Hollywood On The Nile: The (R)Evolution Of Cinema In Egypt

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - A golden age of Egyptian cinema from the 1950s through the mid-1970s may have ended, but its impact on the culture and imagination of the public is very much alive. Popular film in the Arab nation has always been vital in shaping national and cultural identity for moviegoers in Egypt, who often possess an almost encyclopedic knowledge of films, actresses and actors.

In a recently released book, "Revolutionary Melodrama: Popular Film and Civic Identity in Nasser’s Egypt," Joel Gordon explores the intersection of cinema and politics during the Nasser era, a time marked by the emergence of a new civic identity for an independent Egypt.

"Film pervades Egyptian culture, particularly images from Hollywood," said Gordon, an associate professor of history in Fulbright College. "During Nasser’s rule, you had a generation of filmmakers eager to break boundaries. Egyptian stars, like their counterparts in Hollywood, took on stage names and created glamorous personas. The screen became a palette for depicting a new politics and a new society."

In "Revolutionary Melodrama," Gordon traces the evolution of cinema as it reflects cultural shifts, exploring the themes of revolution, cross-class romances, women’s emancipation and class inequities.

He examines what he terms "revolutionary melodrama," a vast body of studio and state-funded films ranging from musicals and comedies to historical dramas, beach romps, and crime stories, produced between 1952, the year of the coup that brought Nasser to power, through the mid-70s, when black and white films gave way to color and Anwar al-Sadat set out to uproot Nasser’s socialist state and consolidate government authority.

In the early years of Nasser’s reign, the rules for making movies changed as the regime began encouraging the industry to produce films that evoked a social conscience.

Moviemakers, freed from a repressive political and social order, began making films that reflected the revolution unfolding before them.

Gordon discovered that ambiguous and often contradictory images of the peasant were particularly revealing in showing how movies were both shaping and being shaped by an evolving social order.

"More than any other sector of society, the peasant cuts to the heart of post-colonial self-identity. They were shown as poor, downtrodden, exploited, and abused. Or as proud, resolute, physically powerful, thick-skinned. And sometimes as indigenous and rooted, the preservers of tradition," said Gordon.

Under Gamal Abdel Nasser, the state promoted cultural production — music, art, cinema, drama, poetry and the fine arts. In this climate, the cultural power of cinema became immense. As women sought greater equality, the "bad" women in Egyptian cinema began to appear, rebels yearning for freedom, yet often returning to the status quo in predictable and reassuring happy endings.

"As long as the films were couched in certain conventions," said Gordon, "they could criticize the present by retreating safely to the past. The new woman was increasingly active in politics, challenging the conventions of marriage. Looking at endings is the easy way out, though. The body of these films is what’s important."

Only toward the end of the Nasser era would the peasants, along with tribe members and other keepers of tradition, emerge into their own as full participants in the new society, capable of helping chart their own course.

After succeeding Nasser in 1970, Anwar Sadat turned toward the West and dismantled the socialist public sector. Filmmakers became more cynical, reflecting a sense that the country was moving in the wrong direction.

When the film "Karnak" exploded on the screen in the late 1970s, it effectively marked the end of the Nasser era. The black and white oldies were gone, replaced by color, and the actors exposed the repressions of the Nasser era in an Orwellian tale of punishment without crime, of officials busily eliminating enemies of the state.

The film opened a floodgate of similar films that openly examined the flaws and political repression of Nasser’s government.

"Still, there’s a sense of loss, of a great period in film that can never be recaptured. The Nasser era films represent a particular golden age when optimistic, forward looking films meshed with the rise of the great movie stars and filmmakers. But the revolutionary project that created the upheaval and encouraged the arts also failed to create democracy. Instead it had become an authoritarian bureaucracy, rife with corruption," said Gordon.

In the 1990s, Egypt built an enormous media production city. Today, a high budget Egyptian film costs a mere half a million to produce, unlike the high tech productions of Hollywood, many costing well over $100 million.

Yet in Egypt, the black and white oldies remain a favorite, shown constantly on television. The faces on big and little screens, many still alive, constitute a pantheon of stars that many Egyptians, young and old alike, feel will never be replaced.

"For the generation that came of age with the Nasser revolution — and this is the generation that still dominates Egyptian public life — these are the romantic, rugged heroes of youth and young adulthood. They fell in love with Omar Sharif and Gregory Peck, Fatin Hamama and Audrey Hepburn. Their children, while not having grown up with these glamorous icons, are still intimately familiar with the older stars and recognize them for what they were," said Gordon.