Cairo Station review

★★★★☆

Release date: July 1, 1958

Director: Youssef Chahine 

Producer: Gabriel Talhami

Main Cast: Youssef Chahine, Hind Rostom, Farid Shawqi, Said Khalil

'Cairo Station' follows a man named Qinawi, who is lame and pitiful. Madbouli, a newspaper stand owner, sees this and offers Qinawi a job at his newspaper stand. Eventually, Qinawi makes his reputation in Cairo station, and becomes well known throughout the station. Everything was going well and normal for Qinawi until he met a women named Hanouma who illegally sold drinks in the station. He quickly fell in love with Hanouma and did what he could to make her recuperate the feelings. Hanouma humored him for a bit, through his proposals and gestures to make her fall in love, but Hanouma was already engaged to a man named Abu Siri, and they were to get married very soon; so because of this, she had to reject him when she realized he was serious with his feelings toward her. Completely shattered from his heartbreak Qinawi planned out a murder plan to kill Hanouma. His obsession for her grew more and more dangerous, until he bought a knife and went through with his plan. Qinawi stabbed Hanouma's friend and put her body in a suit case, which was later found due to her still being alive and trying to escape the suit case. After the friend announced that Qinawi tried to kill her, Hanouma tried running away from Qinawi to avoid being killed. Qinawi held Hanouma with a knife in front of the public, threatening to kill her. Madbouli, who is a father figure to Qinawi tricks him into thinking Qinawi is going to marry Hanouma. Qinawi slips into craziness and thinks he is putting on a suit to get married in, when in reality he was being put in a straight jacket. 

I think this is one of my favorite movies we have watched in this class. The acting from Youssef Chahine was amazing, and the cinematography was even better. I actually really enjoyed that this movie was in black and white, I think that it really added to Qinawi's character. The movie being in black and white allowed for the honor aspect of the film to come out more, and only made Qinawi seem more crazy. The ending I found to be very bittersweet. Madbouli cared for Qinawi so much, like he was his own son, and I think the scene where he was forced to trick Qinawi into getting into the straight jacket really portrayed love in all of its ups and downs. The scene highlighted that you will do the hardest things for the people you love. It's no question that having to trick Qinawi was emotionally hard for Madbouli to do, but he knew he had to for the sake of Qinawi.

Out of 4.9 thousand IMDb voters, Cairo station was given a score of a 7.5/10. 9.7% of those voters gave the movie it's highest score of a 10/10. and 0.8% of those voters gave the movie it's lowest rating of a 1/10. I was not surprised to see that out of every single movie I have reviewed, this movie had the lowest percentage of 1/10 reviews. I really enjoyed this movie, I thought it was so well filmed and had amazing acting. It kept me on my toes the entire time. The only thing that could make it better for me is to be a little more clear with the story in terms of not adding unnecessary characters of scenes. I think Abu Siri was not the most needed to be in the movie. Of course we needed to know that Hanouma was engaged but, I think that was good enough in terms of the plot and story line.