Gare centrale

This is only the second "Arabic" film I have ever watched; the other one, several years ago, incidentally also emanated from Egypt: AL-MUMMIA aka THE NIGHT OF COUNTING THE YEARS (1969). The reason I have decided to return, all too briefly I might add, to that cinematic territory now is twofold: because I am purposefully catching up with acclaimed movies – the film under review is included in several authoritative "all-time best" polls – and it happened to be the late director Chahine's birthday. Actually, given his relative fame, I was surprised to find out that the only other work of his to be equally referenced was ALEXANDRIA...WHY? (1979) – which is not readily available to me at this juncture – and, for what it is worth, the only other film of his in my collection is the intriguing historical epic, SALADIN AND THE GREAT CRUSADES (1963) – which ought to prove ideal for inclusion in my annual Good Friday marathon. Amazingly, rather than being fêted by his compatriots for competing at that year's Berlin Film Festival (where it lost to WILD STRAWBERRIES [1957]), Chahine suffered the ignominy of having a film-goer spit in his face and the movie itself being banned until being rediscovered in the West 20 years later!

While the generic international title of CAIRO STATION does hint at the two schools of film-making to which the film could belong, i.e. Neo- realism and Film Noir, the original one of BAB EL HADID ("The Iron Gate" or literally "Door Of Iron") crystallizes the social, emotional and psychological trauma afflicting the main character of crippled newspaper-selling tramp Qinawi (an excellent performance by Chahine himself) who haunts the busy railway station lusting after clandestine lemonade seller Hanuma (Hind Rostom) who, however, is betrothed to a burly railroad worker and union man. Qinawi lives in a dingy room at the station that is literally covered with pin-up cut-outs of girls onto which he draws Hanuma's all-important bucket of lemonade bottles. The latter mercilessly leads Qinawi on but does not shirk from laughing in his face when he proposes to elope with her on the eve of her wedding. It is this rejection and imminent event which pushes him over the edge into violent retribution and mental meltdown.

The vivid recreation of the titular environment – with its many animated peddling characters and warring work factions – comes off as crude and chaotic during the film's "Neo-realist" first half but, once it centres on Qinawi and his fateful chasing of Hanuma, it becomes decidedly gripping and rewarding. I knew very little on the film's plot and themes going in and, frankly, I was not expecting things to turn out the way they did; while the railroad setting can be expected to remind one instantly of Jean Renoir's LA BETE HUMAINE (1938) and Fritz Lang's noir remake HUMAN DESIRE (1954), it was the surprising Hitchcockian (the knifing of the wrong girl whose body is being carried throughout the station in a trunk that leaks blood and almost topples open at one point) and Buñuelian (not just the fact that Rostom looks a lot like Lilia Prado but also Qinawi's obsession over her and a one-off display of foot-fetishism displayed at a much younger girl) elements which jumped out at me. Of course, I could not help recognizing several words in the dialogue - most effectively during the climactic cries of "Sikkina...sikkina" ("knife...knife) - given the Arabic language's semantic similarities with the Maltese one.

It's not hard to see why "Cairo Station" was banned for 20 years in Egypt. It gained much recognition in Berlin, being nominated for the Golden Bear and Chahine missing out on the Best Actor prize on a technicality, but in Egypt the audiences, used mostly to the romantic comedies and melodramas Egypt's massive film industry was expected to release, found the film's darkly sexual nature disturbing, and the censors reacted in an even harsher manner. Expectations for the film were probably even further away from the finished product since the film starred Farid Shawqi and Hind Rostom, two big stars of the Egyptian cinema.

Everything you hear about the film from Chahine and from Egyptian film scholars suggest that he put his heart and soul into making this film. If the gritty yet stunningly well-orchestrated visuals don't convince you that's true, then Chahine's passionate, masterful portrayal of the main character surely will. It really is one of the greatest performances of all time, and that's fairly surprising coming from someone who chose to stay behind the camera for most of his long career. There's not a single moment where you don't completely believe the character and the character's motivations and feelings, Chahine is just THAT good.

The storyline itself is nothing to write home about unless you view it within the context of Egypt when the film was released. The film is very reflective of the pent-up frustration that many Egyptians felt (one could even say that inner turmoil of the main character is completely intended as a reflection of Egypt before Nasser took over), and the events surrounding the main plot are hugely reflective of the transition Egypt was going through (in one spectacularly stylized scene Qinawi looks on as rock n' roll is celebrated Egyptian-style inside a train carriage).

There are some brilliant moments throughout the film, but Chahine's handling of the final twenty-odd minutes are beyond brilliant. For one, he handles the change of tone spectacularly well, and his performance certain helps here. It's remarkable to watch a film directed by its star in which the actor's performance and the director's work feel so intrinsically connected- when Chahine the actor is dancing to rock and roll, Chahine the director is wonderfully playful, allowing the camera to move freely and capture the energy and enthusiasm of the scene. When Chahine the actor is at his most vulnerable and sexually obsessive Chahine works the film into a tense, spectacularly well-edited frenzy.

This isn't Chahine's first film, but it is quite possibly Chahine the auteur's first film. Although it contains a fair bit of Lang and a little Hitchcock (it is remarkably similar in its final stages to Hitchcock's "Psycho", which would only come out two years later, even some of the editing is similar), the film is mostly Chahine, looking at Egypt as only he can. "Cairo Station" is a film of remarkable depth, filled with great characters and wonderful performances, and featuring a spectacularly tense score. Beyond all that it is a film of immense technical precision and of unparalleled passion, and it is unquestionably the work of a master. A perfect film, the greatest Arabic-language film ever made, and one that I would personally rank as one of the greatest films made anywhere by anyone.

10/10

I believe Cairo Station marks my very first experience in watching an Egyptian movie (those television soap operas over the RTM channels when I was younger, don't exactly count). And having the opportunity to watch one made by an acclaimed Egyptian filmmaker, was nothing less than a bonus. What provided the icing on the cake, was that it was shown in 35mm print, and that is precisely the attraction of the World Cinema Series.

I was under the uninformed impression that older, black and white movies, will likely to be paced too slow for my liking, or have stories that are quite bland by today's standards. I was so wrong, and Cairo Station absolutely threw those notions out of my mental window the minute I experienced the first few minutes of it. It has an extremely strong story, sophisticated in that it managed to span multiple threads and had ensemble characters, having so much paced so nicely within its 74 minute runtime, and having them all come together neatly for the finale.

Having the events take place within a single day, it centers around 3 lead characters - Kenawi the newpaper boy (played by the director himself), who walks with a limp and gets discriminate against by the working folks at the train station (hence the English title), Hanuma the sultry, sexy soft drink seller (played by Hind Rostrom) and her beau Abu Sri (Farid Shawqi), a porter at the station who's galvanizing his fellow workers to form a union to fight for better wages and welfare. There you have the female lead in a familiar seductress role, an anti-hero, and the hero himself, caught in a love triangle, which starts to turn Kenawi's jealousy and having his love spurned, into a dangerous obsession.

Sounds like a Hitchcock-ian thriller? You bet! It's a dark movie indeed, one which explores the trappings of a misguided soul and his fetish and fantasies of beautiful pin up models, and because of his inability to express himself properly, gets frustrated and even with his relatively low IQ, starts to scheme to get his desires met. But it's not always all about Kenawi, as having the premise set in one of the busiest train stations, it allows for a number of avenues to introduce simple side stories to enrich the main narrative - every anonymous face in the station, definitely has a story to tell.

And what exactly was in the film that had made audiences back then upset? Well, I could offer a few suggestions, but by today's standards, it has seemed that it's already quite common, be it the water soaked clothing that accentuates a woman's curves, or a folio consisting of various scantily clad pin up models, or the many cleavage bearing shots, or perhaps some dancing and flirting amongst a train full of man, giving them that seductive wink? One wonders, but as with most situations, anyone seemed to have been crossing the boundaries, pushing the envelopes, or revolutionizing the way stories are told, would have met with either accolades for doing so, or unfortunate condemnation like what this film received during its very first screening.

But on hindsight, as always, this movie is nothing short of being remarkable. And having already watched it, I will be watching it again when the film screens once more to the general public on October 5th. Mark your calendars, and experience a world class production that has withstood the test of time - 50 years and counting, is no mean feat!

Well this right here is my idea of filmic excellence.

Set in a bustling train station in 1950s Cairo, it transcends its setting to tell a thoroughly engaging story. The director is like an anthropologist who is at once knowledgeable about how the characters and their situations are wholly peculiar to 1950s Cairo, and at the same time fully aware of how their stories and struggles are undeniably universal. At times the film flirts with romantic melodrama with its central love triangle. At other times it feels like a slice of classic Cinema Verite in its almost documentary-like rovings around the lower classes who make their living at the station. But at its core, it's nothing but an early psychological thriller about love and obsession (which, as a shot near the end emphasizes, can perhaps be seen as two sides of the same coin).

Made some sixty years after the Lumiere brothers filmed The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, it's hard to imagine that those early film pioneers would be anything less than impressed with what the art had become in the hands of this Egyptian storyteller. And sixty years after Bab El Hadid (aka Cairo Station), it's still hard to imagine a more enjoyable movie being set in a train station.

Calling any movie one of the greatest of all time is a vacuous epithet that ignores the subjective nature of enjoyment. That said, I can definitely see where those reviewers who call Cairo Station one of the "greatest of all time" are coming from.

Egypt's official entry for 'Best Foreign Language Film' at the 31st Academy awards, Cairo Station is director Youssef Chahine's paean to the city he was born in and which influenced much of his later work. Reviled in Egypt by critics and moviegoers alike on its release, the film is now considered among the finest works of its kind. With touches of Hitchcock and Powell, the film tells the story of a crippled news vendor (played by Chahine himself) who is besotted with a beautiful and capricious seller of cold drinks (Hind Rustom). This unhealthy obsession, bordering on the homicidal, leads to a tragic denouement. This misplaced love story, if it can be called that, is played out against the backdrop of the main train station at Cairo. Indeed, more than the players, the station is the focal point of interest of the movie. A cesspool of unceasing human activity, with its fights, petty intrigues, welcomes and tear-stained farewells, the station is the throbbing heart of this vast metropolis which combines comedy and tragedy in equal measure in the stories its citizens live to narrate.