Stazione centrale

This Egyptian movie is a miracle in itself.It can appeal to anyone in the world and is as good as any great work of any country.All takes place in a station with a frustrated paper boy,living his life vicariously through pin ups photographs ,the central character .Round him, lots of secondary characters revolve .He seems an outcast ,without any friend,and despised by all the girls around.The work sometimes recalls Jean Renoir's "La Bete Humaine" ,but with more attention to detail.This is a microcosm which the director films with virtuosity (the editing is stunning ) and his story has a ring of sincerity.Chahine once told he put a lot of himself in his pitiful hero.

The movie does not fall easily into a genre:it is a documentary about a station with street hawkers -Hanuma almost got run over while trying to escape from the Police;it is also a political movie ,some of the workers feeling they need an union;it's also a sentimental movie ,a young couple about to be parted -strangely the young girl reappears at the very end of the movie ;it's a thriller ,the scenes in the warehouse compares favorably with Hitchcock and all best film noir directors ;it's finally a movie which almost verges on fantasy and horror ,with a final as impressive as those of "sunset boulevard" or "whatever happened to Baby Jane?"

There's even an embryonic woman's lib! Let's underline the importance of the wide screen ,which makes the director look like an entomologist watching an ant hill with a magnifying glass:"Bab El Hadid" ,it's all this and more.

I don't really agree with certain circles who claim Cairo Station "one of the greatest films ever made" but it's a neat little film. It has that very basic, almost primitive, shooting style and editing which in some ways reminds of me Greek romance melodramas from the same time yet the perverse content sets it worlds apart from that kind of populist cinema which I suspect was as popular with lower/middle-class audiences in Egypt as it was in Greece. I liked that Chahine makes the titular railway station a stage for contrast between the old and the new. Between fashionable swinging Egyptians and the traditional Muslim conservatives. Between a lady president dressed in a modern pantsuit and destitute girls selling soda to the passengers. Between the old feudal faction of porters and the new one trying to assert its working rights by forming a union. This sociopolitical contrast touching on contemporary changes in Egyptian society (which, other than what the movie presents, I know nothing about but seem to be almost identical with the anxieties that surfaced in Greek screwball comedies of the same time) reflected in the movie itself, out of a typical melodrama of thwarted love Chahine dragging a dark noirish thriller with psychosexual undertones and an almost slasher-like turn in the third act replete with knife-wielding crazies chasing beautiful women that predates Psycho by a good two years. In borrowing the generic aspects of a programme picture for his character-driven piece and portraying his mentally imbalanced protagonist with sympathy and humanity, Chahine made a movie more wholesome than its 73 minute duration would suggest.

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.

"Cairo Station" is a very sad film...there's no getting around that. The story is tragic and when the film ends, you'll likely feel a bit drained...so don't day I didn't warn you. But I am not saying to avoid this Egyptian flick...it's well worth seeing.

The story begins with Madbouli introducing the film and explaining how me met and befriended Qinawi*. Qinawi was a poor guy with a limp without a friend in the world...so he adopted him and helped set him up at the train station selling newspapers. What follows for much of the film is showing the plight of all the many workers at the station-- the porters, women who work there illegally selling drinks and the rest. They get paid next to nothing and life is very, very hard.

About midway through the story, Qinawi approaches Hanouma and proposes to her. But he's poor, limps and seems a bit slow intellectually...and Hanouma is an obnoxious pig. So she laughs at him and belittles him for proposing to her! Qinawi is crushed...and soon has murder on his mind. Here is where it gets interesting because although everyone watching the picture knows murder is wrong, within many or perhaps most watching the film, there is a part of them that wants to see the coarse and horrid Hanouma die! This reminds me of the great 1944 film, "The Suspect"...where the audience naturally cheers for the leading man to kill and hopes he gets away with it!! I don't want to say more...other than the plan does NOT go as Qinawi hoped...and ends on a very sad note.

The film has a good story but there are other interesting things going for it. The camera-work is pretty amazing...especially coming from a nation not known for filmmaking. Many of the scenes have an almost film noir style to them with the lighting and camera angles. And, the film is rather daring--especially choosing to make the movie about folks near the bottom of society. Worth seeing.

*Like many films not in English and from countries with non-Western alphabets, there is no one way to spell the characters' names. The subtitles call him Qinawi and IMDb Kinawi...both are correct.

In his cinematic masterpiece, Cairo Station (Bab el Hadid), the brilliant director Youssef Chahine doesn't just give us a film; he takes us on a journey into a complete, breathing world within Cairo's train station. This location is not merely a backdrop but the main character itself-a bustling stage where a thousand stories converge and human destinies collide. Through Chahine's lens, the station becomes a microcosm of Egypt, a melting pot of all contradictions: hope and despair, love and obsession, and the daily struggle for survival.

At the heart of this world, we meet three characters who represent timeless human archetypes. There is Qinawi (in a legendary performance by Youssef Chahine himself), the lame, isolated newspaper vendor who watches the world with eyes full of repressed obsession and trapped desire. In stark contrast is Hanuma (Hind Rostom), the vibrant and sensuous soft-drink seller, representing an untamable life force that commands attention. Between them stands Abu Seri (Farid Shawqi), the powerful leader of the porters, who embodies collective struggle and legitimate ambition in the face of a harsh world.

Artistically, Cairo Station is a lesson in cinematic innovation. With a vision far ahead of its time, Chahine masterfully blends the harsh realism of marginalized lives with the dark, psychological tension of film noir. His constantly moving camera and unique angles don't just show events; they delve into the depths of his characters, unforgettably conveying their inner turmoil and anxiety in a powerful visual language.

Ultimately, Cairo Station is not just a story but a profound and daring dissection of human nature and the impact of social alienation. It is a complete work of art that was rejected in its time for its honesty and frankness, only to be celebrated later by the world as one of the most important classics of international cinema. This is a film whose echo still resonates powerfully, asking unsettling questions about our societies and ourselves.

Rating: 8.1/10

An essential recommendation for all lovers of serious cinema and those seeking a true artistic masterpiece that transcends time and place.