Alexandria...Why? (Iskandnerija…lih?)

 

ALEXANDRIA... WHY? (Iskandnerija…lih?)                    B+                                           Egypt  Algeria  (133 mi)  1979  d: Youssef Chahine

Bear with me.  What do I have but complaints and more complaints about this ship of misery... this tomb that is Alexandria.  Oh, Alexandria!  Why was I ever born here?                             —Yehia (Mohsen Mohieddin)

An autobiographical look at the changing face of the Egyptian identity, set amongst the backdrop of port city Alexandria during WWII, intermixing a heavy dose of grainy black and white newsreel war footage, along with a heavy anti-British sentiment, yet the Brits held the line against advancing Nazi Field Marshall Rommel and his Afrika Korps of Panzer tanks, saving the city from what would have been an historical catastrophe.  In many ways, Chahine’s childhood resembles that of Jacques Demy, as portrayed in a loving biographical portrait of her husband in Agnès Varda’s Jacquot de Nantes (1991), as both had a childhood love affair with Hollywood, a lifelong obsession that would continue into their adult lives, with both viewed as dreamers.  Much of the film deals with coping with the economic hardships of the war, where paramount on the adult minds was preparing for what appeared to be an impending invasion and occupation by the advancing Nazi troops in Egypt, with their eyes set on obtaining control of the Suez Canal.  As Egypt was under British colonial rule, one subplot was plotting acts of rebellion against the British, as Arab nationalists were killing English soldiers and plotting the assassination of Winston Churchill, anything to get the British Empire out of Egypt, which morphs into a homosexual love affair between wealthy uncle Adel (Ahmed Mehrz), a radical nationalist who kidnaps and kills British soldiers until he meets a drunken young British soldier, Tommy (Gerry Sundquist), where his plans go haywire, with the young Brit ending up in his bed instead, while another involves a romantic subplot between Ibrahim (Ahmed Zaki), a Muslim working-class communist and Sarah (Naglaa Fathi), a Jewish-Egyptian woman whose wealthy father is an anti-Zionist communist, with suggestions that all Jews are not Zionists, and could instead be part of a nationalist Egyptian struggle.  But the emphasis is on a young boy, Yehia (Mohsen Mohieddin), the son of an Arab father (Mahmoud el-Meliguy) and an Italian mother (Mohsena Tawfik), who grew up in a polyphonic culture of Eastern and Western flavors, surrounded by English, Italian, French, Greek, and Arabic languages, and living in a religiously tolerant environment where Muslim, Christian, and Jews all peacefully coexisted.  The film reflects the perspective of a young boy who lives in the fantasies of Ziegfeld Follies, escaping into a rich fantasy world, using a first person narrative to describe his exploits, a student at Alexandria’s prestigious Victoria College, attending movies, staging satirical shows as he dreams of studying filmmaking in America, who wants to do Shakespeare but also wants to direct a musical and make comedy skits about Hitler as Rommel is approaching, discovering reality and its impending horrors continually interfere with the stage shows he’s trying to produce, with mixed success.  Fragments of Hitler’s speech announcing his intentions to occupy Alexandria are mixed with utopian seaside images of Alexandria as a European tourist playground, spending restful hours lapping up the waves, spilling over to the beaches, where this idyllic scenario is met with a grand Hollywood theme that oozes innocence and romance, Theme from a summer place (Percy Faith version) YouTube (2:13), before quickly changing to jazzy American music from the 1940’s, like Glenn Miller - In The Mood [HQ] - YouTube (3:35) or watching Georges Guétary, aka Lambros Worloou, a fellow Alexandrian of Greek parents who ran away to Paris to become a Hollywood star, Georges Guétary - Stairway to Paradise sung in French 1952 YouTube (2:40).  Adept at mixing genres and styles, Chahine accentuates abrupt editing, fantasy sequences, and overlapping narratives, frequently changing moods from bawdy, lively, often lurid or melodramatic, yet full of bouncy pop music and flamboyant heart-on-sleeve moments.  Conveying a wide array of characters and emotions, this low-budget movie leads to a mad rush of a finale where family and friends finally scrape together enough money to send our young protagonist to America, the land of his dreams, yet even then he turns it into a comic sketch.  Despite the lengthy run time, there are few moments of contemplation, instead running at a frenetic pace, jumping over events, where the multi-layered style is often hard to fully comprehend, using a zany, irreverent style that feels more than a little absurdist, yet this fractured, kaleidescopic structure unearths plenty of new revelations 

Written by Chahine in collaboration with Mohsen Zayed, winner of a Silver Bear (2nd Place) at the Berlin Film Festival and the first of the three-part Alexandrian Triology, a coming-of-age saga that also acts as a Proustian personal memoir, this is an introspective look at the relationship between the director and America, developing an overwhelming obsession with the splashy Hollywood musicals of Esther Williams, Busby Berkeley, and the dancing sensations of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, yet equally mesmerized by a show-stopping number by Eleanor Powell tap-dancing on the decks of a U.S. Navy warship Eleanor Powell - Dance Finale from "Born to Dance" - 1936 YouTube (6:24).  Yet these fantasy sequences are juxtaposed against war footage, and the worst shock of his childhood memory, the death of his older brother, who was viewed as the favored son, with all the family hopes and aspirations placed on his shoulders.  When he died of pneumonia, which was incurable at the time, his death was blamed on younger brother Youssef, who inadvertently started a fire when he tried to light a Christmas candle, though it was quickly put out, yet it was used as an excuse for his brother’s death, with his grandmother lamenting, “Why did he have to die?  Why didn’t the young one die instead?”  This memory haunted the director his entire life.  His father opposed the idea of theater as a profession, preferring something more secure, like an engineer.  At only 17, after watching a movie on the life of Ziegfeld, the famous Broadway producer of lavish musicals, he attempted to emulate those stage productions, persuading a wealthy sponsor to allow him to rent the Alhambra cinema in Alexandria, but she only allowed two hours for rehearsals.  The result was a disaster, with spectators leaving in droves, many demanding their money back.  To his family, that was proof he was pursuing the wrong profession, but to him, it only proved he needed more experience and more rehearsal time, as his next attempt a few years later was more of a personal triumph.  Staging a theatrical production during times of war can be a tricky thing, as flared emotions are all over the map, pride, resentment, or fear, where timing is everything, as satirical lampoons may be viewed as bad taste.  Similarly, the film was released just after the realization that President Anwar Sadat had held secret meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin at the Camp David Accords, eventually signing a peace treaty brokered by American President Jimmy Carter.  To many in the Arab world, this was a bewildering defection that left them stunned and angered, feeling betrayed by one of their own.  Although this led to the return of the Sinai to Egypt, it was rejected by the Muslim Brotherhood and the left, strongly opposed by the PLO, believing Sadat had abandoned efforts to create a Palestinian state, which led to Egypt being suspended from the Arab League in 1979.  Just two years later Sadat was ambushed by an assassin’s bullet.  For Chahine to release this film under such surrounding political turmoil, it was viewed as backsliding into Egypt of the 1940’s, offering a nostalgic and conciliatry tone of forgiveness during a time the nation was incensed.  Many accused Chahine of complicity with Sadat in promoting normalization with Israel.  As a result, the film was banned in all Arab countrties except Egypt and Algeria.  From then on, bitter controversy accompanied each and every new release.  Chahine’s career was shaped by the turbulence of the 40’s, as anticolonial struggles began to gather momentum, with several Arab countries gaining their independence from France and Britain.  Yet the most volatile issue was the uprooting of Palestinians from their homeland in order to create a new state of Israel. Chahine’s own emergence from a minority group, coming from a Lebanese Greek Christian background, living in an Arab Muslim country, compelled him to believe in universal brotherhood, where demonstrating fundamental respect is an essential ingredient to amicable resolutions, as this film makes an unmistakable plea for a peaceful coexistence of faiths and a tolerance for the differences of others. 

Part of the film’s appeal is the unique editing structure, aggressively accentuating contrasting styles, keeping viewers off balance, continually reshaping the film, like love in the time of war, Egypt under occupation, lives under a constant assault of threats and turmoil, but also joy and the exhilaration of romance, where it’s a school movie, a movie-within-a-movie, using comic set pieces and fantasy sequences to describe how people are torn between the absurd and the incoherent, some prospering under the British, others see salvation in the Americans, others are willing to welcome the Germans, or even Mussolini, with a multitude of outcomes possible, becoming a psychological examination of the ever-shifting Egyptian identity, connecting with an international audience, while remaining true to its Egyptian origins.  Curiously, there’s no sense of unity among the population, where the multicultural experience of 1940’s Alexandria is not at all confusing to the protagonist Yehia, yet may confound western audiences, as Chahine breaks through the stereotypes of Egyptian models, presenting Alexandria as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, acknowledging Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Arabs, yet also Greeks, Italians, and  European Jews.  No minority goes unmentioned, while the various political trends include Islamism, communism, secular anticolonial nationalism, and Zionism.  Sarah’s brother David moves to Palestine to fight with the Zionists but is disappointed at what he discovers, as it’s not the promised land he expected, so instead his family sends him to an American military school.  Yehia himself seeks salvation in America, dreaming of attending film school, yet his family hasn’t the means to send him.  That all changes the moment he’s accepted to a school in Pasadena, as they scrape together what’s needed, creating a rousing crescendo for a finish, a poignant reflection of what he’ll miss, including his family and all that he’s leaving behind, while also offering a sly wink towards an uncertain future, accentuated by "MOONLIGHT SERENADE" BY GLENN MILLER YouTube (3:24), where this comes across as a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  Even the director shows up in front of the camera playing a newspaper journalist in one instance, and a film director in another, where he even gives a knowing look directly at the camera.  The European colonial presence is accentuated in the clubs and streets of Alexandria, where the nightclubs are packed with British and Australian soldiers, while American and European music dominates movie theaters.  Yet Chahine highlights how colonialism manifests itself in Yehia’s school, which has a strict policy of speaking English only, the language of the Brits.  When studying Hamlet’s soliloquy, breaking it down into English was the assignment, but Yehia felt no personal identification through memorization only, so he decides to subvert the assignment by translating it into Arabic, basically using the colonizer’s tools against them, which immediately angers his teacher, ordering him out of the classroom, but he resists, continuing to recite Shakespeare in Arabic, which his British professor is apparently incapable of understanding.  It’s a profoundly significant yet also liberating moment, a sign of growth and personal change.  But the groundbreaking challenge Chahine presents is breaking the taboo of homosexuality in Egyptian film, where uncle Abdel is driven by a murderous hatred of the British, picking them out one at a time in order to kill them.  When Tommy goes off on a drunken rant at a follies-style nightclub, he makes a spectacle of himself, only to find himself half naked in Abdel’s bed the next morning, wondering what happened to his clothes, with Abdel still pointing a gun at him.  What’s apparent is that his life has been saved by sexual desire, with homoeroticism replacing the murderous impulse.  The two bicker about the situation they find themselves in, with Tommy denouncing being viewed as a minority object, with Abdel denouncing his denouncement, as the personal becomes the political, yet what’s clear is a shifting dynamic between the colonizer and the colonized, where a lustful relationship can grow, yet Tommy must return to the front to fight in the battle of El-Alamein, Second Battle of El Alamein | National Army Museum.  What started as an attempted murder becomes a tragic love story, becoming extremely impactful and especially poignant when Abdel stands before Tommy’s grave at the massive El-Alamein memorial site, El Alamein Commonwealth War Cemetery, Western Desert ..., with Chahine adding an elegiac tribute through a song of his birthplace, The White Cliffs of Dover - Vera Lynn (1942) - YouTube (2:55).  Very powerful stuff. 

The Land (al-Ard)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE LAND (al-Ard)              B+                                                                                                    Egypt  (130 mi)  1969  d: Youssef Chahine                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            If the land is thirsty we would irrigate it with our blood.                                                                It is our old vows and our responsibility to fill it with good.                                                       The land of our ancestors and the reason of our existence.                                                           We would sacrifice our lives to give the land a life.                                                               —recurring musical refrain written by Ali Ismail

With the Biblical historical costume drama SALADIN (1963) and this film, Chahine has returned to an old-fashioned style of filmmaking, with a recurring song sending a powerful message that assumes the role of the film’s narrator, as a wealthy class has exploited lower class workers throughout history, making this a blatant parable on the horrors of capitalism, authoritarianism, and fascism, as brute force reigns down on the peasantry, always protecting the interests of the wealthy.  Once acclaimed in a nationwide critic’s poll as Egypt’s greatest film, this epic historical film examines the lives of small peasant villagers against the powerful interests of the landowners.  Much like using brush strokes, the director paints a broad canvas in the small, intimate details in the lives of ordinary citizens, powerfully affecting, especially when we come to understand the historical implications that have played out through history.  Considered a classic of socialist realism, this film is an adaptation of Marxist writer Abdel Rahman al-Sharqawi’s 1953 novel Egyptian Earth published shortly after the abolition of the monarchy by Egypt’s 1952 revolution, giving voice to the defining struggles engulfing the nation.  An authentic chronicle describing a rural Egyptian village’s struggle against the arbitrary injustice imposed on them by a repressive hierarchy of authority, set in the British colonized era of the 1930’s, a colonial presence in Egypt since 1882, the main plot concerns the unsuccessful attempts of a community of impoverished village farmers living on the Nile Delta to retain their access to water, drawing up a petition to stop their exploitation by major landowners and ensure the irrigation of their land, which is completely ignored, instead advancing the interests of a corrupt Mayor and a wealthy landowner, told by authorities that they can only irrigate their land a few days a month, several of the villagers are arrested for overwatering, having little choice, believing their corn and cotton crops would be destroyed otherwise.  Although the outside threat originally seems to unite the villagers, divisions resurface, as individual interests supersede village solidarity, selling the others out, where the changing times literally bulldoze those left behind as collateral damage in the push to modernize, where the poor are always sacrificed to protect the lofty ambitions of the rich.  The film premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1970, offering a realistic portrayal of village life from the perspective of the villagers themselves, like an insider’s view, providing a series of episodes that not only reveal their way of life but also the escalating impact of the intrusion of an oppressive authority.  After the Nationalist Revolution of 1952, there was a socialistic trend to express an open commitment to the poor and oppressed, which they did by highlighting the injustices and atrocities of earlier regimes, yet Chahine’s film was released on the eve of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s death, just two years after the traumatic Six Days War defeat to Israel in 1967, and while it may have been designed to advocate humanistic values while also setting a tone for redefining Egyptian identity, it also carries an eye-opening pessimistic streak that may accentuate the profound failure of Nasserist ideology, with any prospects for real social change fading from view.  Unfortunately, many of the problems that existed in pre-1952 rural society in Egypt still exist today.  What’s significant about this film is that what happens here is a formula repeated in countries around the world, as modernization pushes out locals and cultural norms, including smaller markets, replaced with something altogether new and different, but not necessarily better.  When Walmart or big box warehouse suppliers come to your neighborhood, it replaces smaller stores that have sometimes been in the family for generations, but can’t compete with the large inventory of these colossal warehouses, which allows them to undercut all other rivals, basically putting them out of business.  This film introduces a much more basic economic tradition, something ingrained in the culture for centuries, but the law and the police always side with the wealthy class, putting smaller, marginal economic models out of existence.

Perhaps the central premise of both the book and the film is man’s love affair attachment to the land he works, where the work in the fields defines a man’s existence, producing food for his family and community, viewed as an integral part of their collective survival, which also includes adequate water distribution from the nearby Nile River, which one would think is a vast and reliable resource, yet the water management favors the wealthy at the expense of the poor.  The central figure is Mohamed Abu Swelam (Mahmoud el-Meliguy), a man defined by his family and work, the most respected of the Fellah, who has remained on the land while his two former comrades in the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 have risen to prominent societal positions and now carry the honorary title Sheikh, including Sheikh Hassuna (Yehia Chahine), an honorable religious figure whose son Mohammad Effendi (Hamdy Ahmed) is the local school teacher, and Sheik Yusuf, a greedy, village merchant.  There are secondary characters that figure prominently, including Abu Swelam’s attractive daughter Wassifa (Nagwa Ibrahim), who seemingly has to choose between her cousin Abd El-Hadi (Ezzat El Alaili), a penniless yet headstrong farmer who is seemingly a younger version of her father and Mohammad Effendi, an uncharacteristically weak and naïve but educated young man who represents the possibility of economic progress, while one of her best friends is Khadra (Tewfik El Dekn), a landless orphan who ends up bartering sex for food.  One curious aspect of the film is an introductory return home visit from a 12-year old student who was been away at school in Cairo for the last few years, serving as a kind of narrator, perhaps a stand-in for the author himself, helping viewers become familiar with the various village characters, but then just as quickly disappears, not to be heard from again, where you think he may have aged and developed into one of the prominent characters, but that is not the case.  A similar device was used in the novel, with the child’s narration returning again at the end, which can get confusing, so this carry-over into the movie doesn’t really work, as he’s never really integrated into the storyline.  Instead the interests of the fellah are highlighted from the outset, as an unscrupulous Pasha, Mahmoud Bey (Ashraf El Selehdar), an aristocratic remnant of the Ottoman days wants to build a palace, but to do so requires inflicting pain upon the villagers, so he cuts their irrigation days from 10 days per month to five, creating chaos and division among the villagers, each wanting to water their own respective plots of land, sending in soldiers to arrest offenders, where the more prominent fellah are imprisoned and tortured, where the worst offense is to call them women as they are subject to Waterboarding, while cutting off the moustache of Abu Swelam, making sure they are thoroughly emasculated and humiliated.  This allows the Pasha to confiscate land to build a road that leads to his mansion.  These acts of corruption reveal the system of the fellah for what it is, as they are viewed as subhuman, so if they suffer or go hungry it does not deter the actions of the wealthy class, whose primary goal is to enrich themselves, sending in a Camel Corps of armed soldiers to quell any rebellion amongst their ranks, enforcing a curfew where villagers aren’t allowed to leave their homes.  But Chahine humanizes these soldiers, as they themselves were driven from their land with the building of the Aswan Low Dam, which was designed to prevent flooding and access hydroelectric power in order to provide for the greater good.       

While overly melodramatic to the core, though not without caricatures, there are scenes of song and dance at a wedding and an erotic scene of Khadra bathing in the river that quickly turns ugly, shot on 35mm by Abdelhalim Nasr in color, there are also striking uses of tracking shots, frames-in-frames, with plenty of deep focus shots as well, yet perhaps most memorable is a scene of dust blowing through an empty village, a scene shrouded in smoke and betrayal, as if Hell on earth was being depicted.  Mostly, however, this is an ensemble work revolving around the interplay between the villagers, who stand in stark contrast to the wealthy class, as they offer a welcoming generosity, easily sharing what little they have, and provide a warming communal spirit.  While they bicker and fight among themselves, they also embrace and easily forgive.  When the captain of the Camel Corps takes offense by a stinging rebuke of their mission, reminding Abu Swelam that he should not speak this way to a guest, Abu Swelam answers, “If you were a guest, I’d welcome you with open arms.  You came to beat us.”  In an earlier scene with the villagers fighting over the scarcity of the water, actually coming to blows, they are diverted by another emergency, as a cow has fallen into a water wheel, mirroring a scene in Dariush Mehrjui’s Iranian film THE COW (1969) released the same year.  The men put their individual quarrels aside and work together to solve an immediate problem, displaying cooperation in a collective effort, each embracing the other afterwards in a spirit of brotherhood.  This collective spirit of unity is the heart of the film, a metaphor for nationalist, pan-Arab cooperation during the Nasser era.  The history of colonialism in the Arab world is rooted in the economic and political exploitation of resources, exactly as depicted in the film, where a simple rural village is taken over in a power grab that protects the interests of the wealthy class.  In what is arguably the most passionate scene in the film, Abu Swelam reminds both old friends, Sheikh Hassuna and Sheik Yusuf, who fought together in WWI and the 1919 uprising, that there is a difference between then and now, claiming they once stood up like men, sharing a common interest, fighting side-by-side in a spirit of patriotism, but now everyone is out for themselves.  Sheikh Hassuna is moved enough to embrace him, renewing his friendship and solidarity with the village, but in the very next scene he betrays them.  When the government workers arrive to build a road, Sheik Yusuf, who owns the only shop in the village, decides it’s in his interest to withhold goods to local villagers, as he can sell his goods to the government workers for a higher profit.  Sheikh Hassuna initially stands up for Abu Swelam, but when the Pasha threatens to build a road through his land instead, he quickly betrays not only his old friend, but the entire village, an example of the moral hypocrisy of religious clerics.  It’s important to point out that in a nation that suffers from over 70% illiteracy, 60% of Egyptians belong to the fellah, making this the first time they’ve ever received a realistic portrayal in Egyptian cinema history, so this story has personal ramifications.  The finale is a crushing blow, as the villagers are working collectively to harvest what they can from the crops before the builders arrive, but the arrival of an armed cavalry police dampens their spirits, destroying the land, reducing it to dirt, while those that stand in the way, like Abu Swelam, are tied-up with a rope connected to a horse, his feet bound, and dragged through the dirt in a bloody and murderous example of the price paid for progress.