Cairo Station

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 CAIRO STATION [1958]

Starring: Hind Rostom, Youssef Chahine, Farid Shawqi

Direction by Youssef Chahine

Language: Arabic 

I live in an Arabic speaking country, and so I am surrounded by Arabic media: Arabic television, film, and music. It seems to be a lot of the same: romance interspersed with family drama (much like the Bollywood of the 1980s-2000s). I was looking through Netflix only to find poorly made Arabic horrors/thrillers, and what seemed like an infinite amount of Romantic comedies. However, when I saw Cairo station and read the description, I was hooked. Black-and-white, 1950s, murder, mental deterioration, obsessive romance? Count me in! (I realise now that I sound slightly strange saying that on here).

It only took a little bit of further research to back up my assumption that this movie was miles different to any other Arabic Egyptian film of the time. I guess that this movie had the same effect that Darr had on Bollywood cinema in the 90s. 

Setting the movie at a railway system was very interesting to me, and the movie starts off by highlighting the transient nature of railways, and the significance of them. After watching the movie, I can tell that the director was probably a very existential guy. Were these railways a metaphor for the dynamic nature of Egyptian society? A society ever-changing after the changes in government? From the opening scene, this movie was thought-provoking.

Was the lameness of one of the key characters a metaphor for the weakness of the structure of Egyptian society? A society where those at the bottom were forced to rebel?

I'm not usually one for film noirs: they tend to bore me if they can't keep a plot going. However, this was atypical: maybe it was because this was a film noir set in an entirely different setting. It wasn't an overdone Hollywood picture, where everything is slick and proper: this movie was a message. And what I liked about it was that this movie wasn't used for the purpose of providing social commentary like many modern movies are: through slow-burn often profoundly sad dramas. The social commentary in this movie was found through the details. The railways and the constant mentions of unionization was a commentary on the oppression of those right at the bottom of society. The underlying sense of fear was representative of the uncertainty of Egypt's political future at the time. The eventual killing of the female protagonist highlights the commonality of sexism in a very patriarchal society. This exploration of themes so neglected in Egyptian films of the time will paint you a vivid picture of what Egypt really was at the time.

This movie gave me an insight into Egypt that no other romance movie at the time could. There was a vibrance to this movie that I can't really explain. There was something about it that just made me get more and more invested. And although the plot was pretty complicated at the beginning, stick it out and you'll be left with a fascinating movie so unlike any other you can see from the time.

9/10

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