Hassan and Nayima Film Review

Aka - Hasan wa Naimah

In one room of the home the women have gathered to toast the bride with cake, song and dance while down below the men wait for the entertainment after the wedding. When Hassan arrives, the women look out of the windows down upon the stage but are not allowed to join them. This is Egypt at the end of the 1950s and though more progressive than now in some ways, it was still a male-dominated society in which women and daughters had few rights. The Rababa singer begins his song 'Her eyelashes hurt me truly. Her eyelashes kill me" and around him dances a woman who is all hips and spilling flesh. The men eat it up and lean in for a kiss from her but upstairs the women only have eyes for Hassan. In particular, Nayima who feels her heart bouncing ready to burst. After he finishes his song and is on his way back to his village, she goes out to speak to him - a friend warns her that she will get in trouble - women don't start conversations with strangers. But she does and the love story begins.

This was the debut for the two lead actors who would both go on to big careers - Muharram Fuad as Hassan would become a very popular singer but an actor as well - and Soad Hosny as Nayima would become one of Egypt's most famous actresses - called the "Cinderella of Egyptian Cinema". At this point, they both have a lot to learn in their craft - Fuad is wooden in his romantic utterances and Soad is as flighty as a lightning bug nearly boiling over with love. This after meeting for two minutes in a darkened stairwell. Young love. With the help of her maid Fatima (Wedad Hamdy), they manage to meet for a few minutes in the city but that is all they need to declare their love and promise to get married. Hassan just has to ask dad. And there the problem lies.

He is a wealthy landowner and has already promised his daughter to Atwa (Mahmoud El-Sabbaa) the village bully who has his eye on the father's land. And the idea of his only daughter marrying a mere singer simply isn't done. This is fairly standard in romantic Egyptian films of the time - fall in love - problems arise - happy ending - with a few songs thrown in. One of the pleasures for me in seeing these Egyptian films of that period is just being able to tiptoe into another very different culture for 90-minutes. The way they address each other, the formality, the patriarchal system, the look of the homes and exteriors, the role of women, the bonds of friendship that go from individuals to villages.

When Hassan gets badly hurt, his whole village gets on a truck and goes looking for revenge. The director is Henry Barakat who at the time was one of Egypt's top directors, He directed films from the early 1940s to the early 1990s and his film Days and Nights is a favorite of mine. This has some nice moments but feels a bit clunky at times in the acting and dialogue. Apparently, it was inspired by a real incident in which a singer in love with a village girl was murdered.