Watched this for the first time last night and man, what a fun time. It's one of those 50s movies where you have to turn off some of the leftist neurons in your brain but, you know. It's not the only one.
I practically know the music by heart, but seeing it produced is something else. I can't get over how theatrical this feels, like a stage musical on the world's most elaborate stage. A lot of the musical numbers are shot in one extended take, and given how unbelievably complex the choreography can get I'm amazed they pulled it off. On the one hand I guess people were doing versions of these routines on Broadway every night, on the other hand I can only imagine how many takes it must have taken for the movie version.
Lalume (in the screenshot above) absolutely steals the show. Love seeing a woman who knows what she wants and gets to spend her time just transparently going for it without also being coded as the femme fatale villain. I'm amazed Dolores Gray wasn't the original Broadway performer for her because Gray is so perfect here, a stagelike bigger-than-life performance that totally works. I'm grateful they gave her a new solo for the movie version because she deserves it.
Seeing this also really gave me some context on just how recent anti-Arab sentiment in the west is. Like, this wasn't trying to be positive representation or anything - this is a movie set in a cartoon Baghdad starring mostly white people. But it opens with the Islamic call to prayer and the protagonists giving a prayer to Allah. It's unthinkable you'd see something like that in a Hollywood movie today!