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Al-Ahram Weekly 24 Feb. - 1 March 2000 Issue No. 470 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 24 Feb. - 1 March 2000 Issue No. 470
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Heritage Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters
Obituary
Veteran film director diesHossameddin Mustafa (1926-2000)
By Mohamed El-AssyoutiAt dawn on Tuesday 22 February 2000, film director Hossameddin Mustafa was seized by a stroke that took his life.
Mustafa, who assisted on Cecil B DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and occasionally worked as a cinematographer in Egyptian films, was famous for his prolific film-making career. He prided himself for having directed over 100 feature films in three decades -- from the mid-1950s until the late 1980s when the sudden cutback of film production, known as "the cinema crisis", took place.
At the outset of his career, Mustafa directed Kifaya Ya Ein (Enough, O Eye, 1956), a melodrama starring Magda and Kamal El-Shennawi. He then set out to direct cinematic versions of the most respected literary texts, as well as movies for pure entertainment. His most remarkable contributions, however, were produced in the earlier third of his career, particularly the 1960s.
Although Mustafa's version of Naguib Mahfouz's Al-Tariq (The Road, 1964) was critically acclaimed, his later versions of Mahfouz's works -- including Al-Shahhat (The Beggar, 1973), Wekalet Al-Balah (1982) and Al-Harafeesh (The Riff-Raff, 1986) -- ranged from the average to the mediocre.
Among the merits of his three films based on Dostoyevsky's novels The Brothers Karamazoff, Devils, and Crime and Punishment -- produced as Al-Ikhwaa Al-A'adaa (Brothers and Enemies, 1974), Al-Shayatin (Devils, 1977) and Sonya Wal-Magnun (Sonya and the Madman, 1977) respectively -- was that they starred several of the then young generation of actors in Dostoyevsky's complex lead personas.
Mustafa also brought to the screen several of Ihsan Abdel-Quddous's novels, such as Al-Nadhara Al-Sawdaa (Black Spectacles, 1963), starring Nadia Lutfi, which arguably became a classic.
Al-Shaymaa (1972), based on Ali Ahmed Bakathir's novel of Prophet Mohamed's sister, starring Samira Ahmed and Ahmed Mazhar, is aired on television at least once a year during religious occasions.
Mustafa was subject to public censure when he became one of the few film-makers to visit Israel and persistently announce his support of the normalisation of Egyptian-Israeli relations.
In the latter part of his career, Mustafa directed musicals such as Teir Fil-Samaa (Bird in the Sky, 1984) and Al-Affarit (The Demons, 1990) with Iman El-Bahr Darwish and Amr Diab respectively. His latest films were Hikmat Fahmi (1994) starring Nadia El-Guindy, and Al-Zalem Wal-Mazlum, which became among the biggest box office failures of the decade because its producers had neglected to publicise for it.
Mustafa was also extremely popular as a director of television dramas in the 1980s, a path to which he resorted almost exclusively after the onset of the cinema crisis. The 1990s saw several historic television series by the late director, including Al-Abtal on Napoleon's expedition to Egypt and Nisr Al-Sharq on Salaheddin and the Crusades. The latter was aired daily during last Ramadan and enjoyed the popularity of its viewers. Mustafa was shooting its sequel until he passed away.
