Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Near Misses in the Near East
The Adventures of Hajji Baba (USA, 1964)
Though the vogue for Middle Eastern Orientalism in 20th-century movies wasn’t entirely a scourge — where would the history of fantasy films be without Harryhausen’s 7th Voyage of Sinbad? — by and large it was mainly responsible for a lot of crap and claptrap. This goes way back to the Silent Era, peaking with The Sheik in 1921, the movie that made Rudolf Valentino a household word. Orientalist films set in the Near East almost always relied on visual clichés of colorful and exotic luxury, with female characters who exhibit a sensuality forbidden in the Christian west, and male antagonists who are cruel, dishonest, greedy, and lecherous. The protagonists, almost exclusively male, are either European or Americans of European descent, heroes who exemplify the “Western” traits of courage, daring, integrity, and respect for decency. Even when the heroes are themselves Middle Eastern, as in the movies we cover this week, they still embody those qualities deemed “Western” and are usually played by Europeans or Americans.
