Review of Cairo Station / باب الحديد, directed by Youssef Chahine

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I feel like a lot of my blog introductions, especially when it comes to movies, have been lamenting on the fact I don’t have a ton of time lately. I used to work as a film critic (which, in fact, was so incredibly underpaid that I now make more off of this blog’s display ads than I ever did publishing anywhere else), and then when I was in graduate school I was writing a lot about film, so I used to watch so many movies.

But now I work an 8-5, come home, and then doom scroll my evenings away instead of watching the movies I used to love so dearly. And recently I realized I want to stop doing that, so I’ve set limits on my phone and am fully prepared to sit back and watch more movies and read more books in order to feed my brain.

I ended up acquiring a Criterion subscription in order to try and nourish my brain in this way, and I have actually been watching a ton of movies on the Criterion Channel. I feel like I’m never going to get through the entirety of their catalogue in my life, especially considering I’m pretty broke to pay for this every single year—or at least right now.

It was on Criterion I watched Cairo Station. I’ve been thinking about going to Egypt a lot lately, and realized I had never actually seen a movie from the area. So I found this movie and pressed play!

Let’s get into the review. I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

At a Cairo train station, an unstable young man falls in love with one of the female vendors working there.

This movie starts with an act of charity: a newsstand owner spots, Qinawi, a young man who might be challenged, and has pity on him. He decides to give him a job at the Cairo train station and help him out, as he could use someone to hand out newspapers and sell them there.

It’s in the train station all of the local women ignore him, as he has a handicap. However, Qinawi is enamored with the cold drink vendor named Hannuma. She’s beautiful and always there, feeding into his obsession, especially when she doesn’t realize that he’s trying to pursue her romantically.

Hannuma is engaged to Abu Siri, another worker at the station. He’s the luggage porter and trying to organize everyone into a union to try and better their collective circumstances, and their engagement doesn’t seem too unhappy. Qinawi ends up proposing to Hannuma, but she rejects him after he declares they’re going to have a home and kids in his home village.

Qinawi snaps after she rejects him. He sees a murder in the news and decides the only way to move forward is to kill Hannuma. He buys a knife and prepares a plan. When the authorities crack down on her and the other women selling drinks, she gives him her bucket to hide. He decides to lure her into the warehouse using that.

Hannuma sends her friend to get it for her, but he does not notice that and stabs her. He sticks the dying woman in a crate containing Hannuma’s trousseau, then has Abu Siri put it onto the train himself. It’s at a nearby stop though that someone discovers the blood leaking from the crate and finds the woman still alive.

The police are told and she identifies her attacker as Qinawi. At the same time, Abu Siri’s union members try to put the murder on him, but the news breaks and he’s liberated from going to jail. Hannuma goes to get her bucket and Qinawi realizes his mistake. He chases her onto the rail yard and onto a train, trying to kill her, and he holds her hostage when a crowd begins to form.

It’s the newsstand owner who’s able to coax him out by saying they can marry. He tells Qinawi to put on his wedding garment and he does so, but then he looks down and realizes it’s actually a straight jacket. As he begins to struggle, he’s led away, Hannuma now reunited with her fiance.

Overall Thoughts

I had little to no expectations going into this movie, but I enjoyed it a lot. It’s a fairly simple movie in terms of plot and characterization, and I learned a little bit about Egypt during this time. I was also reading about how this movie specifically was actually revolutionary in terms of its depictions.

It came after the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy, which led to a brief period of opening up in terms of topics films could cover. We see illegal street merchants, a protagonist who’s a little mentally ill, and people who are often scorned in society depicted in this movie, which is why I found it so interesting.

I say if you’re interested in this form of representation, then this is a movie you should watch. Or if you’re into broader Arabic film, then this is definitely something that should be on your list!

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