Egypt
4.5*
Director:
Youssef Chahine
Screenwriters:
Abdel Hay Adib
Mohamed Abu Youssef
Director of Photography:
Alevise Orfanelli
Running time: 77 minutes
Original title: باب الحديد
Transliterated title: Bab al-Hadid
Alternate title: The Iron Gate
The acting could be much better, and the climax requires an enormous suspension of disbelief, but Youssef Chahine’s Cairo Station is compact and those parts that might seem random at first all fit together in the end, underlining Chahine’s skill as a storyteller and a craftsman.
Chahine stars as the main character Qinawi, a young man who lives at Cairo’s main railway station and whose limp either scares other people or makes him the object of their ridicule. He sells newspapers and has his eye on Hanouma, a woman who doesn’t let herself be ordered about, but she seems destined to be married to Abu-Serih, who wants the workers at the station to form a union and stand up against their boss, Mansour, in whose employment they struggle to make ends meet.
The film is very frank about Qinawi’s sexual frustration, and the first time we see the inside of his little home, it is plastered with magazine cut-outs of scantily clad women in braziers. Referring to Qinawi, the voice-over ominously asks us “How could anyone have foreseen his end?”
While Qinawi is infatuated with the feisty Hanouma and sometimes leers at her obscenely, a gesture she does not take very seriously, two others stories, seemingly insignificant, are taking place in the background. In the first one, a young girl’s boyfriend is about to leave for four years and the small part of their story that we are privy to seems sincere and romantic. The second story, of which we learn indirectly whenever the main news vendor, Madbouli, talks about it, is a grizzly tale of murder: a woman was discovered in a trunk, her head and arms chopped off, and her killer unknown. These two stories will slowly come into focus towards the end of the film and tie in with Qinawi’s obsessive idea of romance.
The film doesn’t have many surprises – we can spot the dénouement from a mile away – but the final reel does contain a nail-biting sequence of events that is breathtaking to behold and even if you know what you are in for, the full cinematic experience is truly amazing. In many respects, this final part of the film is the culmination of the art of the filmmaker, whose film starts off on some shaky ground. Another scene that is a stand-out takes place on a stationary train at the station, where Hanouma starts dancing along to the music being played by the passengers. It is a raucous affair, upsetting some of the more conservative onlookers, and at the end of the number, Hanouma turns to the camera and winks at us, signalling our complicity in this unconventional bit of fun.
Some of the direction is magnificent, including a moment when a boy is saved from an oncoming train and narrowly escapes when Hanouma pulls him from the tracks. The film sometimes struggles with the post-production studio dubbing and it is particularly audible whenever Abu-Serih speaks and produces a very loud echo even when he is outside. One brief shot caught my attention: when Hanouma and Qinawi are sitting next to the fountain, one quick image shows them clearly defined in the foreground, separated from an indistinct background by the haze of the fountain. It is beautiful – much shorter, unfortunately, than the strange long take that precedes it, which shows these two characters speaking at length without looking at each other.
Chahine’s film is short and creates tension by means of a play between light and darkness, and a quickening pace at the end that will leave you breathless. Its climax relies on us to believe that Qinawi is literally blinded by obsession, but the rest of the film makes up for this bit of extreme simplicity and succeeds in presenting a story that is truly riveting.