Cairo Station (1998)

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I read more about this Egyptian film after finding it in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, it was selected as the Egyptian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, but it did not make the final nominations, so I was more intrigued to watch it. Basically newsstand owner Madbouli (Hassan el Baroudi) takes pity on physically challenged peddler Qinawi (Youssef Chahine, also directing). He is given a job selling newspapers in the Cairo train station, but he is shunned by all the women there because of his mild handicap, although he has little trouble walking. Qinawi becomes obsessed with beautiful cold drink vendor Hannuma (Hind Rostom), but she is already engaged to husky luggage porter Abu Siri (Farid Shawqi), who is trying to organise a protest with his fellow workers against exploiting and abusive treatment from the manager. Hannuma treats Qinawi sympathetically, and makes a joke about a possible relationship, this prompts him to propose to her. He has fantasies about a home and family with her, but Hannuma rejects him, and Qinawi's obsession with her turns into madness. Qinawi reads a story in the newspapers about an unsolved murder, he is inspired to buy a knife and plots to kill Hannuma. Local policemen are trying to catch Hannuma and the other women illegally selling drinks, she asks Qinawi to take and hide her incriminating drink bucket. Qinawi seeks to lure her into a warehouse to pick up the bucket, but instead she asks a friend to get it instead. In the darkness, Qinawi is unaware that a different woman comes into the warehouse, he stabs her repeatedly, hides the body in a wooden crate. Qinawi gets Abu Siri to put the crate aboard a train, but the woman inside it is not dead, she is found, and the station is alerted. The workers Abu Siri tried to form a union with at first try to blame the attempted murder on him, but the would-be victim identifies the assailant. Meanwhile, unaware of her near-death escape, Hannuma goes to the warehouse to get her bucket. Qinawi chases her through the rail yard and catches her, he holds a knife to her head to keep a crowd of people away. The newsstand owner tells Qinawi that he will be allowed to marry Hannuma, he coaxes him into putting on what he thinks is a wedding garment. Qinawi then realizes he has been put into a straitjacket, he struggles, but is taken away by the authorities. It is the story of a disabled man with a deluded affection is driven to insanity, I thought it was going to a simple sad tale of a love story that can never be, but it turned dark, and the use of the location was great, I really liked it, a most interesting drama. Very good!

"Cairo Station" is a very sad film...there's no getting around that. The story is tragic and when the film ends, you'll likely feel a bit drained...so don't day I didn't warn you. But I am not saying to avoid this Egyptian flick...it's well worth seeing.The story begins with Madbouli introducing the film and explaining how me met and befriended Qinawi*. Qinawi was a poor guy with a limp without a friend in the world...so he adopted him and helped set him up at the train station selling newspapers. What follows for much of the film is showing the plight of all the many workers at the station-- the porters, women who work there illegally selling drinks and the rest. They get paid next to nothing and life is very, very hard.About midway through the story, Qinawi approaches Hanouma and proposes to her. But he's poor, limps and seems a bit slow intellectually...and Hanouma is an obnoxious pig. So she laughs at him and belittles him for proposing to her! Qinawi is crushed...and soon has murder on his mind. Here is where it gets interesting because although everyone watching the picture knows murder is wrong, within many or perhaps most watching the film, there is a part of them that wants to see the coarse and horrid Hanouma die! This reminds me of the great 1944 film, "The Suspect"...where the audience naturally cheers for the leading man to kill and hopes he gets away with it!! I don't want to say more...other than the plan does NOT go as Qinawi hoped...and ends on a very sad note.The film has a good story but there are other interesting things going for it. The camera-work is pretty amazing...especially coming from a nation not known for filmmaking. Many of the scenes have an almost film noir style to them with the lighting and camera angles. And, the film is rather daring--especially choosing to make the movie about folks near the bottom of society. Worth seeing.*Like many films not in English and from countries with non-Western alphabets, there is no one way to spell the characters' names. The subtitles call him Qinawi and IMDb Kinawi...both are correct.

This Egyptian movie is a miracle in itself.It can appeal to anyone in the world and is as good as any great work of any country.All takes place in a station with a frustrated paper boy,living his life vicariously through pin ups photographs ,the central character .Round him, lots of secondary characters revolve .He seems an outcast ,without any friend,and despised by all the girls around.The work sometimes recalls Jean Renoir's "La Bete Humaine" ,but with more attention to detail.This is a microcosm which the director films with virtuosity (the editing is stunning ) and his story has a ring of sincerity.Chahine once told he put a lot of himself in his pitiful hero.The movie does not fall easily into a genre:it is a documentary about a station with street hawkers -Hanuma almost got run over while trying to escape from the Police;it is also a political movie ,some of the workers feeling they need an union;it's also a sentimental movie ,a young couple about to be parted -strangely the young girl reappears at the very end of the movie ;it's a thriller ,the scenes in the warehouse compares favorably with Hitchcock and all best film noir directors ;it's finally a movie which almost verges on fantasy and horror ,with a final as impressive as those of "sunset boulevard" or "whatever happened to Baby Jane?" There's even an embryonic woman's lib! Let's underline the importance of the wide screen ,which makes the director look like an entomologist watching an ant hill with a magnifying glass:"Bab El Hadid" ,it's all this and more.

I don't really agree with certain circles who claim Cairo Station "one of the greatest films ever made" but it's a neat little film. It has that very basic, almost primitive, shooting style and editing which in some ways reminds of me Greek romance melodramas from the same time yet the perverse content sets it worlds apart from that kind of populist cinema which I suspect was as popular with lower/middle-class audiences in Egypt as it was in Greece. I liked that Chahine makes the titular railway station a stage for contrast between the old and the new. Between fashionable swinging Egyptians and the traditional Muslim conservatives. Between a lady president dressed in a modern pantsuit and destitute girls selling soda to the passengers. Between the old feudal faction of porters and the new one trying to assert its working rights by forming a union. This sociopolitical contrast touching on contemporary changes in Egyptian society (which, other than what the movie presents, I know nothing about but seem to be almost identical with the anxieties that surfaced in Greek screwball comedies of the same time) reflected in the movie itself, out of a typical melodrama of thwarted love Chahine dragging a dark noirish thriller with psychosexual undertones and an almost slasher-like turn in the third act replete with knife-wielding crazies chasing beautiful women that predates Psycho by a good two years. In borrowing the generic aspects of a programme picture for his character-driven piece and portraying his mentally imbalanced protagonist with sympathy and humanity, Chahine made a movie more wholesome than its 73 minute duration would suggest.