When the stars shone from Cairo: remembering Egyptian cinema’s dream factory

January 29, 2015 Updated: January 29, 2015 01:03 PM

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It has been called the “golden age of Arab cinema” – that period from the late 1940s to 1960s, when Arab actors from across the Middle East headed to the stardom capital of Cairo.

The women were unfailingly glamorous, elegant and poised, while the men, handsome and chivalrous, embodied what a real star should look and act like.

With the death of Faten Hamama this month, one of that era’s leading ladies, and of Mariam Fakhr Eddine last November, it’s time to remember Cairo’s cinematic legacy.

“Egypt is where the entire Arab world went to become a star and make a name for themselves,” says Osama Asal, an Egyptian film critic and writer. “For the actresses and actors, they all became Egyptian in the sense they learnt and adopted the dialect. Some even became citizens.

“When a film was a success in Egypt, it was a success across the Arab world and beyond.”

Big names were often compared to Hollywood stars: Hind Rostom became the Marilyn Monroe of Arabia; Roushdi Abaza, the Arab Clark Gable; Anwar Wagdi, the Arabian Robert Taylor. Then there were the stars with their own titles: Farid Shawqi, known as “Wahesh” (monster or ultimate villain) and also Malek El Terso (king of the poor); Soad Hosny, the Cinderella of Egyptian cinema; and, Shadia, so beloved by her public that she is known as “Maabouda al Jamaheer”, roughly translated as fan’s idol.

It was also a time of singing legends such as the crooner Abdel Halim Hafez, dubbed “Al Andaleeb al Asmar” (the tan nightingale) and “the Queen of Arabs”, Umm Kulthum, who worked with Mohammed Abdel Wahab, the singer and legendary “composer for the stars”.

“Egypt had a love affair and a deep connection with moving pictures right from the beginning,” says Asal. “Just a week after the films of the Lumière Brothers made their debut in Europe in 1895, they were shown at the prestigious cafes of Alexandria and Cairo.

“The industry developed from silent movies to talkies, with musicals being the bulk of the productions in the 1930s and 1940s,” he continues. The film critic credits the businessman Talaat Harb as one of the pioneers of Egypt’s home-grown industry because he founded Studio Misr in 1935; it became one of the major studios.

“It was a time of light movies, of love, of songs and often about the rich class and what their life is like,” Asal says.

With the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and the foundation of Gamal Abdul Nasser’s republic, the mood on the streets changed.

“Egypt and the Arab world, with this new air of pan-Arabism, started to rediscover itself, becoming a time of creativity in all senses, where the cultural and art scene developed on a remarkable level,” Asal explains.

Cinema grew more intellectual with the inclusion of established literary figures including Naguib Mahfouz, who in 1988 won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The new government passed laws to support the film industry as well establishing the High Cinema Institute.

“It was the 1950s and 1960s that produced the greatest cinema giants, timeless movies that were so deep and so beautifully crafted on every level,” Asal claims, pointing to the legendary film maker Youssef Chahine, who is credited with giving Egyptian movies an international profile.

With more than 15 local studios, Egypt began to produce 60 to 70 movies a year at the height of this so-called golden age.

Then, slowly, the same film studios were nationalised and by the end of the 1960s the state began to exercise more control. Paranoia and censorship took over and some film actors fled Egypt in response to fears of interrogation and duress from Egyptian intelligence agencies.

“It was a strange time, where there are rumours to this day that Soad Hosny the actress was a spy and that is why she was killed in 2001 as she was about to publish her memoirs,” he says.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, cinema became a more commercial enterprise and the popularity of TV grew, with series produced to be shown over Ramadan becoming the focus of many studios that previously produced the great films.

Today, the drama of Egyptian cinema has been surpassed by the country’s politics. often played out on social media. But you can find many of its greatest stars – not only the dead, such as Faten Hamama, but also those who remain, such as her former husband Omar Sharif, Hassan Yousif, Shadia, Magda, Nadia Lutfi, Madiha Yousri, Lobna Abdel Aziz and Shouweikar and many more – endlessly performing on Arab satellite channels still dedicated to the classics.

Rym Ghazal is a senior features writer with The National.

rghazal@thenational.ae

Egyptian-born actor Omar Sharif died on Friday, aged 83. Pawan Singh/The National

Doctor Zhivago star Omar Sharif dies, aged 83

July 10, 2015 Updated: July 11, 2015 11:22 AM

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LONDON // Egyptian-born actor Omar Sharif, who starred in Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia, died on Friday, aged 83.

“He died this afternoon of a heart attack in Cairo,” said Sharif’s London-based agent, Steve Kenis, adding that the actor had been in a hospital for patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

Former antiquities minister and renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, who was one of Sharif’s close friends, said the legendary actor had died in an upscale clinic in Cairo, where he had been for a month.

“His psychological condition had deteriorated – he had stopped eating and was not drinking,” Mr Hawass said.

He said Sharif’s funeral could take place on Sunday.

Sharif began acting in the 1950s and was propelled to stardom after playing an Arab chief enlisted by Peter O’Toole’s T E Lawrence in the World War I drama Lawrence of Arabia, for which he won an Oscar nomination.

An even bigger role followed as the eponymous hero in David Lean’sDoctor Zhivago, the adaptation of Boris Pasternak’s novel of tortured passions during the Russian Revolution.

Known for his raffish good looks, Sharif went on to star in many more films and television productions, including alongside Barbra Streisand in 1968’s Funny Girl.

In later years he became almost as well known for playing bridge and owning thoroughbred racehorses as for his acting.

Fluent in Arabic, English, French, Greek, Italian and Spanish, Sharif spent many years living between France, Italy and the United States, before settling back in his native country.

Born Michel Demitri Shalhoub on April 10, 1932 in the Egyptian city of Alexandria to parents of Syrian and Lebanese descent, Sharif was raised a Catholic.

His former wife, the Egyptian actress Faten Hamama, died earlier this year on January 17 at the age of 83.

The two met while filming the romantic drama Sira’ Fi Al-Wadi, or Struggle in the Valley, and fell in love. Hamama divorced her then husband, the Egyptian film director Ezzel Dine Zulficar, and Sharif converted to Islam so that he could marry her.

The couple went on to star together in nearly 10 films, the last being Nahr El Hub, or River of Love, a 1961 Arabic remake of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

They had one son, Tarek, before divorcing in 1974.

Sharif never remarried, but had another son, Robin, from a brief relationship with Italian journalist Lula De Luca.

In a 2003 interview with a newspaper, Sharif blamed the constant travelling for his role in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia for his and Hamama’s divorce.

“It separated me from my wife, from my family,” he said. “We didn’t see each other anymore and that was it, the end of our marriage. I might have been happier having stayed an Egyptian film star.”

* Agence France-Presse