Cairo Station (1958)

[Scottie]

Cairo Station (1958)

Youssef Chahine established his international reputation with this masterpiece, which, though initially a commercial failure in Egypt, would become one of the most influential and celebrated works in all of Arab cinema. The director himself stars as Kenawi, a disabled newspaper hawker whose obsession with a sultry drink seller (Hind Rostom, known as the “Marilyn Monroe of Arabia”) leads to tragedy of operatic proportions on the streets of Cairo. Blending elements of neorealism with provocative noir-melodrama, Cairo Station is a work of raw populist poetry that explores the individual’s search for a place in Egypt’s new postrevolutionary political order.

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• New 2K digital restoration of Cairo as Seen by Chahine (1991), a short documentary by Youssef Chahine, with an introduction by film scholar Joseph Fahim
• New interview with Fahim
• Chahine . . . Why? (2009), a documentary on the director and Cairo Station
• Excerpt from Chahine’s appearance at the 1998 Midnight Sun Film Festival
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by Fahim

New cover by Mariam El-Reweny

https://www.criterion.com/films/32722-cairo-station

[eightslicesofpie]

Never heard of this, but definitely wanna give it a shot now!

[White Dang]

Now this is a classic! Great job Criterion, and finally

[Sommerswerd]

I saw this excellent film as a double feature along with Union Station(1950) at last year's Noir City Film Festival. Here is what Eddie Muller wrote in the festival program about the film:

[Cecil B. DeMille]

Quoting from my post in the general Criterion thread:

Originally Posted by Cecil B. DeMille

"Cairo Station" is a classic from the Egyptian Golden Age of Cinema which is frequently mentioned among the best Egyptian film noirs form that period. The Egyptian film industry, particularly in the middle of the 20th century, was the Hollywood of the Arab world, and produced many great classics of Arabic language cinema. I sincerely hope that this is the first of many classic Arabic films to be released in the Criterion collection, or at least on region A blu-ray. E.g. the classic Egyptian films of Omar Sharif. There are so many gems here waiting to be discovered by Western audiences. Similar to Mexico and India (Bollywood), Egypt is a major film nation, the films from which are strangely almost completely unavailable on home video in the West, and thus unknown to Western audiences as a whole, unfortunately. "Cairo Station" was listed as 31st in the Library of Alexandria's (Bibliotheca Alexandrina) list of the 100 greatest Egyptian films of all time. I can't wait to check it out once released.

All in all, really excited for the first Egyptian film in the Criterion Collection.

Originally Posted by Sommerswerd

I saw this excellent film as a double feature along with Union Station(1950) at last year's Noir City Film Festival. Here is what Eddie Muller wrote in the festival program about the film:

[Show spoiler]

I really hope this release is the result of a general interest of the people behind Criterion in Arabic films, and that this is not just the result of one or several Criterion employees having attended the most recent noir festival. It is the same with Eddie Muller saving some Argentine noirs in recent years. It is great that he has been rescuing these films, but what about all the classics that are not noirs? They need saving, too. And they need to be shown to audiences around the world, as well. Where are the champions of dramas and comedies and tragedies and melodramas and (non-noir) genre films from these countries?
One of the downside of the way the major boutique labels like Criterion work is that they usually only release those films that the people behind the label are exposed to, usually through film festivals, and, increasingly, earlier home video releases on e.g. DVD. This results in a bias towards those films that are available and known to the curators at the labels.
We could also see this in the last Sight & Sound poll, which showed a move towards films championed by the Criterion Collection. I.e. one can already notice the bias introduced into film criticism through curation by boutique labels. Curation is a double-edged sword.

Because of rights issues as well as less exposure as these films haven't really been championed in the West since they were first shown at film festivals many decades ago, films even from major film nations like Egypt, Mexico, Argentina, and India remain unknown here, even the most important classics. This is a huge issue.

[sherlockjr]

Originally Posted by Sommerswerd

I saw this excellent film as a double feature along with Union Station(1950) at last year's Noir City Film Festival. Here is what Eddie Muller wrote in the festival program about the film:

I too saw CAIRO STATION at a Noir City festival (Boston) and it was terrific. Never heard of it previously. Hope plenty of others get introduced to it via this Criterion release.

That's one of the best things about going to a film festival: getting to see great films you never even heard of previously.

[sherlockjr]

Originally Posted by Cecil B. DeMille

.

I really hope this release is the result of a general interest of the people behind Criterion in Arabic films, and that this is not just the result of one or several Criterion employees having attended the most recent noir festival. It is the same with Eddie Muller saving some Argentine noirs in recent years. It is great that he has been rescuing these films, but what about all the classics that are not noirs? They need saving, too. And they need to be shown to audiences around the world, as well. Where are the champions of dramas and comedies and tragedies and melodramas and (non-noir) genre films from these countries?

Eddie Muller's spent decades championing film noir, writing about noir, programming noir film festivals, rescuing obscure films often long forgotten, starting a non-profit that helps pay for promoting and retrieving those films.

Other genres and regions should be seen. But they need their own champions with the time, enthusiasm, and talent to devote to those films we know less about. I don't know where they are. Perhaps you?

One of the downside of the way the major boutique labels like Criterion work is that they usually only release those films that the people behind the label are exposed to, usually through film festivals, and, increasingly, earlier home video releases on e.g. DVD. This results in a bias towards those films that are available and known to the curators at the labels.

The acquisition people for revival/art disk labels can only license films they know about, likely have seen, and think will work for their label. How else could it work?

For over a century there have been thousands of feature films released around the world every year It would be physically impossible for the small acquisition department at Criterion to have seen all of them. Film festivals, previous releases, critical writing, other film world people, etc all inform them of titles they should check out.

We could also see this in the last Sight & Sound poll, which showed a move towards films championed by the Criterion Collection. I.e. one can already notice the bias introduced into film criticism through curation by boutique labels. Curation is a double-edged sword.

I think you have the causal relationship reversed. The Sight & Sound poll is international while Criterion is only distributed in US/Canada and a few in UK. The S&S poll informs Criterion of titles they might want to release, not the other way around.

Many titles on the S&S poll were academically and critically considered film classics long before Criterion existed. Many of those were known and available because acquisition people at small art film distributors saw them, acquired them, and released them in other countries--often because they'd seen them at film festivals.

Because of rights issues as well as less exposure as these films haven't really been championed in the West since they were first shown at film festivals many decades ago, films even from major film nations like Egypt, Mexico, Argentina, and India remain unknown here, even the most important classics. This is a huge issue.

I think you've uncovered an issue to devote your personal efforts to, sucn as Eddie Muller has done for film noir. It took him many years and much effort, but its now fruit for the film noir audience.

Note, however, that there needs to be an audience. Film is a very expensive artistic medium. There will need to be a US audience to fund those efforts. Film Noir was long a very popular genre in US rep/revival theaters so the audience was already there. The audience for other genres and country's efforts would need to be built large enough to fund that work as well. In the last three decades Criterion's and Janus Films releases--of the films they know--have gone a long way towards building an awareness and audience for directors and foreign language films that might otherwise not have existed. And we'd have all been poorer without it.

[MifuneFan]

The Criterion Channel has over 20 films from director Youssef Chahine, including Cairo Station. I'm not currently subscribed, so I don't know if they play with any Janus/Criterion logos before the films.

https://www.criterionchannel.com/dir...oussef-chahine

[MifuneFan]

The cover artist, Mariam El-Reweny, has provided her process, as well as other concepts for the cover. I've converted the video to a GIF below. Also pretty cool to learn that Criterion commissioned an artist who is actually from Cairo to do the artwork as well.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ1EAeFt...en&img_index=6

[NeilZ]

I'd never heard of this director, or the movie, and didn't even know Egyptian cinema was a thing. I watched this streamed on the Criterion channel cause wasn't sure I'd be happy buying a movie this blindly, but I was totally blown away.

The man was way ahead of his time on so many levels it's really shocking. It's got elements of Fellini, Clouzot, and Hitchcock all blended into an Egyptian setting, from an ambitious director who was clearly aiming big and succeeds.

Definitely will pick up the release when it comes and I hope they put out more of this man's work. Meanwhile a number of his other movies are up on the channel too.

I wonder if the streamed version is the 4K restoration coming to blu ray. It looked very good so I assume it probably is.

[sherlockjr]

Originally Posted by NeilZ

I'd never heard of this director, or the movie, and didn't even know Egyptian cinema was a thing.

Egypt, with the largest population in the Arabic speaking world, has had a long history of both popular and artistic filmmaking that is distributed in many other Arabic using countries and related cultures in other countries as well. I know pretty much nothing about those many decades of significant output, but I suspect this is far from the only excellent film in their film libraries. Like with Argentina, Mexico, and many other cinemas we're only seeing bits of more recently, we've had so little access to those Egyptian titles that we don't know what we're missing. Which could be a whole lot of worthwhile filmmaking.

I wonder if the streamed version is the 4K restoration coming to blu ray. It looked very good so I assume it probably is.

I saw CAIRO STATION theatrically last year and it looked excellent. So presumably that same excellent restoration is being used for all formats.

[Edenbeast]

According to the review, this movie was banned and was discovered 20 years later. I don't know how and where the reviewer acquired this information, because its not correct. The movie was never banned.

[LeDroitDeTuer]

Originally Posted by Edenbeast

According to the review, this movie was banned and was discovered 20 years later. I don't know how and where the reviewer acquired this information, because its not correct. The movie was never banned.

I think it's some poor interpretation of this:

Chahine’s film was an anomaly among the safer melodramas of the era, however: a damning psychological study of a marginalized class left out by the revolution. Contemporary Egyptian audiences expected their fatalistic melodramas to encompass a moral message, no matter how forced or contrived. Cairo Station contained none: it was too deviant, too dour, too cruel, too morally ambiguous. And it was roundly rejected by audiences (if not by critics), disappearing from public consciousness for almost two decades before it was broadcast on television in the seventies and belatedly embraced.

https://www.criterion.com/current/po...e-and-the-city