Historical Outline of Egyptian Cinema

In this paragraph I will sketch a short historical outline of Egyptian cinema, placing it into the most important political and historical events that Egypt underwent in the period from 1896, when the first film was screened in Egypt, until the mid-1960s.

Cinema arrived in Egypt very early: not even a year had passed since the birth of cinematographic art in Paris on 28 December 1895, the first showing of a film took place in Alexandria on 5 November 1896 and, a few days later, in Cairo (Armes 1996: 661).

The first films to be screened were by the Lumière brothers,²⁷ and were screened in the Tousson stock exchange in Alexandria and in the Ḥammām Schneider in Cairo (Shafik 2016: 10). In 1897, the film company of Lumière Brothers sent to Alexandria a representative, Alexandre Promio, who shot a film entitled Place des Consuls, à Alexandrie, and then continued his trip to Cairo, Giza, where he filmed the pyramids and the Sphinx, and Upper Egypt (Allan 2008: 159).

In the same year, the Cinématographe Lumière opened its doors in Alexandria and started offering regular screenings. Within few years, Edison, Pathé, and Kalem film companies arrived in the country, sending their representatives in particular to Cairo and Alexandria (Allan 2008: 160). In 1906, the French company Pathé opened the first cinema, while two more Cinématographes in the same year were opened in Cairo and in Alexandria. Just two years later, Cairo and Alexandria already had five cinemas offering

27 Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas (1862–1954) and Louis Jean (1864–1948). Inspired by Edison’s Kinetoscope, which was an early motion picture exhibition device, designed so that one individual at a time could see a film through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device, they patented an improved version of it, the Cinématographe, that allowed the film to be projected for an audience.

films with Arabic translation (Shafik 2016: 10). Egypt had 11 movie theaters in 1908, increased to 80 at the beginning of 1917 (Elnaccash 1968: 52).

Egypt, ²⁸in this period, was principally a ‘consumer’ of films produced abroad, mostly in Europe. but would soon start to produce films as well. Indeed, Egyptian cinema would soon become the most popular in the Arab region, which has been defined as part of the canon of ‘Arab Cinema’ (Kholeif 2011: 3). Egypt has dominated the Arab film market for years, having been the first Middle Eastern country to launch a national cinema. It is sufficient to say that, according to Viola Shafik (2016: 9), Egypt had already produced more than 2,500 feature films by the end of the 1970s, compared to 180 for Lebanon, 120 for Tunisia, 150 for Syria, about 100 for Iraq and Algeria, and only half a dozen for

28 This image and all the other images used in this study are public domain images.

Al-Ahrām newspaper, 9 November 1896, Page 3

Jordan. By 1998, the number of Egyptian films had already reached 3,500 (Nicosia 2007:

19). These films, which would have been exported from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, made Egyptian cinema not only the most successful of the Arab world, but also of the entire African continent. As Aldo Nicosia (2007: 19) pointed out, these elements:

sono sufficienti a decretare un successo che non ha eguali in tutto il continente africano e può rivaleggiare solo con il Bollywood indiano. Il cinema egiziano è stato, fino a qualche decennio fa, unico ambasciatore della cultura araba in tutto il mondo, nonché efficace strumento di influenza politica nella regione. Il dialetto parlato nei suoi film è diventato lingua franca dell’ecumene araba, spesso unico trait d’union del Maghreb e del Mashreq.²⁹

When the cinema arrived in the country in 1896, Egypt was under a British albeit informal protectorate that had started a few years before, in 1882, after the Anglo-Egyptian War. The war was a response to the rebellion of the Egyptian army officer Aḥmad ‘Urābī against the Khedive³⁰ of Egypt and Sudan, at the time Muḥammad Tawfīq (d. 1892).³¹ In January 1882, the British Government, together with that of the French,³² sent a note of support to the Khedive, recognizing de facto his authority and delegitimizing ‘Urābī’s revolt, before sending a fleet that arrived to Alexandria on 20 May 1882 (Cole 1993: 238). Following a riot that broke out in Alexandria on 11 June 1882 and resulted in the killing of 50 Europeans, ‘Urābī asked his troops to restore order (Reid 1998: 232). However, the riot continued in the city, and the British decided to bombard Alexandria and then invade the Suez Canal Zone. Even though Egypt remained formally part of the Ottoman Empire, British sent a general consul, Lord Cromer, who would remain in Egypt until 1907 and would effectively govern the country. A few years later, in 1914, a formal protectorate was declared.

This state of (semi-)colonialism situates Egyptian cinema of the period in what was defined as the cinema of the ‘colonial period’. Although this clearly affected Egyptian

29 “[they] are sufficient to endorse a success that does not have any equal in the African continent and can only compete with Indian Bollywood. Egyptian cinema has been, until few decades ago, the only ambassador of Arab culture all over the world, as well as an effective means of political influence in the region. The dialect spoken in its films became the lingua franca of the Arab world, and often the only trait d’union of Maghreb and Mashreq.”

30 The term comes from Ottoman and can be roughly translated with ‘viceroy’. It was first introduced by Mehmet ‘Alī Paşa, who declared himself Khedive of Egypt. In 1867, the Ottoman Empire recognized the title, which was then inherited by Mehmet ‘Alī’s successors.

31 For the social and cultural reasons at the basis of this revolutionary moment, see Cole (1993).

32 Britain and France were already controlling Egyptian finances, following the 1876 bankruptcy, as representatives of the caisse de la dette publique [the public debt commission], created by European

cinema, Egypt was also the only Arab country that was “able to develop a national film industry” even under colonialism (Shafik 2016: 11).

The cinema industry at the beginning was dominated by foreigners (vide infra), although some Egyptian directors were already active, and worked particularly on news films and short fiction films, many of which were produced by Europeans with the cooperation of Egyptian actors.

Things changed in 1923, when Maḥammad Bayyūmī founded the first cinema studio, Studio Amon Films, in the Cairene neighborhood of Shubra. It was particularly important for two reasons: on the one hand it was the first studio established by an Egyptian and, on the other hand, it produced the first news film in Egypt, The Amon Newsreel (Armes 2008: 41). It was Maḥammad Bayyūmī who persuaded Ṭal‘at Ḥarb, the founder of Bank Miṣr, to invest in cinema. Indeed, in 1925 Ṭal‘at Ḥarb founded Šarikat Miṣr li-l-tamṯīl wa-l-sīnimā³³ [Egyptian Company for Performance and Cinema] (al-Ḥaḍarī 1989: 191).

Two years later, in 1927, the film Laylā was produced, considered the first really

‘Egyptian’ full-length feature film. The film was first directed by the Turkish director Wedad Orfi then, after a disagreement with the producer and actress ‘Azīza Amīr, he was substituted by Stéphane Rosti, an Italian-Austrian born in Egypt (al-Ḥaḍarī 1989: 208–

11; Shafik 2007: 18, Armes 2008: 105). Laylā had an incredible success. The entire elite of the country gathered to watch it at its world premiere in Cairo. According to a newspaper article, Ṭal‘at Ḥarb himself congratulated ‘Azīza Amīr (Hillauer 2005: 29).

However, al-Ḥaḍarī (1989: 167–73) contends that Laylā was not actually the first

‘Egyptian film’: Victor Rosito’s Fī bilād Tūt ‘Anḫ Amūn [In the Lands of Tutankhamun], produced in 1923 by Studio Amon Films, was already a full-length feature film, not newsreel. Although a foreigner, the film director Victor Rosito was permanently resident in Egypt. Besides, the film was produced and shot in Egypt then screened first in Egypt.

Thus, it can be considered Egyptian.

33 Known also as Šarikat Miṣr li-l-Tiyātrū wa-l-Sīnimā.

In 1927 Qubla fī-l-ṣaḥrā’ [A Kiss in the Desert] was released, directed by a Chilean-Palestinian director Ibrāhīm Lāmā (Shafik 2007: 19). From 1928 film production would constantly increase year after year: two feature films on average were shot per year, and already in 1929 there was a first attempt to synchronize dialogue, by recording the sound on discs and playing them during the show (Elnaccash 1968: 54).

It was only in 1932 that the first ‘talkies’ or sound films, albeit partial, were released.

There is a dispute about which was the first: Yūsif Wahbī’s Awlād al-ḏawwāt [Sons of Aristocrats], first screened on 14 March 1932, or Mario Volpi’s Unšudat al-fu’ād [The Song of the Heart] first screened on 13 April 1932 (al-Ḥaḍarī 2007: 29–48 and Shafik 2016: 12). In any case, 1932 was, undoubtedly, the year in which sound films appeared in Egypt.

Two years later, in 1934, Ṭal‘at Ḥarb inaugurated Studio Miṣr, which was equipped with a laboratory and a sound studio (Shafik 2016: 14). The support he decided to give to the development of an independent national cinema industry needs to be contextualized in the historical moment that Egypt was going through.

In 1919 Egyptians took to the streets to demonstrate against the British occupation, Maḥammad Bayyūmī (1894-1963)

of the nationalist Wafd Party. Britain issued a unilateral declaration of independence in 1922 that did not, however, put a real end to the occupation. Although Sultan Fu’ād I grasped the opportunity to declare himself King of Egypt, the British occupation continued undisturbed. The Anglo-Egyptian treaty in 1936, signed by Egypt and Britain, formalized the British right to station troops in Egypt to defend the Suez Canal.

A major step towards independence, however, was taken in 1937, with the conclusion of the Montreux Convention on the Abolition of Capitulations in Egypt. The convention provided for abolition, within 12 years after the ratification, of the capitulation system, which put European subjects in Egypt under the jurisdiction of Consular Courts instead of national courts. In fact, after a transition period of 12 years, in 1949 the Consular Courts were abolished (Botman 1998: 295).

It is clear that the creation of a national cinema was part of this nationalist moment.

Nevertheless, other elements contributed to the development of a national Egyptian cinema during the colonial phase compared to other Arab countries, where this would have been impossible, as in Algeria, where the production of “indigenous culture was excluded by strict measures of regulations” (Shafik 2016: 15). In Egypt there was a

“dynamic multicultural life” that, especially after the upheavals of 1919, developed “a stronger interest in the medium and combined it with well-established arts like popular musical theatre”. The multicultural élite strongly supported cinema, investing in the production of new films. Many theater directors, actors and actresses invested generously in cinema, giving it a range of possibilities that was unthinkable in other Arab countries (Shafik 2016: 12–13).

While the creation of a national cinema was an important aspect of the nationalist moment, the nationalist struggle per se seldom appeared in films (Nicosia 2007: 21). In this phase Egyptian cinema was dominated by melodramas and musicals, often inspired by American films. Songs, music, and dance were a basic element of film production at that time. Moreover, it is in this period that Egyptian cinema acquired one of its chief characteristics, the relevance that popular ‘stars’ had in it. Following the introduction of sound, the film industry realized in particular the potential of Egyptian music, already well known throughout the Arab world: the appearance of the musical icons Maḥammad

‘Abd al-Wahāb and Umm Kulṯūm, who featured in several films, soon became a guarantee of the success of a film well beyond the Egyptian borders. Thanks to the

celebrity that these stars enjoyed in the entire Arab world, Egyptian cinema could overcome the language barrier even in those countries who have a distinctly different Arabic variety, like the Maghreb:

The continuous consumption of Egyptian mass production caused the audience in many regions to acquire at least a passive knowledge of the Egyptian dialect. This process gained the distribution of Egyptian films an advantage that Arab competitors from Tunisia, Algeria and Syria could attain only exceptionally (Shafik 2016: 27).

Early films generally contained an accumulation of comic situations and events, fairy-tale stories in the style of the Arabian night, or sentimental and often unlucky love stories, mostly interspersed with music or dance (Shafik 2016: 24). Sometimes adventure films were also produced, mostly based on Bedouin culture (Shafik 2016: 24). As pointed out by Nicosia (2007: 20), these films often had a similar and predictable structure, which included rapes, violence, separation, illness, and tormented love.

The film production of that period was incredibly high: between 1945 and 1952 it reached 48 films per year (Shafik 2016: 12, see also Armes 2008: 151–2). During the same period, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry recognized the necessity of creating a Cinema Chamber, which was effectively founded in 1947 as Ġurfat Ṣinā‘at al-Sīnimā [Chamber of Cinema Industry] (Flibbert 2005: 452).

The events of 1952, which would change Egyptian history, also affected the cinema industry. With the so-called ‘23 July Revolution’, the Free Officers Movement, a group of army officers under the leadership of Maḥammad Nagīb and Gamāl ‘Abd al-Nāṣir, decided to overthrow the King, at that time Fārūq I, abolish the constitutional monarchy and establish a Republic. The Free Officers Movement also took the opportunity to put an end to the British occupation and to allow for an independent Sudan which, at the time, was still under a joint Anglo-Egyptian control. The movement was at first welcomed by all Egyptian political parties as a necessary reaction to a series of events: the discontent with an incomplete independence process, the Nakba of 1948,³⁴ and the proliferation of

34 The term refers to the 1948 Palestinian exodus, when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were forced to leave or were expelled from their homes, following the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 15 May 1948 and the consequent invasion by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and some troops from Iraq. The Arab armies were defeated after a ten-month war. On 11 December 1948 the UN issued Resolution 194, which remained largely unfulfilled and which called for the demilitarization of Jerusalem (that was supposed to come under UN control), and the return (or reimbursement of property) for the refugees who wanted to return home after the war. A Palestinian state was not created.

peasants’ revolts (See Roussillon 1998: 338). However, things would soon change, as the newly established Egyptian Revolutionary Command Council took a number of measures that included the dissolution of all political parties and an agrarian reform that limited land ownership to 300 feddans per family, redistributing the confiscated land to peasants (Roussillon 1998: 338).

Prime Minister Gamāl ‘Abd al-Nāṣir became President in June 1956 after having ousted President Maḥammad Nagīb. Nāṣir soon became a symbol of anti-colonialism and a myth for the colonized world. Under Nāṣir, Egypt entered a period characterized by a socialist, anti-colonial and pan-Arabist ideology that advocated for the unification of all the Arab countries, deemed to constitute a single nation min al-muḥīṭ ilā l-ḫalīǧ [from the [Atlantic] Ocean to the [Persian] Gulf] and gained wide support in the Arab world.

Although a great Arab nation-state never existed, between 1958 and 1961 Egypt and Syria joined into al-Ǧumhūriyya al-‘Arabiyya al-Muttaḥida [United Arab Republic], which was part of a loose confederation with North Yemen.

Nāṣir also took a number of measures to nationalize business and companies run by foreigners in Egypt, and one of the first steps he took in this direction was the nationalization of the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956 (Roussillon 1998: 339). The nationalization also affected the cinema industry, which was now supposed to become a national enterprise, marginalizing de facto foreigners, as production and distribution were entrusted to the state enterprise (Shafik 2016: 20). This was done through two main strategies: importation, which, in the colonial period, had mostly been in the hands of European agencies became a State monopoly, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the distribution network was nationalized and in 1963 all cinemas were nationalized. The centralization of importation made it easier to control taxes and fees, which were then reinvested into the production of local films (Shafik 2016: 21). Nevertheless, as Viola Shafik (2016: 22) underlines, nationalization had deleterious consequences:

However, the monopoly of the state has also caused serious problems: in the long run, owing to insufficient financial means and the incompetence of state officials, the level of imported films decreased considerably, as did the technical standard of projection and movie theaters.

Lack of proper technical and financial means certainly contributed to a lowering in the quality of the production. Another element that contributed to such a decrease was the lack of qualified professionals. While this problem had been solved in the 1930s with the

importation of experts and consultants from Europe, this solution no longer appeared adequate with the nationalization of the industry (Shafik 2016: 22). The problem of know-how became more urgent and was partially solved in 1945, when a private film school was opened in Cairo. However, the school remained open for only a few years. In 1959 the Ministry of Culture decided to face the problem in a more structural way and established al-Ma‘had al-‘Ālī li-l-Sīnimā [The Higher Film Institute], which gave instruction to an entire new generation of technicians, designers, scriptwriters, and directors (Shafik 2016: 24–5). This had an interesting consequence:

Almost all Egyptian directors who started working after 1959 have graduated from this school. Together with the limits set by a commercial and industrial orientation, the Film Institute is responsible for the relative homogeneity and continuity of Egyptian film making, both in form and content. (Shafik 2016: 24)

Despite the nationalization of the cinema industry, one characteristic remained stable:

Egyptian producers and directors did not renounce adherence to the mechanisms of an entertainment industry. Egyptian cinema was, first and foremost, produced to entertain people, and its basic commercial structure remained unchanged even after the State take-over (Shafik 2016: 25).

While until then melodrama and musicals had dominated the cinema panorama, the adaptation of successful Hollywood productions represented another prominent genre during the Nasserist period. At the same time, under the influence of Italian neorealism, a new generation of directors started to devote attention to social classes that, until that moment, had not found a place in cinema production, namely the rising bourgeoisie and peasants (Nicosia 2007: 22). Among the most important exponents of this trend were Ṣalāḥ Abū Sēf and Yūsif Šahīn (Nicosia 2007: 42). Moreover, this is the period when some of the Egypt’s most important novels were adapted for the cinema, in particular those of the Nobel prize-winner Nagīb Maḥfūz (Nicosia 2007: 42).

Most of this period’s films enthusiastically approached the new Nasserist era. While censorship certainly played a role in this, it is true that there was a sincere enthusiasm and commitment to Nasserist politics. But this would change in the mid-1960s, when some films started to denounce the corruption that dominated the regime (Nicosia 2007: 25).

After the tragic events of 1967, the so-called Naksa, which took place after the Third Arab-Israeli War, or ‘Six-Day War’, which Israel fought against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan between 5 and 10 June 1967 and which ended with a clear Israeli victory, things would change dramatically.³⁵

The Naksa, together with the crisis in the public sector, resulted in a radical decline in film production: it is enough to say that the number of films produced in 1967 reached the lowest recorded since the 1940s, with only thirty-two films being produced (Shafik 2016: 31.