the eye: attention to costumes. In the Soviet film, external stylistic uniformity is maintained, and not a single woman walks around half-dressed, especially in front of other people's men. In the cartoon, Princess Jasmine (by the way, her name was changed because it is difficult for English-speaking children to say "Budur") is not only dressed like a burlesque dancer, but the costumes of the characters also belong to different geographical areas. Aladdin is dressed like a Uyghur - and, by the way, the fact that he is half naked, in his case, can be explained: the last shirt has decayed. He's a beggar. The rest are dressed in the spirit of the Arab countries, not the Uyghur settlements of China. And also the Soviet Budur in the palace has a more eventful life. She plays and learns (an old theologian tells her a boring lesson). Jasmine, on the other hand, does not seem to have a life of its own. In this respect, the film turned out to be more advanced than the more modern cartoon.

Aladdin's story is just one of many in the famous collection "A Thousand and One Nights": The Story of a Grand Deception and a Great Work