Bab el hadid (1958)

Director:

Youssef Chahine

Writers:

Mohamed Abu Youssef (dialogue)
Abdel Hay Adib (writer)

Release Date:

16 January 1962 (West Germany)

Plot Keywords:

Kill | Train | Train Depot | Freight Train | Marriage

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Farid Shawqi		(as Farid Chawki)
Hind Rostom	...	Hanuma
Youssef Chahine	...	Qinawi
Hassan el Baroudi		(as H. el Baroudy)
Abdel Aziz Khalil
Naima Wasfy		(as Naima Wasfi)
Said Khalil
Abdel Ghani Nagdi
Loutfi El Hakim
Abdel Hamid Bodaoha
F. El Demerdache
Said El Araby
Ahmed Abaza
Hana Abdel Fattah
Safia Sarwat

Also Known As:

Cairo Station
Cairo: Central Station
The Iron Gate (International: English title)

Runtime:

France:95 min | Canada:76 min

Country:

Egypt

Language:

Arabic

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono

Movie Connections:

References Niagara (1953)

Worthy dark character-driven film soleil with psychosexual undertones

With my internet connection acting up all week, I only managed to get the movie today and just finished watching it. I don't really agree with Adnanz who claimed it "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 rural 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 slasherish turn in the third act replete with knife-wielding crazies chasing beautiful women around 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.