Estação Central de Cairo

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.

At the crossroads of more than one thing, making it a fascinating film to come out of Egypt in 1958, and certainly shocking to its audiences. Chahine blends neorealism with a little Hitchcock in this story, and adds progressive elements that contrast with traditional Egyptian culture. Examples of these are the attempts of one man (Farid Shawqi) to unionize workers at a train station, the sexually free leading lady (Hind Rostom), scandalous at the time, and even in the cold drinks her character sells, which include western sodas like Pepsi.

The story centers on a lame newspaper seller (Chahine himself!) who obsesses over women in general, cutting out pinups to hang all over his shack, and Rostom's character in particular, despite the fact that she's already engaged and doesn't think much of him. The setup is brilliant and this one really had me hooked, though I thought it squandered some of its potential by not developing its story lines more completely, and narrowing in on the obsession too early.

It's an entertaining film however, not the least of which is due to Hind Rostom, who explodes on the screen. Her sassy character is seen soaking wet, dancing suggestively, and laying in a pile of hay with the implication that she'll have sex there, and the best part is that she's shown in a sympathetic light. In an interesting parallel, we see a group of women who are part of the Organization of Women Against Marriage, with one holding a book titled 'Free.' A contrast is shown in a woman in the market who complains to her husband that the lame newspaper seller has been staring at her, which causes him not only to beat the guy but also her, because it's "her fault" she didn't wear her veil.

The filmmaking here is top notch, with countless images and angles capturing the hubbub of the train station, including one in which a child is saved from being hit, which looked rather scary. There were also a couple images relative to the newspaper seller that I thought revealed his warped personality. In one of these, he looks through glass while his marital prospects are being mocked, distorting his face, and in another, he stands up after being rejected by the woman for not having a penny to his name, and we see a beautiful ancient statue in the background, a masculine figure looking not only healthy and strong, but content. He is a tragic figure because he's been shown empathy by the newsstand owner at the beginning of the film and because he professes the virtues of simplicity and dedication to the woman he loves, things which in a Hollywood film would probably have won out in the end, but not here. I can't say I loved how it played out, but I respected it, and am glad I finally saw this film.

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!

"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.

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.