(Youssef Chahine, 1958) Suspense thriller set in a Cairo train station that represents all of Egyptian society. Remaining Time - Fullscreen Up Next. After the film was released, it was met with major controversy and criticism whereby viewers were displeased with the way the film negatively reflected Egyptians. The melodramatic film is one which reflects upon aspects of poverty, obsession and sexual repression in a seemingly insignificant character in which the train station is the embodiment of Cairo. As the film progresses, Qinawi becomes obsessed and infatuated with the cold drink vendor at the station, Hanuma. This clearly sets the viewer up with a sense of where and when the story takes place, while implicitly outlining some of the personality traits of the main character, Qinawi. He becomes obsessed with Hanouma, a beautiful, vivacious woman who sells soft drinks to commuters, working without official permission. One of the first Arab films to adapt techniques of Italian neo-realism and American film noir. The train station in its entirety and the mise-en-scene immediately enables viewers to distinguish the setting from being a film set but rather an actual train station and this pertains to the characteristics of a neo-realist film. Read More. The shot works to establish the setting in which the entire film takes place. Cairo: A New Desktop Shell Replacement In Development Slick stuff Friday, February 29, 2008 by Zoomba | Discussion: WinCustomize News. As Madbouli senses a troubled atmosphere he states that he thinks Qinawi is “frustrated” and the more frustrated he gets, the more obsessed he becomes. This relates to Michel Chion’s theory of value added sound in order to enrich an image and create an impression in the viewers mind. A Cairo newsstand vendor's fantasies morph into a dangerous fixation with a lemonade seller as a serial killer begins terrorizing the city. Line 1 (blue) is the oldest line of the Cairo Metro, with its first 29-kilometre (18 mi) segment having opened in 1987. Beginning of dialog window. When Chahine directed this film however, he went against all cultural boundaries pertaining to Egyptian cinema at the time. However, the film was much-maligned upon its release. At the Western Coast of Egypt, more specifically at Ain-Sokhna sits Cairo’s first and … It is also the 19th largest city in the world, and among the world's most densely populated cities. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Find trailers, reviews, synopsis, awards and cast information for Cairo Station (1958) - Youssef Chahine on AllMovie - Youssef Chahine directs and stars in this… The fact that there are a lot of people emphasizes the location being the “heart of the city”. The previously mentioned underlying themes are mostly reflected through the acting, location, sound and mise-en-scene of the sequence. Nasser’s revolution encouraged the adoption of nationalist social and political agendas in film, and ‘by the early 1950s Egyptian cinema was integrating a loose adaptation of various realist cinematic trends including French poetic realism, Italian neorealism, and socialist realism’ (Khouri 2010: 10). Chahine, who became a favourite of Egyptian film-goers for his vibrant melodramas, flipped the script on them in Cairo Station by exploring the dark underbelly of life in Cairo. This is the second aspect and indicator that the film is neo-realist. The concourse and platforms of the city transport hub provide a locale that enables Chahine effectively to represent a wide range of Egyptian society. After the voice of the narrator is heard, the viewer is finally presented with his face. This time the emphasis on time is even more significant because the clock is the only thing in the shot. A newspaper salesman at the train station in Cairo develops an unhealthy obsession with a woman who sells refreshments. Cairo Station. In this medium, Madbouli as the narrator, questions how one could’ve foreseen his end (referring to Qinawi). The Cow This conveys the previously mentioned sense of impoverishment. The explicit connections between male voyeurism, the performance of the “feminine”, and sadistic-erotic compulsion is wonderfully brought out. Although the mid or low-level shots of Chahine champions and empathetically regards the plight of the poor, he doesn’t tediously villainize the other social classes. Early cinematic influences included American musicals and Douglas Sirk’s melodramas. She is already committed to Abu Seri, a porter fighting to unionise the exploited workers in the station. Cairo Station has an urgent pace, with striking camerawork by Chahine’s early patron, Alvise Orfanelli: the editing, sound- and image track, drive the narrative forward, in contrast to conventional Egyptian films of the time, which relied on lengthier scenes and dialogue. Cairo-Dock Themes by fkorpsvart Themes created with the old 3D appearance of the popular macOS Dock but adapted to the recent Catalina versionImporting themes in Cairo DockThere are two ways to import the themes in Cairo Dock, both very easy to do.>>> First way.The first way is extracting the files from the.tar.gz... 2 comments 5.7 This addresses the underlying themes of the movie as well as Qinawi’s character traits. Cairo Station is the first mission in Halo 2 (split into 3 parts on the mission selection screen; The Heretic, The Armory and Cairo Station). The mise-en-scene includes the interior of this destitute shed, whereby explicitly showing the harsh living conditions such street vendors live under. Egyptian cinema did not figure for Chahine at this point, but his films quickly began to reflect the radical developments in Egyptian society and politics of the 1950s, and to draw on European modernist film conventions as well as the Hollywood paradigm. Cairo Station was assembled and put into Earth's orbit by Vosper Engineering in August 23, 2550, and officially commissioned on September 14, 2552 when it was designated as the flagship headquarters of the Earth Defense Coordination Zone. She recalled that working for Chahine was immensely challenging; he was ‘soft moving sands that hide a volcano’ (Fawal 2001: 19). A brilliant work, probably the best we’ve seen so far (though those with a penchant for romance might prefer The Blazing Sun or Dark Waters). Directed by Youssef Chahine. Themes › Action; Comedy Drama ... Cairo Station Actor . After this there is a jump-shot to a close-up of a clock as it’s hands tick quickly and the caption reads, “every minute one train departs”. This sense of rapidity would make sense because the movie as a whole takes place in only one day in which a multitude of events unfold. “They're going to try to take our MAC guns offline, give their capital ships a straight shot at Earth. Our third podcast on Youssef Chahine films, this one on Cairo Station, a combination of Dickensian melodrama, Marxist analysis, neorealist aspirations, film noir techniques, and with a contemporary relevance in its Incel-on-a-rampage theme. Youssef Chahine's Cairo: Central Station is a refreshing blend of hidden sexual tension, film-noir and neo-realism from the 1950's. Once again, Chahine conveys a grim sense of what it is like as a moreover impoverished citizen. Video Player is loading. Once more, Chahine is presenting us with the rapidity of the setting, which in turn implies rapidity of the film as a whole. By 1950 Chahine was already directing his first feature, Baba Amin (Daddy Amin). June 20, 2019. by JL Admin. Within a matter of 30 seconds the audience goes from feeling sympathetic towards Qinawi to being uneasy towards him. The frustration mentioned in addition to the mise-en-scene of this shed completely covered with cutouts points to specifically sexual frustration and obsession. www.arabfilm.com. In this close-up, Madbouli denotes the young man as being “lame”. Before going into the shot-by-shot analysis, it is important we take a look at the movie as a whole. This film therefore could be considered rapidly paced. In addition, these films deal with themes of unity and discord, and as such foreshadow and/or reflec ot n the loss of the 1967 War and the resultin defeag ot f the discourse and ethics of Arabism. Cairo Station observes the ‘unities’ of time, place and action, perhaps a legacy of Chahine’s first love of theatre: the action unfolds in the course of a single day, within the bounds of Bab al-Hadid (except for one significant excursion), and the narrative pursues a tragic nemesis. Master Chief, defend this station!”— Lord Terrence Hood to John-117 at the beginning of the battle of Earth. This shot acts as an embodiment of the city as a whole as the subtitle reads “heart of the city”. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Teda Fun Valley. The presence and representation of women throughout Cairo Station is striking, and for a relatively uninformed Western audience, conditioned by mistaken assumptions about the historical ‘place of women in Islamic society’, often frankly startling. 1958 | | 1h 13m | Dramas. By honing in on this realist depiction of sexual repression, Chahine may have been trying to outline the societal matter, as a whole. The melodramatic film is one which reflects upon aspects of poverty, obsession and sexual repression in a seemingly insignificant character in which the train station is the embodiment of Cairo. This series of medium-shots is where the story begins to further develop. During a hot day in Cairo’s main station, Kenaoui, a disabled rural migrant, is offered a job peddling papers and magazines. Chahine had effectively created a unique fusion between neorealist convention, Egyptian melodrama and Hollywood narrative style, through which he began to portray contemporary Egypt. With a filmic sense of Italian neo-realism, he created quite the contrary to what Egyptians were used to in cinema. Gabriel Youssef Chahine (Shahine) was born 25 January 1926 in Alexandria, to a Greek mother and a Lebanese father, who worked as a lawyer. Hanouma’s lover, Abu Seri (‘Speedy’), is played by heart-throb male lead, Farid Chaouqi, also very much against type. In the podcast, Richard discusses how C’es toi mon amour is the film that immediately precedes Cairo Station and Jamila the Algerian, and how it is worth comparing the two musical numbers set on a train in Cairo Station and in C’es toi mon amour in the light of themes of modernity, tradition, progress and personal freedom. The accelerating pace of mid-twentieth-century culture is evident everywhere in Cairo Station, and its impact on women is dramatic. Watch trailers & learn more. Conclusively, I would argue that this scene although brief, holds a lot of implications pertaining to the intention of the film. ( Log Out /  This leaves the audience assuming the end of Qinawi is an unfortunate one, and henceforth an unfortunate film. ( Log Out /  Avengers and Game of Thrones rule 2019 MTV Movie and TV Awards. Lastly, the sequence ends with the opening credits against the city of Cairo as an orchestrated score is played in the background. During the development of his long, often embattled career, Chahine produced 36 feature and short films and six documentaries (Murphy and Williams 2007: 30). The quick sounds of trains as they come and go give the initial impression that events are happening quickly. Part 01: Cairo Station . All that is new leads straight to Hell!’. This medium-shot shows where Qinawi lives, being a shed. Within a few short minutes, Chahine achieves in showing viewers his then controversial realism, the major underlying themes and societal matters, as well as a sense of characters. The sound of the song is particularly robust yet greatly sinister and this adds to all previously mentioned aspects of the film and the nature of it being ominous. Chahine remained by choice and circumstance an outsider: a (non-believing) Christian in a predominantly Muslim society, child of an immigrant family, and a product of the complex cosmopolitan culture of pre-war Alexandria. On October 20, 2552, John-117 received his MJOLNIR Mark VI armor in the Cairo armory prior to … The movie grabs Felliniesque characters (especially that sexy femme) and combines them in a joyous and iconic central location: the tran station of Cairo. Mubarak* station lies next to Cairo's main railway station under Ramses Square. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Following this, Madbouli provides a newspaper selling job and shelter for Qinawi –. The … The line is 44.3-kilometre (27.5 mi) long, and serves 35 stations. This genre-bending series puts a modern twist on Greek and Roman mythology, exploring themes of gender politics, power and life in the underworld. On his return to Egypt, still resisting his father’s wish that he should become an engineer, Chahine began working with cinematographer Alvise Orfanelli, a creative presence in the vigorous Alexandrian film industry, and who would be cinematographer for Cairo Station. To see such a pathetic character and base the entire film off of him would be another factor in making this film quite different than those preceding it in Egyptian cinema. Unmute. While she jokes with him about a possible relationship, she is actually in love with Abu Siri, a strong and respected porter at the station who is struggling to unionize his fellow workers to combat their boss’ exploitative and abusive … This in itself, with the addition of the look of the Madbouli, creates an image of the social class represented in the film and seems to negatively connote it. The effect of this close-up emphasizes the sympathetic expression on his face as he discovers Qinawi. In addition to this, the discomforting interior of the shed reflects negatively on Qinawi and this further exemplifies the previously mentioned sense of rapidity. Go down the stairs and grab a Battle Rifle (BR) from the weapons locker on the wall. Oh, and a terrific wee love triangle between a newspaper salesman Qinawi, drink seller Hanuma and the guy establishing a new union to protect workers at the station from their greedy and uncaring boss, Abu Siri. Acknowledged as probably the most significant ‘auteur’ in Arab cinema, he is one of the few directors to have received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement (1997). This, in addition to the speediness of people walking, adds to the notion of rapidity in time for the film. Madbouli goes into Qinawi’s shed to see how he is coming along, but what he finds is discomforting and questionable for concern to the viewers. The movie itself was extremely significant for Egyptian cinema as director Youssef Chahine presented Egyptians with a type of film they had never experienced before. His parents made strenuous sacrifices for his education, and he attended Victoria College, a mediocre imitation of Eton, surviving from the recent period of British rule. 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