The Golden Years of Egyptian Film: cairo cinema 1936-1967

Between the 1930s and the 1960s, the Egyptian cinema industry was at its height, producing hundreds of black-and-white comedies, dramas, and romances, many of which became enduring classics, much loved and watched over and over throughout the Arab world in cinemas and on television. Whatever the genre, love was always a central theme-ideal love, impossible love, love won, love lost.

Here in this sumptuous, large-format treatment, film fan Sherif Boraie has gathered over a hundred promotional stills from more than eighty great Egyptian movies. In glorious black-and-white, stars who are household names from Casablanca to Baghdad pucker or pout, cower or scowl, clinch or croon, scheme or triumph. There are the divas and the crooners: Umm Kulthum, Laila Murad, Abd al-Halim Hafez, Farid al-Atrash; the leading ladies: Faten Hamama, Suad Husni; the leading men: Omar Sharif, Rushdi Abaza; the dancers: Naima Akif, Tahiya Carioca; the villains: Tawfiq al- Diqn, Mahmoud al-Meligui; and the comics: Mary Munib, Isma’il Yasin. Not to mention the child star Fayruz, the people’s hero Farid Shawqi, and the magnificent Hind Rustum.

Introduced and captioned in English and Arabic, this book of the greatest and the best of Egyptian cinema will appeal to classic film lovers everywhere.