Master of tone

By Said Shimi*

The 18-year-old Farid was lucky to have begun in Studio Misr, the first Egyptian studio, built in 1935 to replicate the studios in Europe and Hollywood. Yet even there the apprenticeship of the young cinematographer was not without its hardships. The foreign cameramen who dominated the industry were generally evasive and reluctant when it came to accepting and training young Egyptians in their craft. Indeed Gaston Madri, the chief cameraman at Studio Misr, went so far as to prohibit Egyptian apprentices access to the sound stages when movies were being shot and it was only through the intervention of Hassan Dahish, an assistant cameraman, that Wahid finally gained access to the sound stage.

A few years later, with the outbreak of war in 1939, Farid and other Egyptian cameramen found themselves alone on the stages. All the foreign experts had left and the generation of Egyptian cinematographers including Abdel-Azim, Hassan Murad, Mustafa Hassan and Ahmed Khorshid, who had been apprenticed and acquired experience in Studio Misr, became the masters. Farid worked as assistant to most of them.

In 1947 Farid shot his first feature film as principal cameraman. The film was called Ibn Al-Sharq (Son of the East). Having proven his skill, he was commissioned to shoot three more films the same year: Kamel El-Tilmisani's Al-Berimo (First Prize), Hussein Fawzi's Sabah Al-Kheir (Good Morning) and Ibrahim Emara's Gouz Al-Ithnain (The Husband of Two). Farid's reputation as a cameraman capable of producing excellent work in record time grew, helping to secure his place at the top of his profession.

He was, perhaps, more responsible than anyone for the screen images of actresses such as Leila Murad, Faten Hamama and Lubna Abdel-Aziz. He dominated the light and musical genre, working with Farid El-Atrash, Mohamed Fawzi, Abdel-Halim Hafez, Anwar Wagdi and with Fairuz as a little girl. He worked relentlessly until 1994, later in his career moving into television, most notably with his work on Damir Abla Hekmat (Miss Hekmat's Conscience), directed by Enaam Mohamed Ali, and La (No) directed by Yehya El-Alami. He was the favourite camera-man of Faten Hamama, Farid El-Atrash and Abdel-Halim Hafez, all of whom were reluctant to accept anyone else in his place.

"In any film," he said, "my work as a cameraman is to capture and reflect beauty. My style is to integrate beauty into the general mood of the film. My shots always do justice to physical attraction, giving beauty its best chance by choosing the most suitable angle and at the same time, reflecting the general dramatic mood of the film. In this way, I am able to give the dramatic effects of the events taking place in the background without in any way undermining the hero's or heroine's beauty being foregrounded. "My style is clearly apparent in Raya Wa Skina directed by Salah Abu Seif in 1953 and Shabab Imra'a (A Woman's Youth) in 1956. Combining beauty and mood is, I believe, the essence of what is required in any dramatic work.

Farid's lighting of the faces of his actors and actresses remained a constant in his work. For him the faces of the hero and heroine should appear not merely faultless but practically angelic. His art came through at its best when he was filming Abdel-Halim Hafez. Farid noted that in his later films, as Abdel-Halim became increasingly ill, his face changed rapidly from one shooting session to the next. Simply ensuring continuity was testimony to Farid's skills.

Always more at home in the studio, where he could exercise complete control over lighting, Farid professed to being unhappy with a number of his later films, largely shot out of doors. Yet whatever his own estimation, little if any fault can be found with the camera technique in such films as Do'a Al-Karawan (The Nightingale's Song), Ayamna Al-Helwa (Our Happy Days), Rodda Qalbi (Return my Heart) and Wa Islamah. And the dusk scenes in Bayn Al-Atlal (Between the Remains) most surely count among the finest moments of Egyptian cinematography.

Whilst writing a book about the history of cinematography in Egypt I met with Farid a number of times. While he reminisced about the happy bygone days I admired the determination of his generation. Once, when we spoke about the use of colours in his films, he expressed his preference for bold colours. He said he occasionally introduced colour to pictures that made them look unreal and attributed these abrupt switches to some inner sense or intuition that the new colour was more appropriate for that specific situation. But he remained, in the end, enamoured of black and white films. Once, he told me, simply to get the tonalities right, he insisted during filming Al-Habib Al-Maghoul (the Unknown Lover) that the walls of the heroine's bedroom be painted navy blue and the furniture to be placed against them a particular shade of off white.

Wahid Farid's career spanned the history of Egyptian cinema. In 47 years he worked on 173 films. Strangely, he shot only one documentary film, Tutankhamun. He has left us a valuable visual legacy, a legacy that speaks forcefully of what can be achieved by those who love not only the medium in which they work, film, but know, too, the intimate secrets of the camera.

The writer is a director of cinematography