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.