Cairo Station is a classic film noir thriller set in the margins of Egyptian society, featuring a charismatic leading lady and a dark tale of sexual obsession, told in a blazing 77 minutes.
The setting is Cairo’s sprawling and boisterous main train station, where poor people scramble to hustle a living – but the fix is in. The porters feel exploited by the freight concessionaire, and, led by the burly Abu Serih (Farid Shawqi), agitate for a union. To enforce the monopoly of the refreshment concessionaire, the cops try to chase off the women who sneak on the passenger trains to sell cool drinks.
The women are a rowdy, bawdy and exuberantly sassy crew. They expertly scamper around the tracks to evade the cops and enjoy lots of horseplay between trains. In one wonderful scene, they even spark the passengers to join in an impromptu dance party on a crowded train. The most fun-loving of the women is the vivacious and curvy Hanuma (Hind Rostrom), who plans to marry Abu Serih.
Kenawi (played by the film’s director Youssef Chahine) is a lame man who staffs a newsstand and squats in a shed at the station. Most of the women scorn him, but Hanuma is kind to him. Kenawi also appreciates Hanuma’s joie de vivre and voluptuousness, and he develops an unhealthy infatuation, which Hanuma firmly tries to discourage.
Hanuma and the station’s other denizens see Kenawi as harmless, but the audience sees another side. Alone in his shed, Kenawi cuts pin up pictures out of newspapers and arranges them on the walls of his lair. Becoming more fixated on Hanuma, he begins to stalk her. When she and Abu Serih slip into a train car for a quickie, Kenawi is outside, simmering at the rhythmic heaving on the tracks. His creepy obsession escalates, and he becomes completely unhinged.
The most surprising and enjoyable element of Cairo Station is the vitality, charisma and boundless energy of Hind Rostrom as Hanuma. Rostrom was an icon of Arab cinema, making 93 movies, and earning the sobriquet “Marilyn Monroe of Arabia”. Wow.
Farid Shawqi, who plays Abu Serih, was a big star, too, amassing 300 screen credits in his career.
Youssef Chahine was the first Arab filmmaker to deploy film noir tropes. Filming on location, he takes us behind the curtain, into an exotic and gritty world, with vivid verisimilitude,. Chahine’s pacing is rapid fire. The crime plot features stalking, mistaken identity, a man hunt, and a hostage standoff, culminating in a straitjacket scene, and, after only 77 minutes, we have to catch our breaths.
Chahine left college in Egypt to train at the Pasadena Playhouse and returned to direct 47 Egyptian films from 1950 through 1987. He served on the competition juries of the Cannes and Venice film festivals, and he was the first filmmaker to cast Omar Sharif.
Egypt had a secular government in 1958, and there’s a comic scene where two imams bumble through the station, cursing modernity; I see my share of Arab films, and I don’t remember any recent ones mocking clerics. I also didn’t expect the sex scene (even if not explicitly on screen, you can tell what they’re doing) and the sexual deviance. The screenplay was penned by prolific writers Abdul Hai Adib and Mohammad Abu Yousef.
Cairo Station has been difficult to find, but now can be streamed from AppleTV. I discovered Cairo Station after it was programmed at Eddie Muller’s Noir City film festival in 2024.
