Between 1971 and 1974, Italian filmmaker Piers Paolo Pasolini produced and directed three adaptions of famous Medieval stories. The Arabian Nights (Il fiore delle Mille et una Notte) was the last, and the most ambitious, with filming locations in Yemen, Iran, and Nepal. If you've seen the other two (The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales), this one will be familiar; most of the same actors, especially Pasolini's lover Ninetto Davoli (left) and his protege Franco Merli, below, whom he discovered working at a gas station in Sicily.
Don't worry, he's 21 in this scene.
Some of the same annoying bits as in the previous movies: dozens of people sitting around singing for no reason; lengthy closeups of random people with bad teeth grinning idiotically at the camera; stories that merge into other stories, so you're never sure what you're watching.
Pasolini eschews the more familiar stories, like Aladdin and Ali Baba, to concentrate on Nur Ed Din (Franco Merli) who loses his favorite slave girl, and wanders around, crying and having erotic adventures while searching for her.
Inside that story is another, about Aziz (Ninetto Davoli), who depends on his girlfriend for advice on how to win The Girl of His Dreams. It ends badly.
And a few others. Prince Tagi (Francesco Paolo Governale) falls in love with a girl through hearing a story about her, but she doesn't like men.
Pasolini eschews the more familiar stories, like Aladdin and Ali Baba, to concentrate on Nur Ed Din (Franco Merli) who loses his favorite slave girl, and wanders around, crying and having erotic adventures while searching for her.
Inside that story is another, about Aziz (Ninetto Davoli), who depends on his girlfriend for advice on how to win The Girl of His Dreams. It ends badly.
And a few others. Prince Tagi (Francesco Paolo Governale) falls in love with a girl through hearing a story about her, but she doesn't like men.
More after the break