RetroClips

The bazaar set alone covered more than two acres on a concrete floor that had to be re-enameled several times a week, part of a production budget over $1.1 million -- an enormous sum for 1924 -- under design chief William Cameron Menzies, whose soaring, geometric sets here launched his career and helped invent what the industry would later call production design. Filming ran more than 28 weeks. Douglas Fairbanks, who produced and starred, did his own stunts and insisted on practical in-camera effects for the flying carpet and the rest of the film's magic rather than the optical trickery available at the time.