The Nightingale's Prayer: Praise for a Classic

The Nightingale's Prayer (Doa al karawan, 1959) by Henry Barakat stands as one of the greatest works of classic Egyptian cinema. The story, adapted from a novel by Taha Hussein, The Nightingale's Prayer is an epic love story filled with betrayal, tradition and murder.

The story follows Amna, a young, pretty Bedouin girl in Egypt who moves to the city with her mother and sister upon the insistence of her uncle, who wishes the women to escape the tainted name left by their womanizing father. Fascinated by, though fearful of, the city life, Amna and her sister, Hanadi, find jobs as housemaids in separate homes. Hanadi works for a respected engineer who seduces her by making her believe he was in love with her. When their mother learns of this, she notifies their uncle to take the girls back to their village.

However, the uncle has his own plan in mind and murders Hanadi in the desert to hide her sins from the villagers. Filled with rage, Amna returns to the city to find the engineer Hanadi fell in love with. What she finds is a womanizer who has seduced a long line of unsuspecting housemaids. Amna decides to work for the engineer and kill him to avenge her sister. But Amna realizes it is more difficult to murder than her uncle made it seem, and as she grows closer to the engineer (who remains nameless throughout the film) she finds her feelings for him change in a very unexpected way.

In the first half of the film, the story follows a traditional formula of moving from the rural to the city. Like many stories with this setup, the family that moves must change or sacrifice something to adapt into their new environment. The mother refuses to do either and sticks to tradition, while Amna and Hanadi quickly embrace city life. It is unclear what is more to blame for Hanadi's death--the mother's devotion to tradition in notifying her brother-in-law or Hanadi's embrace of sexual freedom--but the devastation that follows indicates that moving from the village to the city is a complex transition.

Following the death of Hanadi, Amna's adventures are just as much a search for revenge as it is an internal struggle. What makes The Nightingale's Prayer so powerful is the richly complex growth and development of its characters. Amna's development from young and naive villager, to fierce and determined avenger, to confused and torn lover is heart-wrenching. Faten Hamama's evocative performance is clearly the highlight of the film.

Also, the film's serves as a preservation of Bedouin culture. There are various scenes that are devoted to portraying traditions, values and practices of the Bedouins. The clash between Egyptian city life and village life is a reminder of the vast diversity that exists in the country.

The Nightingale's Prayer does not shy away from difficult subjects--such as poverty, sex and murder--but unlike contemporary, independent Egyptian films, this is in no way an "agenda" film. Nightingale does not seek to teach its audience a lesson about cultural traditions; it is purely an account of the complexities of love and the many forms it can take.

It may seem trivial to make such a distinction; however, the current independent Arab film industry comes with it a stereotype and expectation to make films that address current political and social issues. While many films do just that, its important to remember a that at one time, cinema in Egypt did resemble the "dream factory" that was Hollywood. In retrospect, a film such as Nightingale may seem to be a reflection on social attitudes towards sex and honor killings among Bedouins, but I feel this is an erroneous statement derived from the West's current obsession with political and social issues in the Arab world.

Overall, The Nightingale's Prayer is a lasting masterpiece of Egyptian film making with a worldwide appeal, while still being rooted in Arab culture and tradition.


Click here to watch a scene from the film. Amna and the Engineer relationship is complicated when the Engineer confesses his love, and Amna confesses her true motives.

The Closed Doors: Exposing the Taboo

Atef Hetata's controversial Egyptian film The Closed Doors (Al Abwab Al Moghlaka) marks a moment in Egyptian cinema where the nation began to more openly acknowledge its tense cultural and religious problems, particulalry those concerning sexuality. The film follows the story of 13-year-old Mohamed, known as Hamada to his mother, as he comes of age and battles with urges he's been taught are wrong and the unsettling idea of his mother as a sexual being.

The film opens with an eye peering through a hole in a wall. The audience soon sees that the eye is gazing at a group of girls. As the image continues to grow, we see a young boy, Hamada, distracted in class by the passing girls. His teacher is quick to reprimend him and remind him that he is at school, not at the movies. Hamada is thrown out of class and after closing the classroom door behind him, he is approached by another teacher and told to go to the mosque to escape the hardships of school. Hamada sets off on a walk through his neighborhood, and images of an impoverished Cairo provide the backdrop for the film credits.

Before the credits roll, The Closed Doors, has already given audiences a lot to consider. The image of an eye through a hole in a wall suggests a voyeuristic quality to the film. The camera both stares back at the eye and assumes the eye's vantage point, thus building a twofold relationship between the eye's beholder and the audience. First, the audience is gazing at Hamada, observing and judging him. Next, the audience becomes Hamada, joining in his curiousity of the female form and seeing the world as his inexperienced eyes see it. This relationship persists throughout the film.

Next, there is the remark from the teacher, that this is a class, not a cinema. For Hamada, it is a class pretending to be a cinema, but for the audience, this is a cinema acting as a class. Hamada is being taught literature and writing, but not the things he wants to learn: sex and sexuality. For that, he uses his symbolic cinema in the form of the hole in the wall.

On the other hand, the audience comes to the cinema to experience the sensuality and pleasure of seeing images on the screen. There is a fascinating satisfaction gained from viewing human bodies, particularly beautiful bodies, on the theater screen. This is why movie stars are pressured to be so picture-perfect. However, The Closed Doors closes the door, in a manner of speaking, on this saught-after satisfaction and instead turns every image of beauty and sexuality into one of tension and discomfort. The human body is feared and uncertain in The Closed Doors, for this is the way Hamada interprets it.

Finally, in the opening sequence, Hamada closes the door behind him when he leaves his class. This act seperates him from the boys and teacher inside the room and leaves a void for another door to fill. When one door closes, another opens. In this case, the next door opens towards religion. Hamada closes the door on his education and takes another step towards the door to Islam. And this is where we meet him at the start of the film, and from this point on Hamada will bounce back and forth in his beliefs, struggling with his growing sexuality that has changed his perception of the world.

One way to read through The Closed Doors is to examine the role of doors, both literal and metaphorical. There are in fact many doors in the film that dictate the fate of Hamada and his mother.

As a metaphor, the door is an in-between place and a barrier. It can be used to hide behind or block others out, or it can be removed to bring people together. It can be the threshold for something great, or something devastating.

In that respect, the characters are constantly situated near doors in the home or at school or even car doors. The doors serve as either a separation between two types of people--man and woman, mother and son--or as a barrier to keep things hidden and safe.

For example, when Hamada accidently sees his mother changing in her room, he quickly closes the door to protect himself from seeing her and to protect her from being seen. The door is being used to hide and protect his mother, but at the same time, it was by accidently opening the door that Hamada caught a glimpse of her undressed. The door is neither friend nor foe for Hamada and it is clear that no door remains closed forever.

For the film itself, the door it opens is the one blocking any public discourse on sexual practices or issues, such as incest or extra-marital sex, both of which are major elements of The Closed Doors. Hetata opens the door with a shocking and riveting drama that is rich with metaphors and yet tragic in its realism.

A Man in Our House: Nationalism in Egyptian Cinema

I would like to look at another Henry Barakat (Days and Nights) movie, the 1961 film A Man in Our House (Fi Baitina Rajul) starring Omar Sharif. Like Days and Nights, A Man in Our House features a love story that is threatened by social and political elements beyond the lovers' control and ultimately reinforces traditional morals. However, A Man in Our House features a prominent political message concerning nationalism and patriotism and glorifies the Egyptian resistance to British colonialism, which ended in 1954.

Sharif is Ibrahim Hamdy, a young Egyptian university student and revolutionary who assassinates the prime minister as part of the struggle for freedom. Ibrahim hides from the police by taking refuge in the home of an apolitical fellow student, Mohie, and his family, who risk their own safety to help him.

The father of the family must battle with his obligation to keep his family safe and his sense of duty to his country to protect Ibrahim. He ultimately decides to take in Ibrahim, who quickly becomes another member of the family and an honored guest. A romance emerges between Mohie’s sister, Nawal, and Ibrahim, though Ibrahim tries to reject his feelings because he feels guilty for putting the family in danger.

Their plan is severely threatened when Mohie’s cousin, Abdel Hamid, accidentally discovers Ibrahim. He blackmails the family by threatening to expose their secret if they do not approve of his marriage proposal to the eldest sister, Samia.

Barakat weaves together the political and personal in his narrative. The family’s troubles are also the country’s problems and Sharif’s roles are both an uninvited guest and a wanted felon. This suggests that every Egyptian, even the most apolitical family, is a member of the struggle against colonialism.

Ibrahim's arrival to the house represents an interruption of daily life. The family is forced to examine their role in the revolution and decide what side they are going to take. He is the stranger entering the personal sphere and during his visit, he leaves an impression on everyone in the house.

The film also takes place during Ramadan, a fact that is often mentioned by the characters, and religious morals play a large part in the story. In Days and Nights, religion was almost non-existent. By making Islam so prevalent in A Man in Our House, Barakat makes his film a more uniquely Egyptian work. Themes of resistance and revolution are nothing new in cinema, so by inserting elements of everyday Egyptian life, such as religion, Barakat marks his film as a nationalist work.

A Man in Our House does not spend much time providing context for the events taking place. Indeed, the film was made in the middle of the Gamal Abdel Nasser years in Egypt and the Egyptian revolution was still fresh in people's memories. Barakat overtly embraces Nasser's theory of Arab nationalism and anti-colonialism and observes how these affect the average person trying to lead a normal life.

As also demonstrated in Day and Nights, subtlety is not Barakat's strong point. His middle-class-influenced moral and political messages are made very clear in the film's characters. The Egyptian police are seen abusing and mistreating political prisoners, nearly torturing Mohie to death. The fact that Abdel Hamid is uneducated, having dropped out of college, is repeatedly referenced when discussing his rudeness and immorality.

Essentially, Barakat suggests that a good person is also a nationalist. Resistence is the greatest virtue in the film, so much so that Ibrahim's romance with Nawal is sacrificed for freedom and Ibrahim becomes a martyr for his cause.

Just as Egypt fought to free itself from British colonials, Egyptian cinema struggled to create its own identity separate from Hollywood and other Western cinema. This decolonization of cinema is a problem that persists throughout the Middle East and is just as much an issue today as it was immediately following the Egyptian revolution. As stated in my last post, Palestinian director Elia Suleiman employs a blend of black humor and absurdity to reflect Palestinian reality and this style contributes to the development of a national cinema. This week, we see that Barakat calls upon religion and Egyptian middle-class morals to distinguish his cinema and represent basic elements of everyday life.

This question of national identity in cinema is one I will address more in the future. However, it is clear that the story of a physical resistance in A Man in our House creates the opportunity for artistic and psychological resistance to colonized art.

Days and Nights: An Example of Classic Egypt

My last post examined a recent Egyptian film filled with stories about various problems affecting contemporary Egypt. To contrast, I am providing some analysis on an older film, the 1955 film by Henry Barakat Days and Nights (Ayyam w layali) starring the legendary Abdel Halim Hafez.


Days and Nights follows a very standard formula for 1950s Egyptian romantic melodramas. A young man falls in love with a beautiful girl, but something about him prevents him from being with her. In this film, it is because he takes the blame for an accident caused by his step brother's drunk driving.

Family, responsibility, dignity, and the dangers of drinking are all prominent themes of the film, which does nothing to hide its moral messages. The dialogue is often very pointed, sometimes even contrived, in communicating the "right" point of view.

In the film, Yehia (Hafez) is a university student whose mother divorced his father because he was a drunk. She remarries to a single father, and then realizes her new husband does not treat her two sons equally, favoring his son over Yehia.

Yehia spots the gorgeous Samia (actress Iman) and the two fall in love. However, Yehia's brother hits and kills a man while driving drunk but refuses to turn himself in, leaving Yehia's best friend to be wrongly accused of the crime. Yehia pleads with his stepfather to do the right thing and tell his brother to confess, but his stepfather demands Yehia stay quiet to repay him for raising him.

Frustrated with the injustices, Yehia seeks out his biological father for advice. Yehia proceeds to confess to the hit-and-run, landing himself in court and causing Samia's mother to forbid her from seeing him. At the last minute, Yehia's mother turns in her stepson and takes back her ex-husband, restoring her family unit.

The story preaches honesty, taking responsibility for one's actions, and respecting family as the basic social unit. However, this is not what the film is "about." Ultimately, it is a romance-musical designed to be a box-office hit with mass appeal. The insertion of so many moral messages is reflexive of cinematic trends of the time. Most classic Egyptian films--like many Hollywood films of the time--reinforced the status quo in society.

With that said, Days and Nights is most notable for its incredible soundtrack, featuring several of Hafez's best songs, such as the timeless ballad "Ana Lak Ala tool." However, this is not to say that it does not push boundaries. The film opens with a birth scene, portraying Yehia's mother laying in bed after giving birth, something that may have been problematic in Hollywood at the time.

In terms of aesthetics, Days and Nights is a perfect example of the majority of classic Egyptian cinema. The film uses a style generally known as Classic Hollywood Realism, which entails narrative-oriented editing with predominantly medium shots. There is no experimental or montage editing and one could say the film "plays it safe" stylistically.

One of the biggest criticisms surrounding popular Egyptian film in the 1950s is that it was essentially trying to copy Hollywood style to recreate its success in Egypt rather than form a unique cinema for itself. I would like to argue against this statement and claim that the themes and genres popular in 1950s Egypt were in fact a reflection of the cultural climate.

The Yacoubian Building: The Modernist Paradox in Egypt

Egypt is, without a doubt, the most prolific Arab nation in terms of film production. The old Egyptian classic melodramas and musicals are recognized and appreciated throughout the Middle East. Today, Egyptian films are increasingly focused on a number of social and political issues. However, heavy censorship in Egypt is a major obstacle, though filmmakers are finding ways to slowly overcome boundaries.

The 2006 film The Yacoubian Building (Omaret yakobean) by Marwan Hamed and starring Egyptian legend Adel Imam stands out as a breakthrough in censorship and conservative ideals. The film broke box office records in Egypt and was the nation's official entry for the Academy Awards.

Based on a bestselling novel by Alaa Al Aswany with the same name set in 1990, The Yacoubian Building tells the stories of the tenants of the film's namesake and uses the building, an actual building in Cairo, as a metaphor for modern Egypt. The characters face a slew of social problems--poverty, religious radicalism, sexual harrasment, aging, homesexuality, adultry, abortion, drugs, political corruption, police brutality--and each of their morals is put to the test, and most of them fail.

The depiction of modern Egypt is scathing, to say the least. Very little redemption or hope for Egypt's future is presented.

The film tackles so many issues that it would be futile to attempt to analyze all of them here in this blog. I will most likely return to this film in the future to analyze more specific themes, but this entry will focus on a prevailing theme that I believe is exemplified by each of the characters' personal story: the fear that social progress will ruin tradition and humanity. This is also known as the modernist paradox.

The tenants of the Yacoubian Building all want change. Soad (Somaya Al Khashab) lives with her mother and siblings in a shanty on the roof of the building. She wants to make more money, but cannot hold a job because she rejects the sexual advances of her bosses to maintain her honor. Her mother tells her a woman can learn to tolerate a certain amount of harassment and still keep her dignity and make money. This story represents Egypt as a place where people must forgo their morality in order to make money and survive.

Soad clings to her beliefs in the face of a society that has moved far past her notions of honor. She is at odds with the world around her. At one point, she gives in to her boss and allows him to dry hump her in a back room. Everyone else is unbothered by this, but Soad is crushed and represents a victim of modernity. In this case, the modernism is an immoral and evil thing.

Zaki Al Dessouki (Adel Imam) is the Yacoubian Building's oldest tenant and an heir to a Pasha. In one scene, he drunkenly proclaims to Soad that Cairo had gone to the dogs, that it was once a city greater than Paris but was now full of buildings that were "slums on the top and deformed in the basement," a reference to the poor people that lived on the roof and the morally empty rich tenants inside. Zaki demands a return to the old glory of Egypt, a proclamation that is fitting to be made by one of the greatest actors in Egyptian cinema.

Despite their drastic age diffrence, Zaki and Soad marry at the end of the film, serving as the film's only ray of hope. The two represent a merging of old and new, rich and poor, Muslim and Coptic. The audience is left to believe that through their marriage, Zaki and Soad are preserving the dream of transforming Cairo, since every other subplot ends tragically.

The Yacoubian Building is an attempt at a sweeping portrayal of contemporary Egypt that is a landmark in terms of breaking boundaries in cinema, but it also suffers from trying to cram too much into one film.

Each of the subplots is just as important as the next, and depth and insight into the issues is sacrificed to preserve screen time. Nonetheless, this is a crucial film to see to get a more honest and humanist representation of Egypt and an introduction to the social perceptions of a variety of issues.

Photo Caption: Somaya al Khashab and Adel Imam dance together in The Yacoubian Building.