BOOK REVIEW: THE GOLDEN YEARS OF EGYPTIAN FILM - Cinema Cairo 1936-1967

illustrated overview of first generation Egyptian film

THE GOLDEN YEARS OF EGYPTIAN FILM - Cinema Cairo 1936-1967 edited by Serif Boraie, with essays by Mustafa Darwish, Rafik el-Sabban, and Yasser Alwan, film commentary by Rafik el-Sabban, photographs from the archive of Studio Bakr. American University in Cairo Press/a Zeitouna edition, Cairo and New York, www.aucpress.com. 2008. 239 pages. $45.00 hardcover, 12-1/2" x 9-1/2", ISBN 978-977-416-173-5. bilingual English/Arab, black-and-white photographs.

The work introduces one to the range and vitality of Egyptian films in their early decades. Many do not realize how active the country's film industry was. Many of the films are not exotic as Muslim, Middle Eastern culture is looked at as exotic or foreign. Many of the themes deal with universal, sometimes risque sentiments or situations in an Egyptian setting. If there was no text or other clues, you could take most of the black-and-white stills from the Egyptian movies as being from French movies of the period.

The editor writes, "In this beginning, the film industry was bred on cosmopolitan talent, the cultural fusion that is Cairo, Nile, Arab, and the Mediterranean blowing from the North." And, "Love is the obsession - love won, lost lost." Two short essays that follow relate the beginnings of the Egyptian film industry, similarities to Hollywood, and types of Egyptian films, which include musicals and social commentary. Another short essay is on Studio Bakr. The studio is named after the photographer Hussein Bakr; who took the more than 100 stills of the movies and thus is almost singlehandedly responsible for this aspect of the record of Egyptian film. Bakr was in partnership with Studio Misr, Egypt's "first fully-equipped cinema studio," to do stills of all its films.

Bakr's stills of scenes with leading characters taking up the full page are on right-hand pages. To the left besides film title and name of the one or more characters in the scene are the director, screenwriter, and others in the making of the film. Also is a note on the characters; e. g., "Youssel Wahbi...lives a decent life with his loving, aristocratic wife...until he falls in love with a prostitute"; "Mahmoud el-Miligi in his most evil role, a psychiatrist who uses hypnosis to make his friend commit a murder." You see the characters and the stories are modern.

The notes stop short of going more into the plot line of the respective film. With the generalities of the short introductory essays, this is not film studies or film history. The book is mainly a visual record of Egyptian films and a portrait gallery of leading actors and actresses of the decades covered. Despite its limitations regarding foreign and ethnic film studies, the work is of interest as an introduction to the sprawling study of first-generation Egyptian film and starting point for further study.

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