Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 08/24/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, August 24, 2024

The Devil of the Desert (Youssef Chahine, 1954)

Omar Sharif and Maryam Fakhruddin in The Devil of the Desert

Cast: Omar Sharif, Maryam Fakhruddin, Lola Sedki, Tawfik El Dekn, Hamdy Gheith, Abdelghani Kamar, Salah Nazmi. Screenplay: Youssef Chahine, Hussein El-Mohandess. Cinematography: Alevise Orfanelli, Bruno Salvi. Art direction: Maher Abdel Nour, Hussein Helmy, Abdel Mohem Shokry. Music: Fouad El-Zahry.

In The Devil of the Desert (aka Devil of the Sahara or Shaytan Al-Sahra), Omar Sharif plays Essam, a masked avenger not unlike Zorro, except that instead of leaving the letter Z as his calling card, he leaves a twisted palm frond -- or as the subtitles call it, a "knitted frond," a phrase that elicited puzzled amusement every time I saw it. This frond is also a way of communicating his whereabouts to his followers, chief among them the "gypsy"* Shaden (Lola Sedki). But it's only one of many things that puzzled and amused me about Youssef Chahine's movie. Basically, it's a lively romp, an adventure movie that could have played in the Saturday matinees of my childhood. Essam even has a comic sidekick, and he swashbuckles his way through the plot twists while trying to decide between the sultry Shaden and the lovely Dalal (Maryam Fakhruddin). Unfortunately, it needed a better fight choreographer -- Sharif sometimes seems to buckle when he should swash. It also suffers from clumsy editing, a muddy soundtrack, and a few too many unnecessary scenes, including three musical numbers. So much is stuffed into its 110-minute run time that it's a surprise when it ends in a breathless rush. It left me feeling that Chahine was bored with the film and wanted to get on to something better.

*Many Romani consider "gypsy" an ethnic slur. It was derived from the fact that their people were once thought to be descended from an exiled Egyptian tribe. I use it here because it's the way the subtitles to The Devil of the Desert translate it, and being ignorant of Arabic, I don't know what word is used in the film.