Author: Walid Elkhachab

How Egypt’s two greatest musical stars embodied opposing visions of modernity through their 1930s and 1940s films, one embracing Arab heritage while the other looked westward

What is the connection between the film “My Story with Time” (1974) starring Warda, and the film “Bamba Kashar” (1974) starring Nadia Al-Jundi? Hassan Imam directed both films in the mid-1970s, after the October 1973 war. In both films, Hassan Imam presented a heroine who aspires to be a showgirl. This was the case with Nadia El-Gendy in “Bamba Kashar” and Warda in “My Story with Time.”

In 1900, French novelist Octave Mirbeau published a novel that became a classic of daring, even erotic, literature, entitled “Memoirs of a Maid” (Journal d’une femme de chambre). The novel gained widespread fame thanks to its adaptation for the stage and cinema, and even before that, when Mirbeau began publishing a serialized version in newspapers in 1891 and 1892. However, what truly immortalized the novel in Western culture was its numerous film adaptations in many Western countries. Two films, each starring a dazzling international star, have become particularly memorable: the first is the film “La Chambre en rose” (The Diary…