Word: hajji
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...Adventures of Hajji Baba (Allied Artists; 20th Century-Fox). In the old days, when a Hollywood studio wanted a famous composer to write background music for a film, it had to play an expensive game of Haydn seek; nowadays, the film colony has a sort of Bach yard full of kept musical geniuses. The current favorite is a man called Dimitri Tiomkin, who has filled in the awkward pauses of High Noon, Cyrano de Bergerac and many other recent pictures with stuff that one critic called "Kaffee-Klatchaturian...
...With Hajji Baba, Composer Tiomkin rises above all that. He has not written his score to fit the film; the film has apparently been written to fit his score. The compliment is a dubious one. Allegedly based on some 19th century picaresques about Persia by Author James Morier, Hajji Baba is all too obviously based on nothing but some old Bagdad sets that Producer Walter Wanger found around Hollywood. From there out it's silks of Ind. accents of Chi. on with the swarth and out with the nautch. A heavy navel bombardment in rich color is followed...
...protest. They just waited. Forbidden by Islamic law to wear hats on hajj, they sat huddled hour after hour under the broiling sun, certain that Allah, in his wisdom, would somehow get them to Mecca. Lebanese peddlers did a land-office business selling umbrellas against the fierce heat. "Yallah, hajji [Out of the way, pilgrim]!" cried airport attendants. The huddled groups moved aside, returned and continued to wait-for once on hajj, no pilgrim ever turns back...