Arabian Nights (Subtitled) (DVD)

The Arabian Nights (1974)
(The more accurate translation is: The Flower of the One Thousand and One Nights)

►►►main menu◄◄◄

1. Play film
2. Select chapter
3. Also available: other films by the same director that are available on DVD.
4. Director’s biography
5. Weblink: www.bfi.org.uk

►►►language◄◄◄
...addition to Il Decameron are Arabian Nights and The Canterbury Tales. His most controversial film remains to be Salò which is based on Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom.

►►►actors◄◄◄

Pasolini does not appear as an actor in Arabian Nights, and yes, if you watch The Decameron and Canterbury Tales before watching this film, you will miss his presence.

Most actors ... more

The Arabian Nights (1974)
(The more accurate translation is: The Flower of the One Thousand and One Nights)

►►►main menu◄◄◄

1. Play film
2. Select chapter
3. Also available: other films by the same director that are available on DVD.
4. Director’s biography
5. Weblink: www.bfi.org.uk

►►►language◄◄◄

Italian with English subtitles. AND some songs, prayers, writings are in Arabic, but these are not translated.

►►►running time◄◄◄

125 minutes.

►►►location◄◄◄

It is filmed in Nepal, Yemen, Iran and Eritrea.

►►►chapter division◄◄◄

1. Titles
2. Lady of Moons
3. Zumarud reads a story
4. Nuradin’s search
5. Crowned King
6. The Dream
7. Aziz and Aziza
8. Love is my Master
9. Weep as you made her weep
10. The Garden
11. The Painter begins his story
12. The Demon’s revenge
13. Transformation
14. Yunan begins his story
15. The chamber in the sand
16. The Dream revealed
17. Nuradin and Zumarud

►►►story◄◄◄

The stories are not presented successively; the peripheral story, that begins at the beginning of the film and only ends when it ends that is, is that of Nuradin and Zumarud.

The chapter division detailed above is the one you see in the menu if you want to select a chapter rather than watch the whole film. My following summary (and perhaps I should include here a ***SPOILER WARNING***) is represented in a way that shows each of the 7 main anecdotes on its own.

■ 1st Anecdote:

“What a night! The beginning was bitter, but how sweet is the end!”

This is the main story and it tells us about the “slave”, Zumarud, who is given the chance to choose the person she wants to be sold to. Many old men offer to buy her, yet she makes fun of them all and chooses the poor young man, Nuradin. She gives him money to pay for her “owner” and rent a house, and they both go to it and enjoy themselves. She makes him a wonderful rag and tells him to go to the marketplace and sell it, but warns him against selling it to a blue-eyed man. Of course, Nuradin makes this mistake and this evil man follows him to his house and kidnaps Zumarud. He takes her to one of the men whom she made fun of in the marketplace so that he can punish her for it. She manages to escape but a thief kidnaps her again and tells her that he and the other 39 thieves will all have sex with her. She runs away again after she dresses up as a man and she finally reaches a kingdom. People there offer her to be their king for the habit there is to make the first man from the desert they see a new king for them after the death of their ruler. Throughout all this, Nuradin keeps searching for his love that people start to think he is insane, and many sexual adventures are offered to him on the way as well. Finally the couple meet in Zumard’s kingdom and reunite after a long series of misfortunes.

■ 2nd Anecdote:

“Oh, city of piety, our thoughts are constantly driven to sin.”

It is a short story of a middle-age poet who convinces three young men to have sex with him.

■ 3rd Anecdote:

“Love will decide.”

An old man chooses a handsome fifteen-year-old boy and an old woman chooses a fifteen-year-old girl, and they make them sleep in the same room. The older couple, who have magical powers, it seems, agree that if the boy falls in love with the girl the man wins, and if the opposite happens the woman wins. They awake the boy, he sees the girl and immediately make love to her while she is still asleep. They, then, awake the girl and she does the same to the sleeping boy, so they decide that there is no winner since both the boy and the girl love each other equally.

▪ I still remember something about this story; I think it is longer in the book. Maybe the couple exchange rings, get separated and meet again and get married. Anyway, I read the book 9 years ago, so this addition could be the work of my memory only.

■ 4th Anecdote:

“In the Name of God, what to do when love becomes master?”

On the night of his marriage to his cousin Aziza, Aziz meets a beautiful girl who gives him certain signs. He, puzzled, misses his wedding, but goes to his cousin and asks her to interpret the signs for him. She helps him understand all the signs he is given and thereby meet the girl and make love to her, although she is in love with him herself. Aziza dies because of her unrequited love, and Aziz’s lover punishes him for his infidelity by castrating him.

▪ Aziz uses a bow to shoot an arrow at the end of which there is an artificial male sexual organ into his lady’s vagina (I know some people would get the film only to see this; I would).

■ 5th Anecdote:

“Sometimes dreams are bad teachers because one dream does not tell the whole story. The truth lies in many dreams.”

A man wishes to make a woman called Dunya, who doesn’t like men, fall in love with him. For this end he gets some information from her gardener, and pays two beggars to make a painting of the dream she had on the ceiling.

■ 6th Anecdote:

“Destiny governs our lives.”

An educated man called Tagy finds a door leading to a room underground; in this room he meets a beautiful girl and they make love. But she tells him that she is imprisoned in this place by a demon and that she has to touch a certain tablet on the wall and the demon will appear. The young man answers that he wants to kill this evil spirit, and so, he, rashly, touches the tablet. The girl advises him to run away and he does leaving behind his shoes. The demon takes the man’s shoes and finds him through asking who the shoes belong to. (Yea, I know, a Cinderella story!) Then the demon takes him to the secret room and punishes the girl by cutting her hands, her legs, and her head. (You may want to avoid seeing this if you can’t tolerate such things.) And he transforms the man into a monkey, but people discover that he is too smart to be a monkey. So, someone takes him and shows him to his daughter asking her to give him his original shape; she does although this kills her. When this newly transformed man sees what the girl did for him, he decides to be a beggar and serve God.

■ 7th Anecdote:

Yunan, a young man, while playing hide and seek with some children hears a voice telling him to make a voyage to the sea, and he obeys. He sees a man telling his son to go into a cell underground and not to leave it for any reason. Yunan goes into the cell, befriends the boy and asks him about his story. The boy replies that his father hid him to save him from the prophecy that says he will be killed by a sightless man on his fifteenth birthday, but Yunan says he will defend the boy. They bathe and sleep in the same bed. While they are both asleep, Yunan, as if hypnotized, gets a dagger and kills the boy then goes back to sleep. When he wakes up and notices what fate made him do he gets very scared. However, Yunan’s father, who was searching for him, finds him and takes him back to their land, but because of all he went through, he decides to leave his father’s riches and become a beggar.

►►►original text◄◄◄

This book kept me awake for many nights when I first read it at the age of 16; it made me fully aware of the reason why Scheherazade managed to stay alive. Is it a silly book? Yes, but what explains its power over me? Mind you, I am not the only one who experienced this; many of the people charmed by it never rest till it is finished.

►►►director◄◄◄

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922 –1975) was an Italian poet, novelist, playwright, journalist, linguist, film director, philosopher and actor. The director’s biography section on this DVD sheds more light on the artist’s turbulent life and mysterious death. Among his most famous films in addition to Il Decameron are Arabian Nights and The Canterbury Tales. His most controversial film remains to be Salò which is based on Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom.

►►►actors◄◄◄

Pasolini does not appear as an actor in Arabian Nights, and yes, if you watch The Decameron and Canterbury Tales before watching this film, you will miss his presence.

Most actors in this film are amateurs, like the lead, Franco Merli, who was discovered by Pasolini himself, perhaps with the exception of Franco Citti (the demon in Arabian Nights, Ciappelletto in The Decameron, and the Devil in The Canterbury Tales).

What characterizes all the young actors in this film is their innocence; they laugh and cry with a child’s sincerity, and they appear nude in front of the camera with so much comfort that they manage to transmit this easiness to you. I don’t mean you go out naked; you just accept what you are seeing and refrain from calling them what you might other wise call a silly way of expressing emotions.

►►►what do I think?◄◄◄

What does Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade makes you think of? Close your eyes and dream.. Pasolini’s version of The Arabian Nights will shatter this dream for you. This adaptation of Arabian Nights contains many dreams, but it is not dreamy. Pasolini chose to kill Scheherazade, to show beggars rather than studs, and to have it acted outdoors rather than in palaces. Scheherazade is peerless; Zumarud is a witty, wise and educated woman, like the famous story-teller, yet she cannot take her place, nor is she meant to do that, I believe. As I watched the story of the two beggars I wondered why the director did not choose the stories of the three “slaves” who become castrated because of there promiscuity rather than these sad stories. And finally, am I accustomed to the indoors version of Arabian Nights? For some reason, I felt estranged when I watched the first section of the film which is mostly in the desert. The “problem” is that the book includes more than two hundred stories with various topics, yet only the nicest of these are chosen in the adaptations we are accustomed to.

►►►just a little more◄◄◄

■ One of the funny things I remember about The Arabian Nights, the book, is describing how beautiful people become after having a bath; the word itself is repeated so many times in the book. Although Pasolini’s film is only loosely based on the book, at least because Scheherazade and the main characters we are familiar with like Sinbad and Ali Baba are not there, yet the bath, along with the importance that is attached to it, is definitely there in the film. “As the poet said: May the bath-keeper enjoy a long and happy life.”

■ The music in the film is by Ennio Morricone (1928- ) and it is sublime indeed.

■ The 18 certificate: Sex and nudity in this film are more than in The Decameron, but still, they appear so natural and not really erotic, probably with the exception of the bow scene I mentioned earlier. What is actually erotic about that scene is not the idea itself but the anticipation… wow, thank you Pasolini.

►►►price◄◄◄

Amazon: £34.99 - £89.90.

►►►recommended?◄◄◄

Yes. It is the story from a different point of view; probably not as “elegant” as the readers who were kept awake till morning to read just a little more would have liked it to be, yet the spontaneity with which each story emerges from the other even without a Scheherazade is definitely admirable. 

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