Prisoners of the Casbah (1953)

There are countless Technicolor gems amongst the forgotten Hollywood studio pictures of the '50s. Prisoners of the Casbah is one of them, produced by Sam Katzman during his time with Columbia. Prisoners is one of those gorgeous Arabic epics, full of vibrant colours, sword fights, and pretty harem girls. There's always a scheming vizier (Cesar Romero), of course. One wonders why Sultans and Emirs bothered appointing viziers, since they always turn out to be evil. There's a twist with Prisoners: the lovely Princess Nadja (Gloria Grahame) is a spoiled brat and she's totally infatuated with the vizier Firouz rather than our brazen hero, Ahmed, the Captain of the Guards (Tuhran Bey, a favourite of mine). While the Emir would like Ahmed to marry his daughter and take the throne, the Captain despises the loathsome woman as much as she despises the playboy Captain. These twists on the format are refreshing and open the representation of genders and the various other format stereotypes to scrutiny.

The visuals, whether by the intuition of the director or a conscious creative decision I can't say, affirm Nadja's potency and her initial presumption that she is master of her own destiny. While the Emir and Ahmed try to discuss to whom she will be wed, they remain still in the shot like part of the furniture. Nadja, on the other hand, darts around the frame, slinking around her father, then over to give a barbed aside to the Captain, then back to her father. Her control over the frame is such that once she manages to bring Ahmed into her father's disfavour by rejecting her, the shot closes in on Nadja and her father, leaving Ahmed offscreen, literally 'out of the picture.'

Prisoners could almost be said to be more about the breaking of a headstrong woman's will than about overthrowing a usurping vizier. While there is a climactic sword fight, the movie's real climax is when Ahmed, infuriated by Nadja's continued sympathy for Firouz, despite everything he's done, throws her over his knee and delivers unto her pretty rump a sound spanking. At this moment she falls in love with Ahmed and they begin to kiss. It is a truly startling moment. All along Nadja has had a very distinct view of masculinity: ambitious, bearded, serious, dominant, and, most importantly, potentialy violent. It's made clear early in the movie that Firouz is more just than merciful, a serious man who believes in totalitarian order. Nadja seems oddly drawn to men who will punish her and dominate her.

Whether her vibrant presence within the frame ceases post-spanking, whether Ahmed builds his kinetic force within the frame before he spanks her, and how other characters might relate to these visual motifs, is something I, alas, became too caught up in the enjoyable plotting to discover and I didn't manage to record the movie. It's a subject for future study. Nadja isn't the only 'strong woman' character in the film; indeed, the Queen of Thieves tends to dominate her husband with glances. Her character would also need to be observed. Perhaps the visual information I noted above is a mere fluke or perhaps the intuition of the director for mise-en-scene persisted throughout.

Prisoners is indeed heavily plotted for such a short film (the runtime is 78 minutes). Nadja is to be married to Ahmed, then Ahmed falls into disfavour for refusing and is dismissed. Just then Firouz sends some of his men to hold the princess hostage so he can rescue her and appear the hero, but the plan goes wrong leaving Firouz thinking her killed both the Emir and Nadja. But Nadja is of course alive and with Ahmed. Nadja doesn't want to be with Ahmed and resists him, while he tries to protect her and seeks shelter within the Casbah--a citadel in Algiers within which was a society of criminals that couldn't get out but would also let no-one in. That covers the first thirty minutes. It's rare to see so much narrative packed within a short feature and that movie still maintain an elegant visual style. Generally such a balance is reserved for Val Lewton's productions.

It's curious how in Arabian-themed pictures, thieves are often romanticized. In crime pictures, bank robbers and mobsters tend to be romanticized; in Westerns it's outlaws. Each genre tends to have its criminals to offer as underdogs with an interior code of honour more reliable than the conventional and externally-imposed code within the bounds of the law. In this film, it is only the den of thieves that offers protection from the dangerous government of Firouz. Perhaps it is in the spirit of Jean Genet: crime is liberating, makes one's spirit free. Laws of any kind enslave one to an authority. The thieves are here represented without a hint of cynicism. They're the sort of people you'd like to have a drink with. It's a sign of the sort of innocence in storytelling that seems lost these days, but is wholly present in Prisoners.

I'm a fan of such small but glamourous Technicolor epics as Prisoners of the Casbah. It's a shame so many of them remain undistributed. Were it not for heroic networks like Turner Classic Movies and, in this case, Drive-in-Classics, these movies wouldn't be seen at all. The Adventures of Hajji Baba is another obscure, Arabian epic that deserves viewing. It was made a year later and is similar in its charms.