Arabian Nights (1974) User Reviews

At least it's different...

[rbverhoef · 6/10 · 4 December 2006]

'Il Fiore delle mille e una notte', or 'Arabian Nights', is Pier Paolo Pasolini's final film from his "trilogy of life" and his second to last film in general. His last of course is 'Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom', the controversial first film from his "trilogy of death".

With 'Arabian Nights' Pasolini combines a couple of stories from the book 'A Thousand and One Nights' into one story, although the film itself still feels very episodic. All parts of the story deal with love, or actually I should say lust, ending in sex. Especially the penis gets enough screen time here, it might as well be the leading character. The sex scenes themselves are, in my opinion, not very sensual or erotic (although they admittedly are when you compare them to such scenes in any other Pasolini film) which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it becomes exactly that when more than half the movie exists out of them.

On the other hand the film is pretty entertaining, mostly for its oddness. That again, is something we see in almost any other Pasolini film. His distant approach adds to that feeling, especially when he shows violent images. One might not expect them in a film that arguably celebrates love and sex. Another factor for the oddness is the terrible acting, especially from the men. Maybe good acting is impossible for them here since Pasolini presents them as a bunch of whiners who would do anything for love. Of course, once again, with love I mean sex. The Italian language in the Eastern setting is another thing that feels pretty weird as well. All these elements add to the oddness which makes the film more entertaining than it probably should have been.

I have to conclude with saying that I sort of admire Pasolini. I think only his 'Il vangelo secundo Matteo' can be considered as a truly great film, mostly since his approach is the distant one. I think that is a good thing when it comes to a religious film like that. that approach in his other films is not always the right one, but it is one aspect of why his films are different, often daring. Even when not much is happening, or when we have no clue what is happening, or when we normally would not care that much, Pasolini keeps it kind of interesting.

The sexual encounters in the film are strongly uninhibited, but not graphic or explicit...

[Nazi_Fighter_David · 7/10 · 30 August 2008]

This film version keeps much of the eroticism in Sir Richard Burton's original translation, which previous movie treatments saw fit to water down… Great care was taken in the details: it was shot on location (Africa and the Middle East) and a dark skinned girl was cast as the princess… The acting is extremely good, and the stories connect in and out in intriguing fashion...

The film selects some of the more popular of the Arabian Nights stories, but intertwines them in strange ways… Like the original, many stories lead into other stories and again into others…

One of the most erotic sequences is when two supernatural beings decide to play a trick on a virginal girl and boy… The beings make each young person seduce the other while he or she is asleep… In another scene, one of the heroes finds himself in a pool with a group of very pretty, very nude Arabian women, who tease and tickle him into an intense joy

Pier Paolo Pasolini's third colorful pageant of his ¨trilogy of life¨ series , freely based on ten shameless tales

[ma-cortes · 6/10 · 4 December 2018]

Pier Paolo Pasolini's third epic show of his ¨trilogy of life¨ series , based on 10 bawdy tales and riding out of the magic and splendor from Orient . This is a peculiar rendition of various stories from 1001 Nights written by an unknown autor . An explicit adaptation of classy portmanteu with adequate sets , gorgeous photography , humor and interwoven with strong sexual scenes . This Arabian Nights emerges as a marvelously relaxed and open puzzle of the interlinked tales dedicated to the multiplicity of truth amid a welter of sexual exhibitionism . The tales revolve around slaves , Kings , Queens , demons , love , loss and atonement . And representing an enjoyable life vision behind its humorous facade . As a lot of Arabian Nights tales were adapted , most notably : Set in ancient Arabia, there a youth comes to fall in love with a slave named Zumurrud (Ines Pellegrini) who selected him as her master . As Nur Ed Din (Franco Merli) is chosen by an attractive slave girl to be her new master . After a foolish error causes their separation, he travels in search for her . Later on , she is abducted and subsequently she becomes a wealthy queen and while they must search for each other . Stories are told within stories ; and various other travelers recount their own tragic , surprising , fantastic and romantic experiences . Dealing with travels , supernatural beings , an unfortunate lover (Ninetto Davoli) whose love results in terrible consequences , a nasty demon (Franco Citti) and the whims of destiny.

This Pier Paolo Pasolini's Tales of the Arabian Nights is an acclaimed , if sexually explicit retelling of a handful of Oriental tales . Here Pasolini has loosely modeled a recounting of 1001 Nights' famous tales that were previously adapted and very smoothly in Universal studios as ¨Arabian nights¨ (1942) by John Rawlins with John Hall , Maria Montez , though it nothing to do with this Pasolini film . This movie inspired by the ancient erotic and mysterious tales of Mid-West Asia ; however many tales don't make sense . Pasolini manages in his uninhibited fashion to capture the bawdy and anarchic spirit of far countries . This is episodic romp in which Pier Paolo is up to his old tricks satirizing social habits , religion , lower classes and throwing in liberal doses of love and life . It yields an engrossing array of liberating , mysterious and profound moments . However , the sights of the interminable assembly of seemingly ugly villagers Pasolini picked up as extras can be a bit embarrassing . As well as the endless sex scenes and bad taste can be a little intimidating . By the time these escenes were considered obscene , and some images deemed blasphemous. It was initially banned in Italy , and many other countries for several years . The best episodes are the followings : include stories of an innocent young man who falls for a gorgeous slave , another young man who becomes enraptured by a mysterious woman on his wedding day, and when Zumurrud , a slave turned monarch , after her drag wedding amid delightfully conspiratorial laughter reveals her true sexual identity to her diminutive and equally charming bride and another main story concerning a man who is determined to free a woman from a demon . This ¨Arabain Nights¨ is adorned by beautiful cinematography by Giuseppe Ruzzolini , and shot on location in several countries as Nepal , Zabid, Yemen ,Yazd, Iran , Mesjed-e-Imam, Esfahan, Iran , Mesjed-e Shah : Zumurrud's palace, Esfahan, Iran , San'a, Yemen , Eritrea ,Ethiopia Shibam,Wadi Dhar , Rock Palace , Yemen , Hanuman Dhoka, Durbar Square, Kathmandu, Nepal and Laparo Film Studios, Rome, Lazio, Italy . Evocative production design and art direction by Dante Ferreti , and enjoyable score by Ennio Morricone ; equally , there are lots of nudism : more male than female , homoeroticism and disagreeable scenes . Pasolini's film career would then alternate distinctly personal and often scandalously erotic adaptations of classic literary texts . As his first intallment of his trilogy of life titled Decameron was followed by Tales of Canterbury (1971) : the trilogy's weak point based on Godofredo Chaucer tales and finally the third ¨The Arabian nights¨ featuring 10 of the old Scherezade favorites .

The motion picture lavishly produced by Alberto Grimaldi was well directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini , it has rarely been seem in a great number of countries after its release in 1975 by United Artists , and being ludicrously cut by the censor and insanely dubbed . Pasolini was member of the Italian Communist Party from 1947 to 1949 and he was expelled because of his homosexuality. He was also a poet, a painter , actor and a novelist. He frequently casts Franco Citti , Ninetto Davoli , Franco Merli and Ines Pellegrini and non-professional actors as in Arabian nights . In his movies he shows his own more personal projects, expressing his controversial views on Marxism, atheism, fascism and homosexuality . His first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction of the life of a pimp in the slums of Rome caused a sensation . He was arrested in 1962 by his contribution to the portmanteau film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963) . It might have been expected that his next film, Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) , here Paolo presented the Biblical story in a totally realistic, stripped-down style, would cause a similar fuss but, in fact, it was rapturously acclaimed as one of the few honest portrayals of Christ on screen . Subsequently , he made a Greek rendition : Oedipus Rex (1967) . And other films as the Neorrealist Mamma Roma with Anna Magnani , Porcile , The Grim Reaper , Accatone , Il Bell' Antonio , That long night in , and , of course , ¨Trilogy of life¨. Finally , Salo or the 120 day of Sodom that was deemed extremely violent , obscene and Pasolini being judged , condemned and given a suspended sentence by the Italian courts , being a mercilessly grim fusion of the Marquis de Sade's story with Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy , showing the sinister connection between consumerism and Nazism. Pasolini was murdered in still-mysterious circumstances shortly after completing the film.

Third (and best) part of the trilogy of life.

[dbdumonteil · 31 August 2003]

"Fiore delle mille e una notte" ,which won special prize at CANNES 1974 is the third part of what Pasolini called the trilogy of life which encompasses "il decameron" (1971) and" racconti di Canterbury" (1972). It's the most accessible of all Pasolini movies ,and weren't it for the numerous nudities,it would appeal to large audience.

This must be the script:it's much better than the two first films because the story is built à la Shéhérazade ,with plots ,subplots and subsubplots which fit into each other;and although sex is the main vector,it features enough twists to sustain the interest throughout.It does not forget magic (the segment which features Ninetto Davoli,Pasolini's favorite actor,uses a lot of symbols)and mystery (the adolescent who must be killed when he's fifteen ).Humor is less vulgar than in "di racconti di Canterbury" The little riddle "the aromatic grass of the fields" "the slit pomegranate" and "the inn of the warm welcome " is witty.

Little did we know that Pasolini would follow his trilogy of life with the most depressing work ever made :"Salo" (1975).

Uneven interpretation of old tales... But erotics had its role

[BeneCumb · 7/10 · 22 October 2012]

Similar to the Bible or most of epics, it is impossible to create some smooth and comprehensive work of art from Arabian Nights. It is a bunch of stories of different eras and angles and places of actions lie thousands of kilometers from each other. Pasolini has taken some hectic picks, invited plump women and skinny men (incl. his own lover) and made a loosely combined film where male bodies have full nudity as well, if required (would be interesting to know how the director made those teens and young people to perform so naturally). The 2 hours seems a bit long though, i.e. 1st half of the film is more dynamic and catchy. But the background and habits of the Arab past is well expressed, and Pasolini himself is less profound or less degenerated as usual :)

An Erotic Version of Arabian Nights

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 3 March 2004]

A young man buys a slave in an Arabian market and falls in love with her. She is abducted and while pursuing her, many erotic tales are told to him. This Pasolini's version of `Arabian Nights' is very reasonable, but I do not understand how this movie won a special prize in Cannes 1974. In my opinion, it is a forgettable film, highly recommended for the gay community due to the quantity of scenes with frontal male nudity, but which deserves to be watched once, because of the `trademark' Pasolini. The location where it was filmed is the best this movie can offer. In Brazil, this movie is not available on VHS or DVD; I saw it yesterday, on cable television, in a Pasolini's festival along this week. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): `As 1001 Noites de Pasolini' (`The 1001 Nights of Pasolini)'

Exotic, erotic, authentic

[francheval · 10/10 · 12 February 2006]

This very unique rendering of the Arabian Nights was filmed in natural locations in places as diverse as Ethiopia, Yemen, Iran and Nepal. The beauty of the landscapes is breathtaking, and makes the film an incredible voyage into time and space.

Please note that this movie is an explicitly erotic one, but one tends to forget that the original Arabian Nights were very much so, and not fairy tales for children. It is certainly difficult to make an erotic masterpiece, as sexual content does not make a movie better. It rather tends generally to get crassly exploitative, and rarely beautiful. There is plenty of sex in this movie, but it is depicted in a natural, feel-good and intelligent way that is rarely to be found elsewhere.

By the way, this movie should be seen again at the light of nowadays controversies. The Muslim world was far from always having been puritanical, and the sensual poetry that is rendered here is not Pasolini's invention. It is the faithful reflection of a hedonistic Orient that produced for instance poet Omar Khayyam as well as the original Arabian Nights. It is also a film about love, the most gripping part being the tragic and mysterious tale of Aziz and Aziza.

Don't expect any Aladdin or Ali Baba stuff here, you already figured this out. Anyway, it would be impossible to make a complete film version of the Arabian Nights, so this work just shows a few excerpts combined together (the Italian title is in in fact "the flower of the Arabian Nights"). However, the trend of the tales is respected in the sense that all the stories are interwoven into one another and eventually come back to the original plot.

The atmosphere of ancient Orient is rendered in a style that is lightyears away from usual clichés, and in an incredibly authentic and physical way. At times, you get the illusion that you feel the blazing sun on your skin, that you can smell the exotic vegetation, the sand, the noisy bazaars full of spices. There are a few flaws though : visible cutting, unadapted stances of classical music. The use of non professional actors was common for Pasolini, and gives a pleasant feeling of naive freshness.

The movie is probably Pasolini's best, and belongs to the "trilogy of Life" that included "the Decameron" and "the Canterbury tales", also literature classics. But much more than the two others, this movie is an ode to life. Hard to suspect that Pasolini's last work would be an ode to death. "Arabian Nights" belongs to the golden age of Italian cinema, that was incredibly prolific and innovative in the sixties and seventies.

All in all, not a family movie, but if you are curious and open-minded, get ready for a beautiful journey.

Soft core camp

[billcr12 · 7/10 · 23 March 2012]

Arabian Nights was inspired by the book of the same title. Pier Paolo Pasolini, the controversial Italian director, handles the adaptation of the story of Nur E Din who falls in love with a slave girl, Zumurrud. He is responsible for her Abduction and so, he begins a journey to find his soul mate.

Meanwhile, Zumurrud, dressed as a man has escaped her captors and become a king while her potential life mate wanders the vast land for a reunion of epic proportions. Others share their romantic adventures which include demons, mysterious women and plenty of lust.

Pasolini uses the original story and dresses it up as a soft core costume drama with extensive nudity with some funny moments. It's passable silly camp for those so inclined.

it shouldn't work, but it does- a series of stories of the bizarre and romantic (or erotic, take your pick)

[Quinoa1984 · 9/10 · 13 December 2007]

Whether or not you like some (or just respond positively to some) of Pier Paolo Pasolini's work, or you don't, will depend on how much one can take of provocative subject matter put forward in an upfront manner. For me, he's a director that can go both ways, be it completely muddled and pretentious (Teorema) or almost boring in its S&M tactics of twisted satire (Salo), or actually dramatically engaging (Mamma Roma), and he's never someone who takes the easy road. Arabian Nights is another one, as part of a 'trilogy' of films adapted from famous, erotically-laced works of stories that have scandalized for centuries (the others the Decameron and Canterbury Nights). Once again, Pasolini has a lot of people in his film that aren't actors, or even real extras- sometimes some people will just pop out, or a bunch of kids will run around, and they're plucked right from the scenery. If authentic, film fans, is what you want, Pasonili gives it, in all of the style of a guy out to shoot a documentary on the people in these settings and gets (pleasantly) sidetracked by a bunch of crazy-tragic stories of love and lust in the desert.

As if done in a pre-Pulp Fiction attempt at non-linear storytelling, we get the tale of Zumurrud (Ines Pellegini) and Nur ed din (Franco Merli), one a slave who is bought by the most innocent looking kid in the bunch of bidders. They fall in love, the wise young girl and naive grunt, but they get separated after she gets sold to another man. She escapes, but becomes the unwitting king after she is mistaken for a man. Meanwhile, her young little man is calling after her/him, and getting into his own trouble. Through this framework, we get other stories told of love lost and scrambled; a sad and silly story of a man who's engaged to his cousin, and is thwarted by a mysterious woman who gets his attention, which leads him down a path of semantics (yes, semantics, poetry-style) and sex, leaving his much caring cousin behind. Then there's the man who woos a woman who is under the ownership of a demon, and once their affair is discovered some unexpected things happen via the Demon (Franco Citti, maybe the most bad-ass character in the film despite the surreal-aspect of the showdown). And then one more story, which, hmm....

I could go on making descriptions, but then this wouldn't be much of a review of praise of the picture. Suffice to say it's one of Pasolini's strongest directed efforts, where he's surefire in his consistent usage of the hand-held lens, getting his actors to look sincere through dialog that is half ripped-from-the-pages and half with the sensibility of Pasolini as a poet (yes, I went there in the whole 'he's a poet' thing, but he is in a rough-edged and melodramatic timing and flow). He's also going for an interesting combo; neo-realist settings for a good chunk of the picture, set in and around real locations in areas that don't need much production design, and an epic sweep that includes many extras, some special effects at times (and how about that lion!), and extravagant costumes.

I also liked- if not loved- how Pasonili dealt with sex and more-so the human body itself. It would probably rightfully get an NC-17 if released today in America, and got an X when released in 1980. The dreaded 'thing' of a man is revealed about as often as a cut-away to a master shot of a building. Everything, in fact, is filmed frankly, without the style that tip-toes around the starkness of two people embraced and naked. But it's also not pornographic either; if anything Pasolini perhaps doesn't direct far enough with the sex, as one body just lays still on top of another. There's a specific intent to dealing with sexuality in this world that respects lust and desire from the original text without making it blatant- only in one big instance, involving the fate of the man from the cousin story (the one with Aziz I think) revels in the horror of sex that was delved tenfold in Salo. Add to this the exquisite score from Ennio Morricone, who enriches any scene his score pops up, as a mandolin strings away and the strings rise with just a hint of the sentimental. Without Morricone, in fact, it might not be as emotional a film, when need be.

And lest not forget Arabian Nights can be strangely comical, where Pasolini throws it back at the audience that he knows he's going (rightfully) into the surreal. Like with the story of the Demon and the fate of a man transformed as a chimpanzee, or the vision with the lion, or even the dialog in the pool with the three girls and the man, which is humorous while keeping a tongue-in-cheek. And there's even some good jokes to come out of the obvious step of having Zummurrud as the 'King' when it's clear as day from the Italian dubbing that he's the 'she', so to speak, as it stretches out into a final scene where lovers are united and things are as they should be, however much the director is thumbing his nose at power and sex and the dealings of the heart with organs. Arabian Nights probably couldn't be made today, but could anyone else but Pasolini make it anyway? There's daring in this film, and through the exotic exteriors and sets we see a filmmaker working along like there's nothing else to stop him, for better or worse. This time for the better.

The WTF is strong in this film

[gringoley · 6/10 · 3 May 2016]

The WTF is strong in this film. Lots of head shaking and bewilderment to be found here. Including a bow and arrow powered dildoe.

I've read 1001 nights and found it completely different but there are those that argue this film is the most accurate of all! Such as "Adaptation Essay Prize Winner Pasolini's Splendid Infidelities: Un/Faithful Film Versions of The Thousand and One Nights" by Michael James Lundell. Where believe it or not he argues that "Pasolini's 1974 film Il fiore delle mille e una notte seems to be the most faithful adaptation, in its emphasis on sexuality, of The 1001 Nights in its oldest form. This success is surprising and possibly inadvertent but it presents a potentially measurable connection between the written and filmic Nights."

1001 Penises and some moments of true wonder.

[Ben_Cheshire · 5/10 · 21 May 2015]

There's a lot of potential moral quandaries associated with this movie: real animals getting killed, disturbingly young actors engaging in simulated sex acts, some unsettling adult themes and the general feeling of heat and stench conveyed by the flies and sweat. Then there's Pasolini's signature shaky camera-work and rough acting from non-actors.

If you can get past the thirty minute mark, and a few boring sequences, you may find yourself like I was charmed enough by its incidents that you keep watching to the end, waiting to see what surprise lay in store next.

It features some wonderful moments that suit the mythical source material, and as plentiful supply of penises there ever was, certainly if you count unique penises, I reckon this could beat most pornos, if that's your cup of tea. They're normally just sitting there, bear in mind, but often they're doing other things.

Not exactly family fare, but for those seeking a bit of weirdness, this may just hit the right spot. It would probably be hilarious if dubbed over Kung Pow style. (Or What's Up Tigerlilly style if you prefer).

5/10 for me.

Fascinating!

[mycheung-1 · 9/10 · 26 October 2004]

Fun to see the comments at two extreme posts. There are things like durian and cheese, either you love it, or you hate it! So below is just my personal opinion and you absolutely don't need to agree with me!

It is true that the characters are quite caricatural, but the movie is about one thousand and one nights - it is about fantasies! Honestly i don't ever find the "dreams" typical of hollywoodian movies more appealing. it is just a matter of taste. in fact, through exaggerations, Pasolini let human strengthens and weaknesses magnified and incarnated in the characters. in a way, they are like cartoon characters. Can we call that bad acting? it is just a style of interpretation. Oh, only if we had the innocence like the actors and actress in the movie ... in fact, somehow i found a bit of resemblance (or to the opposite of it!) in these characters to people i know. only if you observe, man! I especially love the story about Aziz and Aziza...

It is above all a movie about love - and there comes sex naturally, and the jealousy, pain, loyalty, betrayal, etc. Even between the "owner" and the "slave", there was absolutely no slavery involves, but just love! well an exchange took place in the market, but that only showed that the slave was actually free. Pasolini didn't have an obsession for the female body which is usually the case in most movies. Is there anything wrong about that? Or are we just too accustomed to female nudity so we always expect it and we become annoyed about male nudity too easily? Both can be beautiful and deserve the same attention from the camera and the audience.

Talking about female vs. male in the movies, i constantly feel that Pasolini pictured man as a simple but too simple (even stupid) creature, while woman as complex and too complex (either a saint or perversed) when it comes to love. But again, it's about fairy tales. Only if it were true, life would be so much easier!

There were poems cited in almost every story and this was one of the most fascinating elements in the movie as well. you may call it erotic, but look at it another way round, who doesn't want his/her own sex and love life to be as poetic and beautiful. I see the humour in the movie with the same lens.

I was also amazed by the flow of the story line - story within a story, and then a personage in the story starts to tell another story... it can be confusing at first, but as the story flows it all became clearer, and at the end, i was simply amazed. or thanks to the DVD technology too, imagine 30 years back when u had to and could only watch it in one go in a cinema!

Light entertainment...with a lot of nudity

[davidmvining · 7/10 · 22 March 2024]

The final entry in Pasolini's Trilogy of Life is more akin to The Canterbury Tales than The Decameron. Erotic but less concerned with shocking the squares than the first entry, Arabian Nights is another anthology film of ancient tales set in an exotic land, filmed beautifully by Pasolini and his cinematographer Giuseppe Ruzzolini, that entertains lightly as it moves through its different stories with something of an overall framing device popping in every once in a while (it's not the original story's framing device). I think the looseness of the framing device here compared to the slightly more rigid use of it in The Canterbury Tales is why I prefer the second entry in the Trilogy over this third.

Nur-ed-Din (Franco Merli) gets talked into purchasing the slave Zumurrud (Ines Pellegrini) by her in the market, her giving him the money to do it. They run off to be together, spending a night of bliss where she tells him the first of the tales that describes a competition between Sium and a woman to find the most beautiful boy and the most beautiful girl in the world, keep them in a tent together, and determine which one is the most beautiful by watching to see which one falls in love with the other, the logic being the one who loves will be less beautiful than the one who does not. The irony of the story is that both fall in love and are, therefore, equally beautiful (this is all done while almost everyone is just...completely naked), and much like the Merchant's Tale in The Canterbury Tales, this provides a good example of the tone and approach to storytelling and the erotic that Pasolini has in store across the rest of the film.

It's this approach to sex, interpersonal relationships, and a certain ancient magic that comes into play more fully in later stories (there's no Aladdin here, though). It's a yearning for a simpler time (ruled by tyrants, riddled with illiteracy, and without anything like modern medicine, but let's just paper over that) where there was a deeper connection between people and the world around them, when they could see magic in things. It also shares that lighter tough in terms of the narrative that Pasolini demonstrated in the previous film, this quick definition of characters through good casting (almost all non-professional actors again), simple stories, and quick little points that makes fun short films.

The framing device that weaves through this film is tighter than what's in The Canterbury Tales (The Decameron didn't even try to have one) as Zumurrud gets kidnapped and finds her way into becoming king of a city (they think she's a young man when she shows up) while Nur-ed-Din goes searching for her. How we move into and out of stories is never consistent and the blending between "reality" and fantasy is frequently fluid. The tales range from Prince Shahzaman (Alberto Argentino) facing off against a demon (Franco Citti) for the affections of a young girl (including actual special effects shots!) to Prince Yunan (Salvatore Sapienza) becoming shipwrecked on an island where he finds a boy destined to be murdered. However, the largest bulk of time is dedicated to the Aziz (Ninetto Davoli), his romantic pursuit of Budur (Luigina Rocchi), and Aziz's cousin Aziza (Tessa Bouche) whom Aziz was due to marry before he became smitten.

This tale, staring the most frequent acting collaborator Pasolini had (for strong reasons since they lived together for a decade, a situation that had ended a little bit before, during the production of The Canterbury Tales, when Davoli had gone off to marry a woman), is an intricate telling of Aziz going through a series of impossible tasks that he usually fails at first before succeeding, leading to him getting closer to Budur over a series of nights. It's an interesting tale with wrinkles about the nature of love contrasted with desire.

The tales weave in and out of each other until the framing device closes things out with an amusing resolution, and we're done.

It's not a deep film, but it's got entertaining aspects and some interesting looks at sex and love and desire all in an exotic setting.

This Trilogy of Life was an amusing detour on Pasolini's part. He would still consider them ideological, and I can see that in them. There are still matters of class and implications around life in the modern world that feed into his Marxist views. However, they're much more background for the portraits of eroticism that he has on display. It's not a surprise that his films, especially The Decameron, led to a rash of adult films, particularly in Italy, because they are so frank and open with their portraits of naked bodies. It was the first that felt the most like an attempt to "shock the squares", but the next two were more fully just anthology films around their central ideas. I appreciated them more, and while I do think that the framing device of this film works better than the framing device in The Canterbury Tales, I think I prefer the second film in the trilogy overall because I simply got a bit more entertainment out of the stories told.

Still, it was light and amusing.

Colorful confusion

[johannes2000-1 · 5/10 · 10 April 2007]

Surely there's a lot to admire and enjoy in this movie: the settings and costumes are extremely colourful, the locations exotic, at times almost dreamlike, and at several times there are stunning mass-scenes. All this makes watching it a dazzling and overwhelming experience. But - at least with me - this movie also evokes bewilderment, confusion and irritation.

Using local amateurs can give a feeling of authenticity, but here is such an abundance of amateurism that it gets on your nerves. Many of the cast don't seem to act at all, but just obediently follow orders: they either loiter about or run around frantically, they grin sheepishly or feign to cry, they rattle their obviously later dubbed Italian lines in mostly loud and high-pitched voices, and then sooner or later (mostly sooner) they take their clothes off, that's about it. The musical score is very strange and uneven, at some parts beautiful music (Morricone!), at other times there are long streches of bland silence. Strangely enough never Arabian-sounding music, which couldn't have been hard to find around the locations where they filmed.

I don't mind a bit of nudity and sex, but this is really way over the top: every guy that pops around the corner is stark naked within a minute or two and runs around like that for the rest of the film. And mind you, this is a 1974 movie that actually won a renowned prize (in Cannes)! What on earth is the point of all this exhibitionism, there are numerous instances where there appears to be no functional motivation for it whatsoever.

Maybe Pasolini liked to create confusion and bewilderment. It's only a bit hard to admire this film for just that and for the enchanting cinematography.

"The truth is not revealed in one dream, but in many..."

[enicholson · 10/10 · 29 August 2001]

This film obscures the boundaries between myth, dream and cinema, or rather, perhaps, it helps create a new kind of art altogether of the three. As tales of myth, the interwoven stories in this film act as lessons of love and heartbreak, collective dreams and fantasies of staggering beauty. Destiny is a major theme in this film, as though human beings all live the same lives, as though humankind's greatest desires and fears are gifts and curses from the gods -- the end residue remaining in the beauty and wisdom of poetry, spoken and visual. Are the concepts of fate and determinism the source of this mythical beauty? Perhaps. Maybe poetry and truth come from a resignation and surrender to forces which humans will never ultimately understand, but can only either submit to or try to battle. But fate is the result of chance and choice -- often hard, foolish choices taken in the chance encounter of beauty and dreams.

All of the episodes have something great to them: the story of Nur in search of his slave lover Zummuru; the story of the flighty, fickle Aziz and the true Aziza; the story of the artist trying to free is lover from the capture of a demon, etc. All of the stories are linked by the parable of the dove freeing the pigeon, only to become enslaved herself. All those who are free owe their freedom to the burden of some else's slavery and suffering, and someone else's great poetry and artistry. Could this be the truth revealed in many dreams? Maybe it's the main truth Pasolini strives toward; there must be others too.

Ennio Morricone has created some very beautiful music for this film. The harp strings overwhelm us unexpectedly when we first encounter the story of the pigeon and the dove. The settings are amazing, throughout Yemen, Ethiopia, Iran and other locations. Only Pasolini can get these kind of performances from his actors -- at once obvious and staged, while also unselfconscious and natural. The visual style is typical Pasolini, using only natural light.

The only other films I've ever seen that remotely resemble this one are the films of Jean Cocteau. Filmed myths of ageless beauty we can only stagger out of the theater upon viewing and at some point on the way home thank these masters for their hard choices and their slavery to art.

Strange, Poetic Filled with Moments of Greatness

[RobertF87 · 18 March 2004]

This was the penultimate film of the great Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. It also concludes his "Trilogy of Life", based on medieval story collections (the others are "The Decameron" and "The Canterbury Tales"). Like the others in the series, this is a portmanteau film (i.e. the film is not just one story but several).

The film begins with a young man's search for his slave girl lover, who has been abducted. Along the way, several stories from "The Arabian Nights" are told.

The film has a very loose structure. There are stories, within stories, within stories. This can be quite confusing at times. It was filmed in Iran, Yemen and Nepal and the countries look absolutely spectacular. The main flaw of the film is that it does show signs of being hastily cut (Pasolini himself reduced the film by half an hour before general release, and there may have been cuts due to the censors). This often makes the film seem quite disjointed. One of the dominant themes in this film is love and sex, and yes, there is a lot of explicit nudity here.

The film touches on dreams, reality, deception, truth, freedom and slavery. While by no means perfect, there are times when the Pasolini's genius and humanity shines through.

Spellbinding and poetry made cinema

[phibes012000 · 10/10 · 18 March 2005]

This is my favorite Pasolini film. This version of Arabian Nights does away with the slave girl telling a master tales: it tells the tale of a slave girl who outwits every man she contacts. First at the slave market she arranges to have herself bought by a young man instead of an old coot. Then she has to teach the man how to make love. Throughout the poem (it works better as visual poetry) Zummarud, the slave girl, gets into one mess after another with all kinds of men (kings, crooks, and governors): every time she outwits them. Along the way are various poetic tales of betrayal and justice (and other things.) Definitely not in the Aladdin vein and a masterpiece of cinema.

Dull, sloppy "avant-garde" 1970s "epic"

[fwmurnau · 2/10 · 9 July 2004]

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.

Behond human divisions fate can be checked

[Dr_Coulardeau · 10/10 · 4 June 2008]

Truth is not in only one dream but in many dreams. At once treachery in this sun-crashed world. Treachery of a slave who chooses her master. Treachery of a Christian who steals the slave for some Moslem buyer who had been refused by her. Treachery of the desert that forces these people to move around to find water for men and cattle alike. Treachery of love itself that is always at first sight, has little to do with discriminating between boys and girls, women and men. Strangely enough for a long time we believe love is nothing but desire and lust leading to suffering and deception, disappointment. And yet we are to find there is a lot more beyond that simple carnal, though also spiritual, appeal, attraction. There is attachment, an attachment that has to do with fate, a curse, a malediction, happiness. Happiness beyond fate, the curse, the malediction of treachery, vengeance, cruelty. On the track of Zumurud, the stolen slave. And Nordine, her chosen master, is the light of the Lord, the light of that happiness. There is a Song of Song atmosphere here when Nordine does not look after his own vineyard and his Zumurud is stolen again, kidnapped by some other man, a Kurd mind you, after the Christian, and his forty acolytes. The Christian ends up on a cross. The Kurd ends up on a cross. And we are delving into the side-tracks of this main story. There is nothing one can do against the will of God. Then more dramatic stories are going to be told, twisted into and around one another with dramas and more dramas all ordered and commanded by fate no one can evade. The story of the tragic love of Aziz and Aziza destroyed or made impossible by Budur who will end up causing Aziza's death and will castrate Aziz. The story of Aziz and Tadji and the decoration of a pavilion in Queen Dunya's garden, the queen who hates men, and the love that will come out of it. The Stories of the two workers, Shahzaman and Yunan, two dramatic stories of fate that enslaves and victimizes human beings, and their choice to drop everything, sons of Kings that they are, and become mendicants to serve God. A vision of God who is totally absent. Fate is not the decision of God but seems to be some kind of force of its own and the only way to compensate for that necessarily negative fate is to dedicate one's life to God. God is abstract. God has no church, no clergy. God only has these mendicants who suffer for his glory, for his rule. Man is taken between the pagan acceptance of fate and the Godlike attitude that leads to becoming a permanent pilgrim on earth. This power of God is captured in civilizations we understand to be Moslem or Hindu, often at the crossing point between old millennium-long beliefs that edge on superstitions and an abstract notion of God that requires absolute submission. The end of the film hence is completely different because it deals with the second, happy and final meeting between Nordine and Zumulud, between the master and the slave turned king in a love that starts with obedience and ends with passion. In this film Pasolini does not follow a painter, nor a story teller, but a poet, the Arabian poet who speaks of love and the success of love beyond all kinds of difficulties, traps, snares, a love that he embodies in a man and a woman, but that is constantly shown as being ambiguous, limitless, without any boundaries. His vision of the mixing of these two cultures, Semitic Islam and Indo-Aryan Hinduism (note it cannot be Buddhism because of the belief in God) is exhilaratingly fascinating. These Arabian Nights are definitely reflecting that meeting point but here Pasolini makes it a metaphor and a parable of the future of humanity that can only find love, life, a reality in the joining of the various traditions of spirituality that humanity has produced in its divine desire to understand and explain what was a perfect mystery for it, viz. life itself that can only be measured and appreciated when death comes.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Awful!

[Swambi · 1/10 · 3 October 2004]

Personally I found this one of the worst films I have ever seen, and one of the few that I was not able to watch through. Unbelievable - okay so its meant to be fantasy - but the art of a good film is to make fantasy believable, not ridiculous. The entire approach appeared to be woodenly acted to the point where it appeared more like an amateur attempt at pantomime where the acting was so poor that it became funny.

On the positive side the background of some scenes shot in the middle east was authentic, but this was only for short periods, and added little to the general story line. It may have been considered erotic when originally filmed, possibly because of nude scenes, but personally I found it (if possible) the reverse. Sorry, to be frank there is no way I would recommend anyone to watch this.

The Story of the Story

[tedg · 1 October 2006]

Pasolini is a wonderful, wonderful adventure. Welcoming him into your heart is not without cost; he's a friend who is brilliant on one side and captive to banality on the other.

The bad? Well, its tolerable for me because it is so flamboyantly obvious. The man has a triple curse: he is outrageously gay, he is insufferably Italian and (perhaps because of these two) he has excessively simpleminded storytelling skills. The stories here in their individual content have juvenile dynamics. The way the emotions are handled is comically simpleminded.

That's in the nature of the stories of course, but our man here takes them seriously, so overlain on this is his own sexual nature. These stories are, some of them, erotic in nature and all of them have desire as the driver. Among the various stories, he's chosen these and that's fine enough. The original stories were distributed in places all over the Islamic world, a huge reach, but all of them which included sex joked about the dissonance between Islmac attitudes towards sex and the actual lives of folks within.

But its rather interesting actually watching how his own predilections enter the story. Most of the men here are slaves to their own desires. But those desires are all — in the stories — skipping over the most superficial of erotic notions. A teenage boy awakes and finds an unconscious teenage girl next to him. He has sex with her. This is equated to "falling in love." It happens over and over and if you encounter these stories in text, its part of the fun.

But see how Pasolini himself enters the story in how he chooses to portray the erotic content. Nudity and youth stand for the erotic, especially the nude boy. When sex is depicted (less than you would expect from the stories) its amazing wooden, mannikins. I suppose if you made some still images of parts of this it would be erotic, but repeatedly seeing the male member of a cartoon tells me that director has the same foibles as the characters we see.

The Good? Well there's more than enough of that to make up for the sexual inadequacies of that part of the world.

There's the absolute beauty of the thing cinematically. It isn't fully cinematic in motion, since Pasolini has no notion of how things flow, what the rhythms of things are. But each shot is fulfilling and some are absolutely breathtaking. He doesn't have any static tableaux like the striking ones in "Matthew," but the visual elegance is erotic in itself. Its a sort of continuous penis shot of life, and you'll find the beauty of the places erotic in their own ways, And then there's the way the stories are crafted.

Yes they are cartoonish. Yes, they have execrable pacing, almost as if they were found objects and put in inappropriate boxes. But the way they are tied one to another is nothing short of brilliant. If we had none of the beauty, and none of the amusement of watching an Italian fop struggle on screen, we'd still have this. And its great.

There isn't any one mechanism that links the stories; there may be a dozen. There isn't any sense to about half of them, and that's part of the miracle. Sometimes they are inside one another, but sometimes they walk through each other. Sometimes it is the same place of extras. Sometimes a repeated situation; "don't eat from that plate." Sometimes it is simply a segue that has no narrative connection at all but just seems nested or siblinged in some way. Its "Sarogossa Manuscript" with fun and beauty.

I must say that one story really is perfect. It alone has two really beautiful women acting erotically. It has expert pacing. It is funny: laugh out loud funny. And it has a punishment that is one of the most arresting images you'll see — if you are a guy. Plus it has a framing story that makes me think it was the first one adapted and filmed.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Neverending story

[AudemarsPiguet · 9/10 · 26 February 2005]

Seeing Pasolini's version of the Arabian Nights reminded of Petersens masterpiece Neverending Story(the 1984 original). Like in the Neverending Story the power of the mind,of fantasy,of hope is not an abstraction but an unlimited,almost almighty force. An adult never ending story,due to its eroticism,but the erotic scenes and situations only add more mystery and beauty to this film. Eroticism,but not only sexuality,affection,love,passion appear as the ultimate initiating journey,as quest for beauty and ideal. However the film is much more intellectual than erotic,while the protagonists(some of whom are the same from Il Decamerone),mainly amateurs,apparently lack sexual magnetism.But this is where Pasolini's genius is asserted:the endless beauty of this film and its characters is not an outer one-body language,the force of expressions,the deep symbolism are to be slowly,carefully and voluptuously discovered... This film enthralls,fascinates and,at the same time,boosts the intellect.With every scene,every moment passing you find yourself more and more captured by something like a barbaric religion,oriental wisdom,a drug,a poem by Omar Khayyam,an exotic work of art or...just a strange succession of adventures from the Arabian Nights. Filligrane,indefinable,bizarre-both sexual and platonic love are described in this way;as the crucial adventure in everyone's life,the ultimate gateway to perfection,immortality-but not in the sense of procreation(rather the aesthetic&ecstatic beauty transcends everything);a religion of the purest pantheistic sort(Divinity is in everything and trough the few moments of ecstasy man can surpass the boundaries between simple mortals and eternal values,in strike of inspiration brought up by love and passion,both not in the strictly fleshly,human,commonplace sense of the word). Pasolini's vision of the Orient is highly personal and anything else but stereotypical(Ancient Rome in Fellini's Satyricon,Middle Ages in the films of Tarkovski or Ken Russel don't always reflect historical truth like a schoolbook,yet they depict a highly artistic,metaphorical vision of these ages and places,historically inaccurate,but artistically more accomplished&valuable than the dull historical truth);it is a fantastic space beyond good and evil,yet not Utopian(it doesn't necessarily exclude violence and cruelty,yet not in a commercial b-movie thriller/horror style,just as a touch to complete the force and depth of several images and situations. Irrespective of his homosexuality Pasolini doesn't only understand heterosexuality,this film gives the impression that he also intensely relishes it with every breath.This man feels heterosexuality!!!! Less entertaining than Il Decamerone(which,is not a less deep and meaningful film than this),intricate,sometimes difficult to follow,unceremonious yet uplifting,mysterious like love and sexuality(or at least our ideal projection of it)itself. Pasolini should have named his trilogy of life the trilogy of unlimited desire,unlimited passion or unlimited fantasy. Because like in the Neverending Story,the power of fantasy,ideal and passions seams in this film the source of life itself(and even a higher,evolved&idealistic form of life on another,more intense level).

"The complete truth is not in one dream, but in several."

[guedesnino · 8/10 · 30 June 2017]

"The complete truth is not in one dream, but in several." With this quote that Pasolini, one of the most idiosyncratic of all filmmakers, begins "Il Fiore delle mille e una notte." The strangeness and difficulty of his work Of his commitment to the contradiction: The basis of this commitment was the refusal to abandon the diverse and partly irreconcilable influences that determined the nature of his art: Catholicism, Marxism, homosexuality, urban favelas (scenarios of his early romances ), The peasantry, neo-realism, an attachment to the fantastic and miraculous.

While "Il Fiore delle mille e una notte" seems to be so far removed from the proposals of neo- realism (in an attempt to capture the external and internal realities of the contemporary moment), the director still remains incredibly faithful to neo-realistic aesthetics : The use of non-professional actors, scenes filmed in external and real places (without the interference of artificial scenes or built specifically for the film), and the spontaneity of the game.

Written (with the collaboration of Dacia Maraini) and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini "Il Fiore delle mille e una notte" (1974), it is the third and final chapter of the "Trilogy of Life" after "Decameron" (1971) and "I racconti di Canterbury" (1972). The greatness of the work of foreigners is noted, with scenes shot in: Yemen, Ethiopia, Iran, India and Nepal, and having a much more complex pre- project during the drafting of the script, undergoing major modifications during the assembly phase. The film was awarded in 1974 at the Cannes Film Festival, having achieved the Grand Prix.

"Il Fiore ..." is based mainly on a story that interacts with others, that is, they are mini stories or episodes, which in the end intertwine in a great fable of a dream world, being the protagonist of this story, the A young couple of lovers, "Nur-ed-Din" (Franco Merli), a cheerful and silly young woman and "Zumurrud" (Ines Pellegrini), a charming and very clever slave. From this couple that marks the initial and main story as a unifying thread, Pasolini tells, six other stories (organized into two groups of three) within a five-part structure.

Each story trio has its own inner themes. The first three (brief anecdotes) are concerned with sexuality and equality, the third (more developed) ending in a tie and the demonstration that female desire and male desire are equally potent. The stories of the second trio are all concerned with the notions of Destiny: two stories in which fate is inescapable and included in a trajectory in which destiny is overcome. In addition, the story of Aziz, Aziza and Badur is in contradiction with the history of the picture of Nureddin and Zumurrud. They are linked by the contradiction that "faithfulness is beautiful, but no more than infidelity." In the tale of Aziz, conflict leads to death and castration, but in the main story, fidelity and infidelity are reconciled: Nureddin, in search of his beloved, can be led to innumerable delightful sexual amusements, but his allegiance to Zumurrud is Always triumphant over them, and finally rewarded in a happy ending that plays (in order to repudiate) sexual power relations.

The recognition and celebration of diversity is an aspect of one of the central movements of Pasolini's work: the effort to rediscover a sense of the wonderful, the magical. Of all the films of Pasolini, "Il Fiore delle mille e una notte" stands out for perceiving the common sense of sexual relations, their pleasure and fun, and promotes this through an eroticism purged of all the contamination of pornography. Relationships that are established with sexual favors or in the end concretized by sex, much more than gratuitous or vulgar, present themselves as something human and common to all, without judgment of values, but for the pleasure of self-satisfaction.

The script, although constructed on a very rigid structure and divided into three acts, each one of which, in its case, divided into four parts, with the strong presence of the structure as an element of connection and homogenization between the stories Chosen by Pasolini and based on the tales "Arabian Nights," in short, the same narrative material is instead presented in the film in a rhapsodic and continuous form. However, we can observe in several moments the remarkable presence of the author (script) and director, transmuted into speeches and defenses redundant to Pasolini, regarding political positioning, his homosexuality and obvious affirmation of faith and heresy.

The work of camera movement is very curious, since Pasolini opted for the use of camera in hand (another clear reference to the neo-realism), which generates an intense movement, almost documentary and that associated with the beautiful photograph of Giuseppe Ruzzolini, Results in a great work and that knows to take advantage of the numerous and beautiful locations, having registered countries that throughout the history have closed by conflicts and wars. Ruzzolini also realizes a vivid photograph that does not differentiate what is reality from a dream, something that we can understand as an assumed position in not defining, giving the viewer freedom to understand everything as a great dream or story, and to make their own separations . Also worthy of mention is the work of Rank Film Labs, with simple special effects and practically handcrafted and that dialogue with the idea of ​​a story, of a story of fable, still permeated by criticism and political sense.

Pasolini expresses through the cinema: beauty, love, truth and justice. Pasolini is essential because of its provocative, jocular and impudent nature in going to the bottom of controversial subjects and that society seeks to conceal, so little still, to accompany in a film. "Il Fiore delle mille e una notte" is a dazzle of images that allude to the dream of an imperfect world, but essentially human and therefore susceptible of errors that are assumed in the attempt of correct.

Rambling, pointless movie

[grantss · 3/10 · 23 May 2015]

Rambling, pointless movie.

Pier Paulo Pasolini's previous two movies, The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, were collections of short stories. The stories were not connected and were mostly dull, anti-climatic and pointless.

Arabian Nights sort of ends up that way too. The stories are longer, and there's less of them, but it's pretty much the same. The stories go nowhere and are even more absurd and perverse than before.

Performances, as in The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, often leave a lot to be desired. Some are okay, but there are also some absolute shockers.

A beautiful film

[cynthiahost · 10/10 · 12 April 2013]

This movie is a very exotic and beautiful film, from the master film maker Pasolini,I kiss his feet. He's better than Orson Wells.Shot in the beautiful locales of Yemen,Nepal,Africa and Iran.Beautiful? A big poverty stricken region!filled with unemployment.Pier saved the day when he came to that country.This film has a lot of nudity,especially the emphasis of the male body as well as the female body.It also has some less explicit simulated sex.like the yoga position sex act scene between Aziz ,played by Ninetto Davoli and Budur,played by Luigina Rocchi.There's a mild gay story in it too.When an Ethiopian king is peeping ,from the bushes, a naked women cleaning herself,until she catches him,he later ask his gay poet to write a poem about it.Later on this old fart of a poet pick up three hot young Ethiopian black studs,with 1974 Afros.They end up having a suggested four way.Although the 3rd remake in 1978 and it's sequel in 1986 had real sex in it,this story is very complex.What should I say? The blond blue eyed Christian ,stolen Nur Ed Din, played by Franco Merli, slave Zumurud,played Ines Pellegrini.Now as he's searching for her .This is when some of the stories are told.Like when one of the prince's survives a gang attack in the desert and he gets rescued by a man who offers him his home,He,the prince eventually meets this women who is in hostage by this man ,who plays a demon,played by Franco Citti.Once he finds out about the two lovers,he chops the women and send the prince to a desert and the demon turns him into monkey.Until some one rescue him ,the monkey and the kings daughter turns the prince back into human.But he turns the kings jobs down chooses to be a truth seeker.The kings son want to take a trip on his father ship.He does and a curse hits the ship causing a wreck.He end sup on a island and discover a 15 year old boy who live their.They both like each other Platonic level ,but,the second prince ends up being put under a hypnotic spell and stabs the boy to death while the boys a sleep.the father rescues the prince but he too become a truth seeker.The Cinema photography is great.The movie was shot silent and the dialog and sound effects were looped in.This movie was as good As Piers version of Canterbury tales.which I saw at the Forrest hill 4theater in 1980 04/12/13