Yet another example of Mr. Maltin's poor judgement in slavishly trying to follow the zeitgeist... "Kismet" is remarkable for many reasons, very little having to do with Marlene Dietrich's gold-painted legs. First, it was a conscious homage to the successful "Thief of Bagdad" (1940)'s depiction of legendary Bagdad. (The original play was set in Tunis.) Nothing was spared in the way of costumes, colour, sets, general allure, melodies (Arlen and Harburg), dance, exoticism and total dedication to fantasy. The director was a veteran of screen magic and a disciple of Murnau (William Dieterle). Despite the story's late-Victorian trappings (a very different story, all told, from the musical version), every plot element is drenched in a kind of dreamy yet very adult eroticism and the actors are required to stretch their usual devices in rather surprising situations that can only come from a brilliant stage play, where the exits are just as important as the entrances. For once, Marlene Dietrich is funny, Ronald Colman is heroic as well as soulful, Edward Arnold is lusty and the Caliph (James Craig) has real gonads. The attention to and respect for details of Muslim life is also staggering for a film of that era. Finally, Herbert Stothart - with an assist from orchestrator Murray Cutter - uses his facility at pastiching any musical genre to channel Richard Strauss (Salome's dance) as well as French Orientalism and Miklos Rozsa to create a vibrant film score that infuses the whole work from start to finish and delivers the kind of "composed film" Powell and Pressburger were still dreaming about. A class act, Mr. Maltin, a class act all the way! Thank you TCM for showing a spotless colour classic that hasn't made it to DVD yet in Region 1 for some unfathomable reason.About James Craig's suitability for the role of the Caliph:James Craig was a reasonable fac-simile of Clark Gable who wasn't trapped in a film star persona and could actually act. William Dieterle had worked with him before in "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and knew exactly what he was doing by casting this raw hunk of burning love in the part of the young Caliph. (This is the kind of part Dieterle himself played when he was a young man - See his Valentin in Murnau's "Faust".) The idea was to depict a Caliph who really behaved like a gardener's son, picked fights in the street and was not afraid of his own Vizier, his own judgment and his own sexual impulses. He is also the only version of the Caliph who has the stuff to stand up to everyone - including death threats, his advisor's admonitions and the beggar's eloquence, lies and "snobbishness" - and to actually tear down the walls of his intended when mating season comes around. This is the scene that really clinched the film for me and made me wonder what the stage play must be like without the usual subtle Hollywood censorship. From the trivia section on James Craig's IMDb bio: "He was name-dropped several times in the novel 'Myra Breckinridge' (1970) by Gore Vidal, as the eponymous hero's favorite and most romantically desirable movie star."I think you don't need to be a transgendered Gore Vidal heroine to agree on that one.P.S.: By the way, here's a tip for hours of cheap, harmless fun... Just pick up Leonard Maltin's "Video and TV Guide" and read any entry using the voice of Simon Cowell or Patrick Swayze in drag. This is the only way to read his reviews.

This is not a bad movie, but it is not an important one. Made in the last decade of Ronald Colman's active career as a movie star, KISMET seems to be an odd choice for him. Normally he was playing English gentlemen types - Rudolph Rassendyll in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, or Robert Conway in LOST HORIZON or Dick Helgar in THE LIGHT THAT FAILED. If he played Americans, they were the Supreme Court Candidate in THE TALK OF THE TOWN or the title character Boston Brahman in THE LATE GEORGE APLEY. Here he was playing the philosophical thief Hafiz of 11th Century Baghdad. An odd choice indeed.To begin with, as he is playing an Arab, there was nothing physically "semitic" about Colman to suggest a citizen of Baghdad. However, the producers must have thought of him as a good example of a cultured type (Hafiz sprouts proverbs and examples of Middle Eastern wisdom), so he fit half the requirement. Still, it might have been better to have used someone who might have looked more like a citizen of the "fertile crescent". Robert Donat would have made a better choice.Secondly, if they had to do a story about ancient Islam at it's zenith of glory and power, why did they choose KISMET? It is an old play by Edward Knobloch which was written about 1910 and became the favorite starring part for the then great stage character actor Otis Skinner.* In fact, Skinner did a film version of the play in the silent period. But while not the worst example of a well made piece of hokum, it remains hokum. Skinner was quite well identified with the central role, but he died in 1942. It may be that Paramount felt they could get away with this just because he was no longer around.*Skinner's career, like so many of his contemporary stars like Richard Mansfield and Henry Irving can only be judged by snips and brief glimpses of their work - if they made an early silent film or even sound film (George M. Cohan in THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT comes to mind) we can see something of what they were like. Irving actually made surviving gramophone recordings of Shakespearean parts. In Skinner's case, most people who recall him at all today probably do so because Charlie Ruggles played him in the movie OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY which was based on a book by Skinner's daughter Cornelia Otis Skinner. If you can find the 1961 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the article on "Make-up" had a page of photographs of Otis Skinner in a dozen roles, including Hajjj (the actual name of Hafiz's character - the real "Hafiz" is the greatest of Persia's poets).Still the studio went to great lengths - they made it a color film (a rarity for Colman, by the way). They gave the two other best parts to the capable Edward Arnold as the evil Vizier, and to Marlene Dietrich as the Vizier's sexy (and bored) wife. This film reunited James Craig and Arnold (formerly together in THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER) with Craig as the Caliph. Except for romancing Joy Page as Colman's daughter, Craig really has little to do here. He's a target for Arnold's ambitious murder plans. Old Harry Davenport is the wise old Chancellor - a comparative figure of good to the evil Arnold.It's serviceable and no more. You watch KISMET and you won't be bored, but you will not be enthralled by it. Colman does try to bring some additional juice to Hafiz. When threatened with banishment he seems genuinely surprised, hurt, and horrified - like being told he will now be a fish out of water, although he can live anywhere else in the empire. There are also some humorous moments, such as the threatened plan to punish Colman (in this film he is threatened with punishment several times) by cutting off his hands - he was captured as a thief. His anticipated looks at this imprisoned, chained down fists are surprisingly amusing. But the screenplay keeps going from mock philosophy to comedy to romance to melodrama. The ride is made as smooth as possible, but it seems like it's on old fashioned back roads.So, I will say the film can be watched - but stick to THE LATE GEORGE APLEY or RANDOM HARVEST or A DOUBLE LIFE or CHAMPAIGN FOR CAESAR to get a better glimpse at Colman's acting strengths. He was just treading water here.

Despite the full Hollywood treatment (the best sets, color cinematography and actors available), this movie was amazingly ordinary AT BEST. Much of it might be the extreme silliness of the plot and terrible miscasting of Coleman and ESPECIALLY Dietrich as Arabs! If you want to see BETTER similar films of the era, try Kim (with Dean Stockwell and Errol Flynn) or the superlative Thief of Bagdad (with Sabu). Both these movies are MUCH better written and succeed in sweeping the viewer away to a magical world of adventure, while Kismet just seems pretty but dopey--in fact, REALLY dopey. If you don't believe me, look at the pictures of Dietrich and her ridiculous hair styles in the IMDb gallery. This is one of the few Ronald Coleman films I dislike (the other being the VERY dull Story of Mankind).

Whew! Beautiful colors! But that's it. Remember "Ninotchka?" "Garbo laughs"? Well, in this movie, Edward Arnold, as the evil vizier, laughs and laughs and laughs, and he's not nearly as good looking. And the two young lovers? There is a reason James Craig is not remembered, he has trouble speaking English with any clarity, rhythm or sincerity. And Joy Page, in the words of Humphrey Bogart, should "go back to Bulgaria." (Yes, that was her. James Craig was the second loser she picked for a husband.) Dietrich provides comedy relief, sounding exactly like Madeline Kahn in "Blazing Saddles." Thank goodness they at least have Hugh Herbert popping up from time to time...and, well, don't tell anyone but I LIKED Ronald Colman in this one....And we haven't even gotten to the truly jaw-dropping (as in bad) special effects. If you want to feel good about yourself at someone else's expense, watch.