Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66507 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-09-17
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: Italian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 125 minutes

Special Features
1.66 Wide Screen
Italian
Region 2
English

Synopsis
Exotic spectacle and unbridled sensuality collide in Pier Paolo Pasolini's dreamlike retelling of the Arabian fable. In this lush adaptation, a prince goes abroad in search of his beloved slave, whom someone has kidnapped. As he travels from land to land, he listens to erotic tales told by the people he meets--and though the stories entice him, he never can forget the lover he hopes to find again. The film--shot on location in Yemen, Ethiopia, Iran, and Nepal--is the final chapter in Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" series that includes THE DECAMERON and THE CANTERBURY TALES.

Customer Reviews

Sumptuous, meandering narrative
One of Pasolini's trilogy of explorations of the medium of storytelling and spoken narrative ("Canterbury Tales" and "Decameron" are the other pair), "Arabian Nights" is the most integrated and coherent of the three. It follows a theme of lust, love, and loss. A slave girl, Zumarud, is empowered to choose her own master - she chooses a youth, gives him the money to buy her, and the pair of them set up home together.

Only he loses her through greed and naivety. He sets out to find her, and the film follows their many adventures and the adventures of those people whose lives they touch. The film is presented in a series of vignettes rather than as a single storyline. In Burton's translation of the 1001 Arabian Nights, King Shahryar believes that all women are inherently unfaithful, and murders each new wife after the wedding night until Scheherazade enters his life. Each night she buys her life by recounting another story, enrapturing the king.

There is no Scheherazade here, but themes of betrayal and greed run through the film. In the main, the setting is in the desert or Arab villages rather than a king's palace. It is a celebration of the beauty of youth and their innocent sexual energy. In one vignette, an old man seduces three youths, in another, a caravan train picks up a young man and young woman and introduces them to one another.

The acting is amateurish and clumsy, but that enhances the eroticism in places - there is none of the confident, rehearsed choreography of the professional here. And yet the sex is passionless, static, unreal. This is a manipulative world where the weak and the naïve are exposed to others who will routinely lie, cheat, steal, and use one another. This is a world in which men have to have love explained to them by women. This is a world of animal instincts mediated and civilised by the use of language.

The visual imagery is stunning, though much of the setting is either desert or bleached out, white or sandy buildings. Only an occasional splash of colour is permitted. The imagery, then, is of an architectural quality, the settings framing the litheness and suppleness of the youthful human body. Again, the eroticism is understated but implicit.

And the characters who pass across the screen tell tales or recite poetry. The tales flow into vignettes or little sub-plots, then drift back to the main theme again. This is the story-telling tradition as popular communication and as explanation. The story is told that ... and people live awaiting the story to unfold, waiting for the moment when the story comes true. The story is told that a man shall cross the desert and become king of the walled city ... .

The beautiful Zumarud finally finds herself mistaken for a man and is made king of the desert city. Men are now her slaves and she has absolute power. This is the absolute power which Scheherazade strove to wield, the power to enrapture, to capture the minds and imaginations of men. Only Scheherazade slaved to capture the king's attention and love by telling fantasies - Zumarud enslaves men by fulfilling their own fantasies. Women, it seems, are not unfaithful - men are deceived by their own thoughts and expectations.

Pasolini creates a story within a story within a story. Each person has a story to tell, but how many others will listen? Are the stories we tell truth or fiction? Can we recognise our own truths? Are the stories meant to inform, to entrance, to entertain, or to deceive. For ultimately, of course, Scheherazade deceives and manipulates her husband as she instrumentally sets out to save her own life by telling him stories. Who can blame her?

Pasolini's "Arabian Nights" is a sumptuous, meandering narrative which will entertain and amuse.

Beautiful transfer of a neglected masterwork
At last, Pasolini's beautifully-photographed tale of love, lust and vengeance gets the release it deserves in this country. Previously only available in murky VHS in Italy, this is a sparkling transfer of a striking film - and completely uncut! I have two quibbles - the lack of extras - there are at least two deleted scenes, one of which was available in the 80s on a compilation Morricone video. Although without sound, it had Morricone's hauntingly minimalist score attached. Pity it couldn't have been added to this otherwise excellent release. The second quibble is the sometimes too-bright or too-grainy transfer. But these are only quibbles - this is a must-have for Pasolini fans or those who appreciate fine cinema.

Paradise on earth
Pasolini has proved himself a master of adaptation - if only the term wasn't so pitiably insufficient to describe his achievement. The films Pasolini based on canonical classics (Arabian Nights, Canterbury Tales, Decameron, Oedipus Rex, Salo, The Gospel according to St Matthew, etc.) are full-scale intertextual responses and contextualisations. The political element may be more pronounced in The Gospel or the notorious Salo than in the Trilogy of Life (of which the Arabian Nights is part), but still the relevance of Pasolini's narrative is visible throughout. All Pasolini's films are, albeit in various degrees, episodic and fragmented - like the century and the society that produced them. The Decameron is a biting satire as much as Salo is terrifying in its power to absorb the viewer into a sort of complicity with the victimiser. The Arabian Nights reverses the gruelling horror of Salo: it is an Edemic space, where paradisal bodies lead lives of pure bliss or pure sorrow - purity, not absolute mirth is the quintessence of Pasolini's cinematic discourse. The body's are paradisal precisely because they are unabashedly imperfect: in the Arabian Nights, Pasolini exorcises the pretentious artificiality of modern image as much as he creates a fresh new narrative medium by appealing back to the sources.
The DVD provides high quality image, but few extras. The price is higher than necessary.