Alexandrie pourquoi?

Yussef is one of the masters of Egyptian Cinema, and I think he got himself a good reputation abroad, specially in France and Russia. He was always criminally ignored by Hollywood, though he studied Cine art in NY. However, he developed this Fellini complex recently. He keeps talking about his youth, his sexual complexes, his relations with parents, his study of Cinema, conflicts with the totalitarian governments.. etc. Yussef comes from a very marginal society in Alexandria, being Catholic (most of Egyptian Christians are Orthodox), from a fairly rich family, being educated at Victoria college. Till now his Arabic language is not perfect. From this marginal area he tries to give us a very complex panorama of the Egyptian society during WW II, when Germans were about to conquer Alexandria, and the British were about to flee. Some Egyptians thought that Romel would be their liberator from the British occupation. Here, you find a complete mess from Egyptian Islamists (Muslim brothers), Jews, communists, aristocrats, Catholics, British soldiers, Nazis ... etc... Very complex that U spend 1 hour trying to figure anything... U got only 3 seconds for every character to understand his attitude and problem. Then, in the second hour, things get better and U begin to appreciate this director. The movie gets emotion and U care for characters...

The final shot shows Miss Liberty while the young man stands on board on his way to US to study Cine art. Then we see Miss Liberty's face closer and we discover it's the face of a prostitute heavily covered with make-up, and she laughs loudly and obscenely. This summarizes his memories about his USA experience. Americans won't like this scene, but they will like it in East Europe and Russia. My opinion is that Mr Shahin is a genius film director, but is a very bad script writer. However, it's impossible to convince him otherwise because he has always done what he thought was right, and he is 80 now ... No hope for change !

Youssif chahine is considered to be The best director in the Egyptian movies history, not only because he makes a good movies but also he say what many of Egyptians want to, in this master piece he talks about Alexandria in the world war 2 where was a cosmopolitan society that Muslims, Christians, Jews, Italians live in. But because of the war every team hate the other and all of them began their own war which is based on the power of money and hateness.Among these crowded conflicts which you can not see but you feel it very well, there is someone who does not care about anything but his dream to be a movie director ,Yehia, who find himself in an universal conflict that he forced to be in it, and it framed his awareness , so don't ask yehia (who plays the role of the director Youssif Chahine) why you always talk about:hating war, love peace, missing the cosmopolitan society....etc?

This movie reminded me of many things...a Felliniesque fantasy, and a war drama and a movie about the love of movies . The characters are likeable and the movie is fun to watch. It's defently a film for movie buffs.

The first part of Youssef Chahine's semi-autobiographical trilogy concerns a young student and his frustrated dreams of being an actor in WWII-era Alexandria. While not as stunning as CAIRO STATION, it's a warm and easily relatable story with strong characters (charming lead performance by Mohsin Mohieddene) and flashes of brilliance, including Fellini-esque fantasias and clever use of stock footage and ironic music. The amateur play scenes are standouts. The problems arise when it comes to the other stories interwoven with the main plot. These cover such controversial material as an aristocrat who "buys" a drunken Allied soldier to kill him for amusement but falls in love with him instead, a group of inept Communists plotting to capture Churchill, and a Jewish girl impregnated by a Muslim boy. Each of these subplots could well be a fine film on their own, but the transitions between them are too abrupt, and rightfully pegged in other reviews as "sloppy" and "messy". It leads to a lot of confusion and the nagging feeling that Chahine is piling too much on his plate.

A dense, difficult, and, unfortunately, sloppy film from Egypt. It deals with a group of characters in Alexandria during (and shortly after) WWII, and is kind of a portrait of an artist type of story. The main character is a teenager, Yehia, an aspiring actor and filmmaker who knows that Alexandria will stifle his creativity if he doesn't get out. He strives to go to England or America. Then there are half a dozen other plotlines running concurrently. All of them are interesting, including a terrorist plot to kidnap Churchill and turn him over to the Nazis when they arrive in the city, a wealthy family that decides to move to Palestine and finds that the land is being occupied by the Jews, and a man who abducts British soldiers and kills them as an act of patriotism, that is until he befriends a particularly innocent-looking one. The movie jumps around breathlessly, and it's almost impossible to follow it completely. Still, there are so many moments of grace and beauty, so many good performances, that I did end up approving of it, if just a little. 7/10.