The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

The walls of Bagdad are so high that to convey their immensity is to reduce the actors before them to squirrels, scurrying at the base of the screen. Within those walls is a city so seemingly vast that we do not witness its parts so much as explore them—moving not just right and left as we do, forward and back; but down: to its catacombs and sewers, and up to the lofty heights of its castle spires and tallest trees. Among the beings inhabiting the city is represented every race; every type: lithe and fleet; muscular and powerful; sedentary and fat; young, old, ugly, beautiful. And beyond the city lies every challenge, real or fantastically imaginary, that an adventurer in a long-lost time might hope, or fear, to encounter. Douglas Fairbanks called The Thief of Bagdad his best film. He was right.

The Indian Tomb, Parts One and Two (1921)

When the European public of the 1920s imagined India, what did they conjure in their minds? Was it a realistic picture? Could it be? Certainly, most of them had never seen the place.

Presumably, some of the filmmakers whose work the public consumed, had. But filmmakers, for the most part, seek to entertain. So when they set a film in India, they made this India the stuff of fantasy, with beautiful dancers and ecstatic priests, and heathen monuments hewn from rock, all of it encroached upon by jungles filled with terrible beasts. This place was defined by its otherness to the West. Its people were outsiders, even when depicted in their own land.