Abdullah Al-Haqim 
Last January, the book “Cheat over the Nile” was published by the critic and academic Walid Al -Khashab on “Dar Al -Maraaya for Culture and Arts” in Cairo. In his new study, Al -Khashab continues its rooting and application of two branches of cultural and cinematic studies in the Arab world in general, and in Egypt in particular: the studies of quotes and comedy art studies in the field of cinematic production.
The title of the book “Kahta over the Nile” calls for a critical comic scenes of the crises of the Nasserite community in the famous movie “Gossip over the Nile” (1971) directed by Hussein Kamal, based on Naguib Mahfouz’s novel by the title itself. But the films that the book is exposed to analysis are classics of cinematic comedy in the Golden Age, from the 1940s to the Egyptian sixties, and there is no doubt about its explicit affiliation with the world of humor. None of these films claims that it provides intellectual, social or philosophical criticism of Egyptian society in that period from the date of national liberation.
The book “Cheat over the Nile” is an extension of the project of the researcher and academic Al -Khashab, which began with the study of cinematic comedy in his previous book entitled: “Engineer Al -Bahjah: Fouad Al -Muhandis and Luxurious Cinema” issued in 2022 by “Dar Al -Marea” as well. As if the last chapter in the book “The Engineer of joy” dedicated to the quotation, especially in the movie “Fifa Zalata”, starring Fouad Al -Muhandis, has turned with the book “Kahtah over the Nile” into a complete study on the phenomenon of quotation in the classical Egyptian comedies, which are loved to millions of Arabic speakers, from “Ghazal Al Banat” and “Abu Helmus” films to “Ismail Yassin” to the seventh wife To the “Bride of the Nile” to “Ah from Eve”.
The book consists of four chapters: one for films of the 1940s, one for the 1950s, and two for the 1960s: one for before the June 1967 films and one after the defeat.
The reader may ask why Al -Khashab is inspired in his book, the title of the movie “Gossip above the Nile” and the novel written by Naguib Mahfouz with the same title. In the introduction to the book, the researcher explains that the use of the title “Coast over the Nile” as an opposition by the title of Mahfouz’s novel and the movie Hussein Kamal, which is based on it, is based on the fact that the humor is in the book Al -Khashab and in the movie Hussein Kamal alike, mixes with irony and is not separated from social/cultural criticism and political criticism. But with the exception of the author’s discussion of this issue in the introduction, the works that Al -Khashab analyzes in the various chapters of his book do not seem closely related to the artistic taste that the movie “Gossip over the Nile” represents. All the films discussed by the book “Coast over the Nile” belong to the world of the clean commercial comedy that it is called in America’s family comedy or comedy suitable for the family, meaning that they are comedies that do not address obscenity in the word or nudity of the body or socially shocking topics. They are comedies that are not directly exposed to politics, unlike satirical scenes, or dyed with black humor, in the movie “Gossip above the Nile”.
However, this does not prevent that the new Al -Khashab book follows the example of the previous book, which represents an integrated cultural study of Fouad Al -Muhandis, and his films interacted with its historical and social context in the 1960s and seventies in the stage of national liberation. In the two books, a serious dealing with comic films reveals the interaction of humor with urgent social issues that occur thanks to the community update after the departure of colonialism and the establishment of the national state. In the latest book, “Coast over the Nile”, a greater focus on the issue of the comedy quote in Egyptian cinema. Rather, the entire book focuses specifically on the analysis of the relationship between specific American and French films and Egyptian films that were quoted from Western origins, and the book continues to convert Western films into films that appear immersed in the Egyptian and Arab reality, to monitor psychological and social changes in the characters and events that take place on the quoted movie, as it monitors the process of linguistic, cultural and historical conversion to the Western film to turn into an Arabic film.
The reader finds the pleasure of analyzing Al -Khashab how to move a French or American movie to the Egyptian screen without the quotation appearing to be inherent. It is surprising that the researcher monitors the frequency of an artistic/ cultural phenomenon in the history of the Egyptian cinema quoting for Hollywood comedies, which is that the American light commercial film often turns into a film that discusses political issues and interacts with the challenges of modernization in Egyptian society, as happened when the American romantic comedy “Arous of the Sea” turned into the famous Egyptian movie “Bride of the Nile”. The “Bride of the Sea” is just a light tale that is insects from a man who is fond of women falls in love with the sea, and the whole movie goes on trying to hide his relationship with that fictional creature.
But the film remains just a light comedy of “Vodville” about marital infidelity, while the Egyptian movie “The Bride of the Nile” is more moral and respectful for the traditions of Egyptian society at the time, and it focuses on chasing the Nile Bride – the blind from the era of the Pharaohs – the young engineer, the hero of the film. The young man refuses to respond to the spinning of the Nile bride in respect of his fiancée – he is linked to an fiancée and not a wife as in the American movie – until his sermon is annulled to devote himself to the Nile bride, when he is certain that he is in love with her. But the Egyptian film adds to these cultural amendments an indirect national political speech, when the emerging relationship between the bride of the Nile and the young engineer turns into an occasion to visit all the features of the Egyptian liberal pride from modern factories and modern institutions and from archaeological sites that are proud and remember the viewer with the glory of Telid.
The book “Cheats over the Nile” is characterized by providing analyzes of unpopular films that are surprised even the loyal follower of the Egyptian comedy of the Egyptian comedy from its relationship with artistic artistic history and political history of Egypt in the pre -national liberation phases and beyond, in addition to amazing analyzes in her grandmother of films that we were imagining merely vascular for pure entertainment such as Ismail Yassin in the fleet and in aviation and Ephrea Ismail Yassin It is limited to the author’s discovery that all of these films are American. But the author accompanies us in the discovery of a comedy movie from Youssef Wehbe’s quotation, directing him and his heroism entitled “A groom from Istanbul”.
Youssef Wehbe is famous as a cinematic director for the presentation of tragic films that belong to the artistic type known as Melodrama, which depends on excessive sad emotions and tragic attitudes from the persecution or torture of the heroine psychologically, and even physically, and the hero was subjected to fate of fate, poverty and strangeness. But the book reveals a comic cinematic masterpiece written by Youssef Wehbe and directed and starred in 1941, a movie adapted from the play “The Game of Love and Crossion”, the famous French comedian Marivo.
According to the book, the Egyptian cinematic comedy managed to expose sensitive issues, although it was not shocking, with the shelter behind stories quoted from the West. Thus, comedy criticizes polygamy in “Wife No. 13” and excessive childbearing in the “MIM Empire”, for example. Censorship may have been easier with comedy, because it is a art that is not taken seriously. But it is certain in the opinion of Al -Khashab, that every quote carried the idea of enlightenment and modernization, even unintended by the filmmakers.
