By Soha Hesham Mahmoud Qassim, Naguib Mahfouz between Film and the Novel, Cairo: Afaq Al-Cinema, the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces, 2011 It is well known that the late Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, whether as a novelist or a screenwriter, contributed as much to film as literature, but what precisely was the extent and nature of his contribution? In Naguib Mahfouz between Film and the Novel, the latest book in the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces' Afaq Al-Cinema series, edited by Hani Mustafa, the encyclopedic critic Mahmoud Qassim compares the work of Mahfouz in its original formulation with its cinematic form in an attempt to answer this question, among many films: Bein Al-Qasrein (Palace Walk), Qasr Al-Shouq (Palace of Desire), Al-Sokaria (Sugar Street), Miramar, Tharthara Fawq Al-Nil (Chatter on the Nile), Al-Karnak, Al-Harafish, Bedaya wa Nehaya (A Beginning and an End), Al-Liss wa Al-Kilab (The Thief and the Dogs), Zuqaq Al-Midaq (Midaq Alley), Al-Tariq (The Search), Khan Al-Khalili, Al-Qahira 30 (Cairo 30), Al-Simman wal-Kharif (Autumn Quail), Al-Sarab (The Mirage), Sowar Mamnou'a (Forbidden Pictures), Al-Hob Taht Al-Mattar (Love In the Rain), Donia Allah (God's World), Al-Shahadh (The Beggar), Al-Shitan Ya'ez (The Devil Preaches), Ahl Al-Qima (People on Top), Wikalet Al-Balah, Ayoub, Al-Khadema (The Maid), Shahd Al-Malika (The Queen's Honey), Al-Motarad (Chased), Al-Gou' (Hunger), Asdiqaa Al-Shitan (The Devil's Friends), Qalb Al-Leil (Heart of the Night), Nour Al-Oyoun (Light of the Eyes), Leil wa Khawana (Night and Cheaters) and Samara Al-Amir (Samara the Prince). The classification is somewhat limiting, and on reading the book one feels that Qassim failed to cover many an important side of Mahfouz's dual presence by restricting himself to it rather than delving into other aspects of the connection between film and the novel. Al-Karnak (1975), directed by Ali Badrakhan, written by Mamdouh El-Leithi and featuring Soad Hosni, Nour El-Sherif, Kamal El-Shenawi, Shwikar, Farid Shawqi, Tahia Kariouka, Salah Zul- Fuqar and Emad Hamdi -- a formidable cast if ever there was one -- is based on the eponymous novel of 1974. The novel, divided into character-headed sections a la John Steinbeck, was written following Sadat's Corrective Movement of 15 May 1971; and its narrator -- contrary to the character of the writer in the film (played by Hamdi) -- tells the story of the others without making an appearance himself. The narrator witnesses the disappearance in 1966 and eventual return of a group of friends who frequent the same café as he: the Karnak. They include a belly dancer in love with a young intellectual, Oronfela and Helmi, as well as Zeinab Diab, Ismail El-Sheikh and Helmi Hamada. This is their third disappearance, and it turns out they have been held by the secret police: Ismail for his enthusiasm regarding the principles of the Revolution and Helmi for communism; Ismail recalls the night he was arrested, blindfolded and beaten before his interrogation by Khalid Safwan -- whose role in the film is far bigger than his role in the novel -- so much so that Badrakhan turns what was at best a background character into a protagonist. El-Leithi also crammed the script with characters that barely existed in the novel if at all: Awad the meat vendor and his wife (Shawqi and Karyouka). The film was a more explicit condemnation of the Nasser era, while in the novel the condemnation was rather more implied. Tharthara Fawq Al-Nil (Chatter on the Nile -- 1971), directed by Hussein Kamal and written by Mamdouh El-Leithi, casts Emad Hamdi, Ahmed Ramzi, Soheir Ramzi, Adel Adham, Mervat Amin and Magda El-Khatib in the roles of a group of nihilistic hashish addicts -- a corrupt art critic, a writer, an actress -- who gather in the houseboat of one of them, Anis, a government employee in his 40s, to smoke, and following the arrival of Samara, an exciting female character, end up committing manslaughter (in the novel the climactic accident takes place prior to the appearance of Samara as a regular at the houseboat). Set in 1964, at perhaps the lowest point in Egypt's historical trajectory -- which was to lead to military defeat in 1967 -- the film emphasises the social criticism of the novel. Certain details were altered, however, to concentrate the social drama: where Anis is pilfering money from Sanaa's purse in the novel and finds her diary by accident, in the film he finds her diary after she drops it in the course of slapping Samara in a fit of jealousy. Thus the drama is primarily social; and likewise Bedaya wa Nehaya (A Beginning and an End -- 1960), directed by Salah Abu-Seif, written by Salah Ezzeddin, and featuring Farid Shawqi, Omar El-Sherif, Amina Rizq, Kamal Hussein and Amaal Farid. The first adaptation of a Mahfouz book for the silver screen, the novel opens inside the school where the two brothers find out about the death of their father, a respectful government clerk in the neighbourhood of Shubra. The film, by contrast, starts ten chapters ahead, after the father has died -- going straight to the financial implications -- and it tells the story of the four siblings, reducing the role of the mother. The film is as close a rendition of the novel as possible, according to Qassim, especially where the story of Nefissa is concerned: that sister turns into a prostitute, is arrested and out of shame kills herself when her brother, a military officer, is called into the police station; once she is dead he too kills himself. Bein Al-Qasrein (Palace Walk -- 1964), the first volume of Mahfouz's famous Trilogy, was directed by Hassan El-Imam and written by Youssef Gohar; it features Yehia Shahine, Maha Sabri, Salah Qabil, Zizi El-Badrawi, Abdel-Moneim Ibrahim, Hala Fakher, Soheir El-Barouni and Ezzat El-Alaili. Gohar starts where Mahfouz ends, however, focusing on the patriarch El-Sayed Ahmad Abdel-Gawwad (Shahine) wandering the streets of Cairo in deep sorrow. Mahfouz opens with the death of Sultan Hussein and the rise to power of Prince Ahmad Fouad, another British puppet, in the course of WWI. Gohar omitted this and much else, according to Qassim, once again in order to emphasises political upheavals: in the film Amina, the matriarch, is given far less space, whether while talking to Fahmi her youngest son -- who will die in the course of a demonstration against the British -- or when Ahmad Abdel-Gawwad kicks her out of the house for going out without permission. Even though these scenes were never written in the novel, Imam added the closest thing we have to footage of the 1919 Revolution to talk about the exile and return of the great nationalist statesman Saad Zaghloul. But the ending of the novel remains intact. A pity that Qassim fails to carry the comparison through Qasr Al-Shouq (Palace of Desire) and Al-Sokaria (Sugar Street) -- and likewise fails to provide potentially very interesting comparisons between Mahfouz's later epic Al-Harafish (The Rabble) and films based on it. Reviewed by Soha Hesham
