Cairo Station (1958)

Film: Cairo Station

Director: Youssef Chahine

Country: Egypt

Released: January 1958

Runtime: 77 minutes

Genre: Drama

Influenced: Yousry Nasrallah, Scorsese, Amr Salama, Abbas Kiarostami, Nadine Labaki

Chahine's Cairo Station (also known as Bab El Hadid in Arabic) is a landmark in North African cinema, released just six years after Nasser's Revolution of 1952. The film is reminiscent of Fellini's La Strada, in that it focuses on social outsiders, and the influence of neorealism is also clear to see. The film also shares a similar rage to some of the Nicholas Ray films of the mid-50s (Johnny Guitar, Rebel Without A Cause), telling the story of Qinawi, a crippled newspaper seller at Cairo Station who becomes infatuated with Hannuma (played by the stunning Hind Rostom), a lemonade seller at a nearby stall. Hannuma is unaware of his feelings and instead falls in love with Abu Serih, a young porter at the station.

As Qinawi's obsession with Hannuma grows, he becomes more and more unhinged, and his behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. Cairo Station captures something of the Egyptian politics of the time, with the film's subplots concerning marriage rights, union membership, poverty (Qinawi lives out on the tracks, earning barely enough to keep the makeshift roof over his head) and even pop music, with Chahine slotting in a musical be-bop interlude from Mike & the Skyrockets. As the plot progresses, the films takes on the feel of a Hitchcock thriller, with a murderer on the loose in Cairo, and unexpected twists & turns.

Chahine used wide-angle lenses to capture Cairo Station in all its sun dappled glory, and like Guru Dutt and Orson Welles, Chahine also took a starring role in the film. Chahine plays the repressed newspaper seller Qinawi, faced with the realisation that the object of his desire is locked in an abusive relationship with her fiancé. Chahine's style is a mix of Eisenstein, Hitchcock, Neorealism and Hollywood, with a local Egyptian flavour, and he cleverly uses montage and cuts to depict a sex scene, cutting to a close-up of a train wheel that is repeatedly bending a worn piece of track. 

The tension builds as the film progresses, culminating in a tragic and violent conclusion. Chahine's powerful and humanistic depiction of the Egyptian underclass, as well as the tense score and the moments of visual brilliance, make the film a gripping watch. Upon its release, Cairo Station was widely panned by Egyptian critics and audiences, and disappeared from view for two decades, but it has since been rediscovered and claimed as a masterpiece. Chahine is now remembered as one of the greatest directors in African cinema and Cairo Station in where he first developed his own unique style.

P.S. Initially I struggled to find a well-restored version of the film – the copy I found online was fairly low quality and the subtitles were lacking polish – but then I came to the happy realisation that Netflix has a nicely curated collection of Chahine films, including Cairo Station.