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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2020
This article provides a close reading of two popular Egyptian action films, al-Almani (The German, 2012), the first blockbuster since the 25 January 2011 revolution, and Qalb al-Asad (Lion heart, 2013), both starring Muhammad Ramadan as a socially produced proletarian “thug” figure. Made for Egyptian audiences, the films privilege entertainment over aesthetics or politics. However, they express distinct messages about violence, morality, and revolution that are shaped by their moments of postrevolutionary release. They present the police state in salutary yet ambivalent terms. They offer a rupture with prerevolutionary cinema by staging the failure of proletarian masculinities and femininities that rely on middle-class respectability in relation to sex, marriage, and work. Even as each film expresses traces of revolutionary upheaval and even nostalgia, cynicism rather than hopefulness dominates, especially in al-Almani, which conveys to the middle and upper classes the specter of an ever-present threat of masculine frustration. The form and content of Qalb al-Asad, by comparison, offer the option of reconciling opposing elements—an Egyptian story line with a less repressive conclusion if one chooses a path between revolutionary resistance and accepting defeat.
1 Al-Almani is written and directed by `Ala al-Sharif and produced by Ahmad al-Sarsawi and Art Template and Films (2012; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V7QooNvi2w). Qalb al-Asad is directed by Ahmad al-Subki, produced by Karim al-Subki, and written by Hussam Musa (2013; personal copy).
2 For example, Gego, “The Subki Family: From Butchers to Cinema Entrepreneurs” [in Arabic], al-Sima al-Misriyya [Egyptian cinema], 7 August 2015 (site discontinued). This blog posting is quite critical of the family for trafficking in “low-class” filmmaking focused on making money. See also Muhammad Baraka, “Al-Subki … Sinima ‘al-Flus Flusna’… wa Ihna `Arfin al-Nas `Ayza Ay,” al-Yawm al-Sabì, 5 December 2008, https://bit.ly/31aQTjv. A 2015 opinion survey about Subki films by al-Yawm al-Sabì found readers divided but mostly negative in their assessment of the films’ quality and critical of their representations of violence, prostitution, debauchery, and drugs, whereas others refused to blame the films for “the deterioration of the moral situation in Egypt” and “corruption of the society.” Islam Jamal, “Sinima ‘al-Subki’ fi `Uyun Qira’ ‘al-Yawm al-Sabì’ … Qira’: Yuhrith `ala al-Fisq wal-Rithaliyya … Tanshur al-Alfath al-Bathi'iyya wal-Manazir al-Khadisha … Tas'a li-Sam`at Misr … wa Mu'ayiduhu Yaradun: Aflamuhu Tamathil al-Waqì wa Laysa Mas'ulan `an Inhidar al-Qiyam,” al-Yawm al-Sabì, Facebook, 13 October 2015, https://bit.ly/2MHaByk.
3 Walaa Hussein, “Facebook Campaigns Denounce Egyptian Films that Degrade Women,” al-Monitor, 4 November 2013, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/11/egypt-movie-women-protest-degrading.html.
4 Gego, “Subki Family.”
5 “‘Subki for Cinematic Production’: A Story that Began with Cooperation and Ended with Conflict over `Id al-Fitr” [in Arabic], al-Yawm al-Jadid, 15 April 2017 (site discontinued).
6 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 128–35; Sean Matthews, “Change and Theory in Raymond William's Structure of Feeling,” Pretexts: Literary and Cultural Studies 10, no. 2 (2001): 179–94.
7 Her pursuers include a local drummer who convinces her to shift from popular to Eastern dance forms. In the end, she chooses none of the men, leaves dancing altogether, and opens a restaurant, a suitably pious bourgeois ending. For the Arabic synopsis, see https://www.elcinema.com/work/1056748.
8 Opening with scenes of World War II, the story centers on a British soldier who wants to die after his brother is killed during a German attack on England. The government offers to transfer him to one of two British colonies, India or Sudan. He chooses Sudan, where he converts to Islam under a religious teacher whose name, `Abd al-Qadir, is bestowed on him, finally allowing him to gain peace of mind. For the Arabic synopsis, see https://www.elcinema.com/work/2007062.
9 See Arabic synopsis of the film at https://www.elcinema.com/work/1334680.
10 Neil MacFarquhar, “Hundreds Killed in Train Fire in Egypt,” New York Times, 20 February 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/20/international/hundreds-killed-in-train-fire-in-egypt.html. For Arabic synopsis of the film, see https://www.elcinema.com/work/1390468.
11 Although the al-Almani film credits begin with a notice that “the events depicted in this film are based on a true story,” the film persistently reminds viewers of layers of mediation and the fine line between truth and falsity. For example, in an early close shot, Shahin's lover sex worker Sabah leans back against him with her cleavage exposed to the camera and says she has always loved him and feels he loves her, “even if it's been pretend.”
12 Pence, Katherine, “Showcasing Cold War Germany in Cairo: 1954 and 1957 Industrial Exhibitions and the Competition for Arab Partners,” Journal of Contemporary History 47, no. 1 (2012): 69–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 The film is not explicit about whether Faris remembers his kidnapping, but he does recognize his natal family and cousin from childhood in photographs he sees in policeman `Issam's bedroom when he breaks in with the intent to murder him on orders from Salim Bey.
14 The character Salim Bey is played by the actor Hassan Husni, who frequently takes similar roles in Egyptian film.
15 Gauche, Suzanne, Maghrebs in Motion: North African Cinema in Nine Movements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lang, Robert, New Tunisian Cinema: Allegories of Resistance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 27Google Scholar.
16 Gordon, Joel, Revolutionary Melodrama: Popular Film and Civil Identity in Nasser's Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2002)Google Scholar; Gordon, Joel, “Broken Heart of the City: Youssef Chahine's Bab al-Hadid [Cairo Station],” Journal for Cultural Research 16, nos. 2–3 (2012): 233CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in reference to the 1954 film Haya aw Mawt.
17 Gabriel, Teshome H., “Towards a Critical Theory of Third World Films,” in Film and Theory: An Anthology, ed. Stam, Robert and Miller, Toby (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000), 298Google Scholar. Shafik, Viola, Popular Egyptian Cinema: Gender, Class, and Nation (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2007), 101, 214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Regarding the value of indigenous traditions, see, for example, Shohat, Ella, “Egypt: Cinema and Revolution,” Critical Arts 2, no. 4 (1982): 25Google Scholar, 30.
19 Abu-Lughod, Lila, Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)Google Scholar.
20 Armbrust, Walter, Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 25Google Scholar, 217.
21 Shohat, “Egypt”; Telmissany, May El, “National Cinema as Alternative Cinema in Egypt,” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 15 (1995): 70–84Google Scholar; Armbrust, Walter, “New Cinema, Commercial Cinema, and the Modernity Tradition in Egypt,” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 15 (1995): 81–129Google Scholar.
22 Armbrust, Walter, “The Golden Age Before the Golden Age,” in Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond, ed. Armbrust, Walter (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 295CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Gordon, Joel, “Class-Crossed Lovers: Popular Film and Social Change in Nasser's New Egypt,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 18, no. 4 (2001): 386Google Scholar, 387; Shafik, Popular Egyptian Cinema, 2–3; Armbrust “New Cinema,” 82.
24 Muhammad Sayyid `Abd al-Rahim, “Li-man Yusna `al-Aflam?” Akhir al-Akhbar, 13 February 2014, http://alketaba.com/old/index.php/2013-10-30-09-55-28/item/2316-moota.html. (site discontinued).
25 “Man huwwa Muhammad Ramadan?” Arageek Bio, accessed 29 January 2020, https://www.arageek.com/bio/mohamed-ramadan#biographyBeginnings-310199; “Muhammad Ramadan: al-Sira al-Dhatiyya,” el-cinema.com, accessed 29 January 2020, https://www.elcinema.com/person/1101790.
26 Mustafa Marie, “Mohammed Ramadan's ‘Ana Mafia’ makes 1st trend in 2019,” Egypt Today, 2 January 2019, https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/4/62956/Mohammed-Ramadan-s-Ana-Mafia-makes-1st-trend-in-2019; Mustafa Marie, “Mohamed Ramadan Performs 1st concert on March 29,” Egypt Today, 20 March 2019, https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/4/67301/Mohamed-Ramadan-performs-1st-concert-on-March-29; “Mohamed Ramadan,” YouTube, accessed 29 January 2020, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJCj2HtcnbOyCj1rmKaxwJg.
27 “Mohamed Ramadan,” el-cinema.com, accessed 29 January 2020, https://www.elcinema.com/person/1101790.
28 At the height of his career in the 1990s, Zaki sought out and played roles of national and political significance, such as Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat. Joel Gordon, “Nasser 56/Cairo 96: Reimaging Egypt's Lost Community,” in Mass Mediations, ed. Armbrust, 161–81, especially 165; Gordon, Joel, “Days of Anxiety/Days of Sadat: Impersonating Egypt's Flawed Hero on the Egyptian Screen,” Journal of Film and Video 54, nos. 2–3 (2002): 27–42Google Scholar; Shafik, Popular Egyptian Cinema, 100–102, 111–13, 214.
29 Riyadh plays Shahin's mother in al-Almani and a mother figure in Qalb al-Asad. Ahlam Hind we Kamilya is directed by Muhammad Khan and written by Mustafa Gum`a and Muhammad Khan (1988, https://youtu.be/TkeZAoLQ4F8).
30 For example, Ruiz, Mario M., “Virginity Violated: Sexual Assault and Respectability in Mid- to Late-Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25, no. 1 (2005): 214–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Amar, Paul, The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 204CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 214, 232; and Hammad, Hanan, “Disreputable by Definition: Respectability and Theft by Poor Women in Urban Interwar Egypt,” Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 13, no. 3 (2017): 376–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 Robert Stam, “Introduction,” in Film and Theory, ed. Stam and Miller, xiv-xviii, 200.
32 Shafik, Popular Egyptian Cinema, 256, 258, 215.
33 Gordon offers an insightful analysis of Hiyya Fawda, the last film directed by Chahine before he died in 2008; Gordon, Joel, “Chahine, Chaos and Cinema: A Revolutionary Coda,” Bustan: The Middle East Book Review 4, no. 2 (2013): 99–112Google Scholar. Hiyya Fawda (in Arabic) is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7stWsZ8oaBM.
34 Hasso, Frances S., “Civil and the Limits of Politics in Revolutionary Egypt,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 35, no. 3 (2015): 605–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 Ghannam, Farha, “Mobility, Liminality, and Embodiment in Urban Egypt,” American Ethnologist 38, no. 4 (2011): 790–800CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36 Tabishat, Mohammed, “Society in Cinema: Anticipating the Revolution in Egyptian Fiction and Movies,” Social Research 79, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 379Google Scholar, 393, 394.
37 Ismail, Salwa, Political Life in Cairo's New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 23–24Google Scholar, 97, 113, 120, 124, 125, 157–58, 162–63.
38 Shafik, Popular Egyptian Cinema, 313. In addition to Futuwwat al-Husayniyya (1954), Shafik examines Futuwwat al-Jabal (1982), Shawar`i min Nar (1984), al-Mutarrad (1985), and Futuwwat al-Salakhana (1989), all of which I watched.
39 Jacob, Wilson Chacko, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 234.
40 Robert Irwin, “Futuwwa: Chivalry and Gangsterism in Medieval Cairo,” Muqamas 21 (Essays in Honor of J. M. Rogers; 2004): 161–70.
41 Roy, Parama, “Discovering India, Imagining Thuggee,” Yale Journal of Criticism 9, no. 1 (1996): 131CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
42 Futuwwat al-Husayniyya can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D6qg2gnej0.
43 Jacob, Working Out Egypt, 249. Also see Greenberg, Nathaniel, The Aesthetic of Revolution in the Film and Literature of Naguib Mahfouz (1952–1967) (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), xix–11Google Scholar.
44 Greenberg, Aesthetic of Revolution, xix–xx.
45 Hayat aw Mawt (1954), directed by Kamal Al-Shaykh, https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3odffs. Gordon writes about this film in Revolutionary Melodrama, 255–59.
46 “‘Qalb al Assad’ to Use Armored Cars from Ministry of Interior,” accessed 29 January 2020, http://www.elcinema.com/en/news/nw678931538.
47 “Mohamed Ramadan to Perform in a Nationalist Operetta,” accessed 29 January 2020, http://www.elcinema.com/en/news/nw678934746.
48 Produced by Studio Misr, written by Salah Abu Sayf and Naguib Mahfouz, and directed by Salah Abu Sayf (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0_0C2r4KjQ). I thank Nefertiti Takla and Mohannad Ghawanmeh in the UCLA departments of history and cinema and media studies, respectively, for directing me to this film.
49 Mouline, Nabil, “‘Dégage—We're Filming!’: Egyptian Cinema and the Arab Uprisings,” Middle East Journal of Culture & Communication 7, no. 3 (2014): 331, 333–34Google Scholar, 337–39.
50 “Muhammad Ramadan Musajjal Khatar wa-Baltagi fi al-Almani,” al-Bawaba, 18 April 2012, https://tinyurl.com/ybszvbcc.
51 The budget for al-Almani was 3.5 million LE. “Muhammad Ramadan Musajjal khatar wa-baltagi fi ‘`Al-Almani'” (“Muhammad Ramadan is a Repeat Offender [dangerous registered criminal] and Baltagi in Al-Almani”), Al-Bawaba (18 April 2012): https://tinyurl.com/ybszvbcc.
52 These posters are placed intentionally. Film directors, producers, and editors make hundreds if not thousands of deliberate choices when designing a mise-en-scène.
53 Neal, Mark Anthony, Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 36Google Scholar.
54 Armbrust, Mass Culture, 165, 180; Fahmy, Ziad, “Media-Capitalism: Colloquial Mass Culture and Nationalism in Egypt, 1908–18,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42, no. 1 (2010): 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 96.
55 Mehrez, Samia, Egypt's Culture Wars: Politics and Practice (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2010), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 I am grateful to an IJMES reviewer for pointing me to this essay in August 2019, which had unfortunately disappeared from the Internet by February 2020.
