Obituary:

Shutter of a legend closes

By Hani Mustafa

Wahid Farid

"Others may consider the camera an inanimate object, a piece of metal, but for me, it is the world." With these words, cinematographer Wahid Farid described the tool which, as a result of his expertise, became the means by which he portrayed and reflected the emotions and sentiments expressed on the faces of the leading actors and actresses of his time.

Farid, who died of renal failure, began his career in 1938 in Studio Misr, the school of the then fledgling Egyptian cinema industry. After working as an apprentice with another master of the lens, Abdo Nasr, Farid began his long love affair with the camera that ended last week with his death.

Farid's start in the business came in 1939 when he was chosen to work as an assistant to photographer Mustafa Hassan, who was commissioned by Studio Misr to shoot a documentary about the pilgrimage to Mecca. A few years later, Farid was assigned his first dramatic film, Ibn El-Sharq (Son of the Orient), directed by Ibrahim Helmi. Then followed Bayyoumi Effendi, starring Youssef Wahbi and Faten Hamama. After that, Farid's name quickly spread in cinema circles as the new rising star of photography.

Farid had a big interest in faces and facial expressions, which created a bond between him and the actor/actress. This, in turn, broke down the barrier between the man behind the camera and whomever was before it. As a result, what he captured on film appeared spontaneous on the screen.

"It is not the camera that loves its subject; it's the person handling it who does," Farid once said. He cited the television series Damir Abla Hekmat (Miss Hekmat's conscience). All the scenes in which Hamama appeared were shot under soft illumination, thus accentuating the dramatic.

Over the years, Farid gave the Egyptian cinema industry several landmark films, including Do'aa El-Karawan [The nightingale's prayer-song]. Many of his movies were produced by famed actor Anwar Wagdi. After studying colour and cinemascope photography in England and Italy, Farid introduced both techniques back home. He shot Dalila and Rudda Qalbi (My heart is spurned) -- the first colour-cinemascope films produced in Egypt.

Farid's mastery of his art was rewarded on several occasions. He received the Photography Merit Award for several of his motion pictures, including Erham Demoo'ee (Pity my tears), Bein El-Atlal (Amidst the ruins), Gaalooni Mogreman (They made me a criminal) and El-Khataya (Sins).

Farid was also a producer. He joined forces with director Hassan El-Saifi to establish the Heliopolis Cinema Production Company. Among their most important productions was one film whose hero had not yet been chosen until Farid met in El-Saifi's house with a young composer, Kamal El-Tawil. El-Tawil, in turn, was accompanied by a young man who sang one of El-Tawil's compositions. After hearing him sing, both Farid and El-Saifi immediately asked this young talent to play the lead role in their new musical production Lahn El-Wafa'a (Melody of loyalty). It was the film that introduced Abdel-Halim Hafez to movie-goers.

Farid did the shooting in Hafez's second film, Ayamna El-Helwa (Our sweet days). He later joined Ramses Naguib in producing Maw'ed Gharam [A love rendezvous], starring Hafez and Hamama. Farid and Hafez later established the New Arab World Company which produced, among other works, El-Banat Wel Saif (Girls and the summer).

Beginning in the early 1990s, when the Egyptian cinema industry started churning out low-quality productions, Farid stayed away. He confined himself to shooting TV soaps, including Damir Abla Hekmat and Demoo Sahebat Al-Galala (Tears of Her Majesty). One of the last films he shot for television was El-Sayed Kaf (Mr K), directed by Salah Abu Seif in 1994.