Everyone involved in making this movie seems to have been on drugs during the filming. Pasolini takes the scintillating stories of the ARABIAN NIGHTS and wrings from them two hours of generally pointless boredom.
The non-professional peformers are sometimes attractive, but none have any talent for acting, so they laugh, smile, and pose.
The best thing about the movie is the use of authentic North African locations and their colorful inhabitants. For those who care, there is a great deal of gratuitous nudity, mostly male. Too bad Pasolini gave so little thought to storytelling, lighting, composition, camera movement, special effects -- all the things a director is SUPPOSED to pay attention to.
Pasolini's only interest in the film seems to be as a pretext for getting young Arab boys and men to take their clothes off. YOu get a lot of young Arab guys standing around naked, with embarrassed grins on their faces, while someone unenthusiastically touches their flaccid members. It's all very un-erotic without being anything else in particular.
In this film Pasolini shows no more directing talent than your average tourist with a video camera. I'm puzzled by some of the approval some critics have given to this curiously inert rendering of the great, exciting source material of the 1,001 NIGHTS.
The non-professional peformers are sometimes attractive, but none have any talent for acting, so they laugh, smile, and pose.
The best thing about the movie is the use of authentic North African locations and their colorful inhabitants. For those who care, there is a great deal of gratuitous nudity, mostly male. Too bad Pasolini gave so little thought to storytelling, lighting, composition, camera movement, special effects -- all the things a director is SUPPOSED to pay attention to.
Pasolini's only interest in the film seems to be as a pretext for getting young Arab boys and men to take their clothes off. YOu get a lot of young Arab guys standing around naked, with embarrassed grins on their faces, while someone unenthusiastically touches their flaccid members. It's all very un-erotic without being anything else in particular.
In this film Pasolini shows no more directing talent than your average tourist with a video camera. I'm puzzled by some of the approval some critics have given to this curiously inert rendering of the great, exciting source material of the 1,001 NIGHTS.