Cairo Station (1958)
(Bab el hadid)
Country: EGY
Technical: bw 77m
Director: Youssef Chahine
Cast: Farid Shawqi, Hind Rustum, Youssef Chahine, Hassan el Baroudi
Synopsis:
The railway station is a hive of activity riven by at times competing factions: the exploited porters and the maverick who wants to unionise; the newspaper sellers and soft drinks salesgirls, together with their legitimised persecutors; the station police force, and always the threat of death or maiming from the unseeing locomotives and rolling stock. Against this backdrop, Madbouli, 'father of the house', takes in a lame beggar who becomes enamoured of one of the girls, who in turn is intending to marry the unionist.
Review:
As in Schlesinger's Terminus, we begin in quasi-documentary form before following a human story within an authentic setting. It is possible to draw comparisons from earlier cinema, with the Italian Neo-realists and Hellinger's The Naked City, but this remains a remarkable achievement from the nascent Egyptian cinema. Having stamped his film with its realist credentials, Chahine proceeds to use all the techniques of narrative film-making: tight, even extreme, close-ups, metaphor (pliant sleepers implying love-making), sound (some very dramatic music), and editing. It is an astonishing feat of acting and directing, positively exuding physicality with its low-angle shots and gaping costumes, while affording itself a final, easy to miss, poetic after-thought: the bourgeois fiancée stood awaiting the return of her young man.
(Bab el hadid)
Country: EGY
Technical: bw 77m
Director: Youssef Chahine
Cast: Farid Shawqi, Hind Rustum, Youssef Chahine, Hassan el Baroudi
Synopsis:
The railway station is a hive of activity riven by at times competing factions: the exploited porters and the maverick who wants to unionise; the newspaper sellers and soft drinks salesgirls, together with their legitimised persecutors; the station police force, and always the threat of death or maiming from the unseeing locomotives and rolling stock. Against this backdrop, Madbouli, 'father of the house', takes in a lame beggar who becomes enamoured of one of the girls, who in turn is intending to marry the unionist.
Review:
As in Schlesinger's Terminus, we begin in quasi-documentary form before following a human story within an authentic setting. It is possible to draw comparisons from earlier cinema, with the Italian Neo-realists and Hellinger's The Naked City, but this remains a remarkable achievement from the nascent Egyptian cinema. Having stamped his film with its realist credentials, Chahine proceeds to use all the techniques of narrative film-making: tight, even extreme, close-ups, metaphor (pliant sleepers implying love-making), sound (some very dramatic music), and editing. It is an astonishing feat of acting and directing, positively exuding physicality with its low-angle shots and gaping costumes, while affording itself a final, easy to miss, poetic after-thought: the bourgeois fiancée stood awaiting the return of her young man.
(Bab el hadid)
Country: EGY
Technical: bw 77m
Director: Youssef Chahine
Cast: Farid Shawqi, Hind Rustum, Youssef Chahine, Hassan el Baroudi
Synopsis:
The railway station is a hive of activity riven by at times competing factions: the exploited porters and the maverick who wants to unionise; the newspaper sellers and soft drinks salesgirls, together with their legitimised persecutors; the station police force, and always the threat of death or maiming from the unseeing locomotives and rolling stock. Against this backdrop, Madbouli, 'father of the house', takes in a lame beggar who becomes enamoured of one of the girls, who in turn is intending to marry the unionist.
Review:
As in Schlesinger's Terminus, we begin in quasi-documentary form before following a human story within an authentic setting. It is possible to draw comparisons from earlier cinema, with the Italian Neo-realists and Hellinger's The Naked City, but this remains a remarkable achievement from the nascent Egyptian cinema. Having stamped his film with its realist credentials, Chahine proceeds to use all the techniques of narrative film-making: tight, even extreme, close-ups, metaphor (pliant sleepers implying love-making), sound (some very dramatic music), and editing. It is an astonishing feat of acting and directing, positively exuding physicality with its low-angle shots and gaping costumes, while affording itself a final, easy to miss, poetic after-thought: the bourgeois fiancée stood awaiting the return of her young man.