Arabian Nights () is a 1974 erotic fantasy comedy anthology film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The film is an adaptation of the ancient Arabic anthology One Thousand and One Nights, also known as The Arabian Nights. It is mostly based on the tale Ali Shar and Zumurrud. It is the last of Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life", which began with The Decameron and continued with The Canterbury Tales. The lead was played by young Franco Merli who was discovered for this film by Pasolini. The film is an adaptation of several stories within the original collection but they are presented out of order and without the Scheherazade, Dunyazad and King Shahriyar frame story.
The film contains nudity, sex, poetry, and slapstick humor. It preserves the eroticism and the story within a story structure of Arabian Nights and has been called "perhaps the best and certainly the most intelligent" of Arabian Nights film adaptations.
With this film, Pasolini intended to make a film of Arabian Nights based on his 'memory of it as a boy'. In preparation for the film, Pasolini re-read the 1001 Nights with a more critical lens and chose only the stories that he felt were the most 'beautiful'.27th international cannes film festival, Pasolini remarks
Plot
The main story concerns an innocent young man, Nur-e-Din, who comes to fall in love with a beautiful slave girl, Zumurrud, who selected him as her master. After a foolish error of his causes her to be abducted, he travels in search of her. Meanwhile, Zumurrud manages to escape and, disguised as a man, comes to a far-away kingdom where she becomes king. Various other travelers recount their own tragic and romantic experiences, including a young man who becomes enraptured by a mysterious woman on his wedding day, and the prince Shazaman, who wants to free a woman from a demon and for whom two women sacrifice their lives. Interwoven are Nur-e-Din's continuing search for Zumurrud and his (mostly erotic) adventures. In the end, he arrives at the far-away kingdom and is reunited with Zumurrud.
The film comprises 16 scenes:Arabian Nights DVD booklet BFI 2009
Truth lies not in one dream, but in many dreams. - verse from the 1001 Nights and opening title
Lady of the Moons: The slave girl Zumurrud is being sold in the marketplace. Her present owner allowed her to choose her new master. Man after man offers to buy her but she refuses. An older man offers to buy her but she laughs and insults his erectile dysfunction. She spots the youth Nur-ed-Din and promises to be his slave. They go back to Nur-ed-Din's home and make love. Zumurrud's story: Zumurrud tells her first story-within-the-story about the bisexual poet Sium from Ethiopia of the royal court. This segment is based on the poetry of Abu Nuwas. The king spots a woman bathing naked and is sad he has to leave. He asks Sium to compose a poem on the spot about the experience. Afterwards, Sium goes into the town where he propositions three boys for sex. Later, the king and the woman he saw bathing earlier find two youths, a boy and a girl, and drug them with potions. They leave them asleep naked in the same tent on separate cots. They make a bet that whichever of the pair falls in love is the inferior one, as the weaker falls in love with the beautiful. In turn, they wake both the boy and the girl, and both attempt to masturbate on the other's naked body. In the end, Sium and the woman admit there is no clear winner and they leave. Zumurrud is finished with her story and has completed a tapestry. She tells Nur-ed-Din to sell it in the market to anyone except a blue-eyed European man. Nur-ed-Din goes to the market and falls for the blue-eyed man's high offer. The man follows Nur-ed-Din back to his home and asks to share food. He drugs Nur-ed-Din with a banana and steals Zumurrud when he is asleep. The blue-eyed man brings Zumurrud to the old man from the marketplace, and he beats her for having mocked him. Nur-e-din's search: Nur-ed-Din is very distressed when he awakens. A female stranger offers to help him. She discovers where Zumurrud is and tells Nur-e-din to wait outside the old man's gate when he is asleep. Zumurrud will jump over the wall and abscond with him. He waits deep into the night but falls asleep. A passing Kurd steals his money and his turban. Zumurrud jumps over the wall and mistakes the Kurd for Nur-ed-Din. The Kurd brings her back to his hideout, where he says his friends will gang rape her. She is chained up but manages to escape the next day and leaves into the desert disguised as a soldier. Crowned King: Zumurrud rides through the desert and arrives outside a city guarded by several soldiers and a crowd of people. She claims to be a soldier named Wardan. The people, believing her to be a man, tell her that after the king passes without an heir, their tradition is to crown the first traveller who comes to their city. She is also given a bride. On her wedding night, Zumurrud reveals her secret to the bride. The bride promises to keep her secret. The European man and the Kurd travel to the city and are summarily executed on Wardan's orders. The people they were eating with mistakenly believe this is punishment for stealing a handful of their rice. Dream: This segment is based on the story of the Porter and the three ladies of Baghdad from Night 9. Nur-ed-Din is mistaken for a porter by a veiled woman. She hires him to collect various foods and dishes from the market to bring home for her and her two sisters. They return home, set the table and begin reading. In the story-within-the-story, Princess Dunya dreams about a female dove helping her male counterpart fly free from a net. The female is then caught in a net and the male flies off alone. She takes the meaning of this dream as the infidelity of men and vows to never marry. Aziz and Aziza: Dunya picks up a book and reads a story. The next story is based on the Aziz and Aziza story that begins on Night 112. Aziz is telling his friend, Prince Tagi, about his life. He was set to be married to his cousin Aziza, but on the wedding day, he is distracted by a mysterious woman he meets by chance, when he sits under her window. The woman communicates to him in scant gestures. He is smitten with this woman and goes to Aziza to figure out what to do. Aziza helps decode the messages and tells him how to reply and what poetry to recite. After a rough start, the woman responds to Aziz who looks forward to their meeting in a tent outside the city. Love is my Master: Aziz goes to the tent and drinks some wine which puts him to sleep. The woman leaves a sign that she will murder him if he does something so careless again. He goes back and abstains from eating this time. The woman (named Budur) comes and they make love. Aziz recites the poetry Aziza told him to. He returns home and Aziza is on the roof, crushed with loneliness, but Aziz does not seem to care. He only wants Budur. Aziza gives him more poetry to recite. Aziz returns to Budur and after they sleep together, he shoots an arrow with a dildo into her vagina. Aziz goes home to rest while Aziza cries again. Aziz goes to Budur the next day and recites more poetry but she scolds him. She says the meaning of the poem is that the girl who gave it loved him and has committed suicide. She tells him to go to her grave. He goes and his mother tells him to mourn faithfully but he clearly has little interest in this. Weep as you made her weep: Aziz returns to Budur the next day but she is very distraught. She gives him a large sum of money and tells him to erect a monument in Aziza's honor, but he spends all the money on alcohol. After leaving the bar, he is kidnapped by a young woman and her hired thugs. The woman orders him to marry her or Budur, whom he was visiting will kill him. He spends a year with her and fathers a child but he leaves one day on the pretext of visiting his mother. He instead goes to see Budur, who is sitting outside her tent. He asks why she is sitting alone. She responds she has sat alone for one year, not moving an inch, waiting for him. When Aziz tells her he is married and has a child now, Budur tells him he is useless to her now. However, she calls some other women and they surround him with knives. He yells out the last poem Aziza gave him and they are forced to halt. Budur says she will not kill him and that Aziza has saved him this time but that he will not leave unharmed. She ties a rope around his genitalia and castrates him. Aziz returns to his mother who gives him a message from the deceased Aziza. A tapestry he believed was made by Budur was actually made by a woman named Princess Dunya. Prince Tagi hears all this and is moved. He wants to meet Dunya as he has fallen in love with her without even meeting her. Garden: The two travel to Dunya's city where she has walled herself off in her palace. They ask the gardener for a tour and he obliges. He says Dunya had a dream about a dove that was betrayed by her male counterpart and has vowed to have nothing to do with men. The two want to meet her under the guise of posing as painters. They plan on hiring two other painters to help them with this disguise. The two are offered seven, eight and even 9 dinars but they refuse to work for anything above one dinar. The Painter's story: The men are all painting and working in the palace. Aziz's friend asks the first one what his story is and he replies that he was once a prince who managed to survive a battle by covering himself in a corpse's blood and pretending to be one of the dead. After the enemy leaves, he runs off to a new city to hide. He asks for work and says he knows a lot about philosophy, science, astronomy, medicine and law. The man tells him this is useless to him and the prince will work cutting wood.