Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 11/14/24

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

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Alexandria: Again and Forever (Youssef Chahine, 1989)

Youssef Chahine and Zaky Fateen Abdel Wahab in Alexandria: Again and Forever

Cast: Youssef Chahine, Youssra, Hussein Fahmy, Amr Abdulgalil, Hesham Selim, Tahiyya Karyuka, Huda Sultan, Seif Abdelrahman, Abla Kamel, Manha Batraoul, Zaky Fateen Abdel Wahab. Screenplay: Youssef Chahine, Youry Nasrallah. Cinematography: Ramses Marzouk. Art direction: Mahmoud Mabrouk. Film editing: Rashida Abdel Salam. Music: Mohamad Nouh.

As with so many of Youssef Chahine's films, I find myself sorely lacking in a background in Egyptian history and politics. In this case, my ignorance of the film industry strike in 1987 made my comprehension of a central section of the narrative difficult to follow. What I can grasp is that Alexandria: Again and Forever is a very personal film about the writer-director's life, including his relationship with a favorite actor named Amr (Amr Abdulgalil). The film opens with the director Yehia Eskendarany (Chahine) trying to coax a performance out of a recalcitrant Arm in Yehia's film version of Hamlet. We gather that the relationship between Yehia and Amr is more than just that of director and actor: Chahine's bisexuality was widely known. As the film goes on, Yehia either tries to or imagines (things aren't really clear) casting Amr as Alexander the Great, and he also turns his attention to the actress Nadia (Youssra), who becomes his imagined Cleopatra. Meanwhile, everyone in the Egyptian film industry is involved in a strike against government interference. And throughout the film, there are musical interludes. It's all very watchable, and as a self-portrait of the director, it has been likened to Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963), a potent comparison. But it's one of those movies I'll have to reserve judgment on simply because of ignorance.