13 - 19 December 2001
Issue No.564
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 December 2001 Issue No.564 |
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Strange omissions
Mustafa Darwish examines the writer's long affair with the cinema
Biographers and critics of Naguib Mahfouz and his work seldom fail to ignore the role played by the cinema in his life, starting from the 1940s when the author was in his mid thirties. Within which context it is adequate, I think, to cite the General Egyptian Book Organisation's The Man, the Summit (1989), an enormous compendium that brings together no less than 42 theses and studies on various facets of Mahfouz's achievement over five decades, and none of which takes account of his contribution to the screen. This surprising, and undoubtedly controversial omission has several reasons. Some of the ambiguity surrounding the topic, though, can be resolved if one sheds light on Mahfouz's connection with the cinema: when it started, how it took root and in what ways it influenced his writing, so that the silver screen wound up staying always at the back of his mind.
The beginning goes back to the Second World War, when Mahfouz's friend Fouad Nouwiera engineered a meeting between Mahfouz and the filmmaker Salah Abu-Seif, which resulted, among other things, in the collaboration of all three on the script of Mughamarat Antar and Abla (The Adventures of Antar and Abla, 1948). Somehow, however, this film's release was unduly delayed, and it was not screened until after the release of Al-Muntaqim (The Avenger, 1947), another script on which Mahfouz and Abu-Seif collaborated. The two had already become close friends, a connection that would not end until the recent death of the latter. For 30 years or more, until 1978, Mahfouz participated in the creation of numerous cinematic texts, whether synopses or screenplays. He worked closely with both script-writers and filmmakers, a collaboration that produced, among many other films, Lak Yom Ya Zalim (The Day Will Come), Rayya wa Sakina (Rayya and Sakina), Al-Wahsh (The Beast), Ga'alouni Mugriman (They Made Me a Criminal), Darb Al-Mahabil (Idiots' Alley), Shabab Imra'a (A Woman's Youth), Al-Futuwwa (Tough Guy), Ihna El-Talamza (We Are the Students), Bayn Al-Samaa wal-Ard (Between Heaven and Earth) and Al- Nasser Salaheddin (Saladdin); many of which are now viewed as major classics of Egyptian cinema.
From top: Bayn Al-Qasrain, Tharthara Fawq Al-Nil and Al-Karnak
No poll concerning the best 100 films in the history of Egyptian cinema has failed to include at least one of these 11 films. Some, indeed, have regularly turned out to be front-runners. Two facts are particularly telling here. First, the stage at which Mahfouz's happy meeting with Abu-Seif took place, setting off his long-lasting love affair with the cinema, was the stage during which his writing shifted from the Pharaonic-inspired to the realistic, his novels beginning to depict urban middle-class life rather than retelling episodes of ancient Egyptian history. The five novels that made his name -- Al-Qahira Al-Jadida (1945), Khan Al-Khalili (1946), Zuqaq Al-Madaq (1947), Al-Sarab (1948) and, finally, Bidaya wa Nihaya (1948) -- were written then, and they all have a cinematic component. As the author Yehya Haqqi rightly pointed out in Itr Al-Ahbab (Scent of the Beloved), they are full of details that reach us through the lens of a microscope, as it were: the workings of a vital, precise and unceasing motion. Indeed it is as if Mahfouz wanted to convey an almost photographic likeness of reality.
During the first half of the 50s Mahfouz did not write a single work of literature that was not in some way connected with the cinema. He devoted himself to two tasks. One was to undertake mental preparation for his delightful Trilogy: Bayn Al- Qasrayn, Qasr Al-Shawq and Al-Sukkariya (1956- 7). The second, more relevant in this context, was to write for the cinema; the films in question include Lak Yom Ya Zalim (1951), Rayya wa Sakina (1953) and Darb Al-Mahabil (1955). Paradoxically, perhaps -- and it is here that one might begin to understand why his role in the cinema is so little regarded -- none of his own works were made into films at that time, despite his own immersion in writing for the cinema. His literature was not translated into the language of film until he was almost 50, a full 15 years after his connection with the cinema ceased, and when he was far less impassioned with the media than he had once been.
In 1960 Abu-Seif directed the first film based on a novel by Mahfouz, Bidaya wa Nihaya. And since then, virtually, no year has passed without a film based on one of his works, whether novels or short stories. This may be to do with the popularity of his work among filmmakers, but, more importantly, it is a consequence of his initial love affair with this art, which imbued all his subsequent work with its tones and colours. His style is in many ways distinguished by its compatibility with film, which makes the task of translating his fiction into cinema remarkably easy. It also makes Mahfouz's connection with cinema a unique, paradoxical and fascinating subject, on which a compendium comparable to The Man, the Summit, though possibly of even greater magnitude, should be written.
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