Love of Country/Love of Family:
A Review of The Open Door

June 20, 2006

This next review of a classic Egyptian film is on The Open Door (1963), the film version of a novel by Latifa al-Zayyat that Emily read last month. Its major fault was the bombastic music that assaults the listener from the opening credits.. which someone thought was appropriate to the patriotic themes.

The plot centers on the growth of a young woman, played by the delightful Faten Hamama. She has to reject two quite different, but negative, suitors.. which also means breaking away from the expectations of her parents. She finds her freedom finally in service to her country, and her love-match (on the cover of the DVD, above) is also a patriot. Because of her brother's involvement with the resistance, we are never allowed to forget the changing political situation of Egypt, and her personal "open door" is paralleled by the "open door" that lays in front of Egypt.

There would be two ways to describe this parallel between personal life and national events. We could say that her life "symbolizes" the Egyptian revolution and the struggle of the Egyptian people. To my mind this makes it sound as if the central female character gains meaning through its connection to the background of national events. My preference would be to call this a metaphoric parallel.. allowing for a transference of emotions. Those emotions are transferred from the primary personal relationship.. which is always what makes us respond.. and ends up imbuing historical event with personal feelings.

I don't know.. that may sound like an academic point. But I think it is important to recognize that national events are given meaning by their association with personal emotions.. by their association with concepts like marriage and family and motherhood.. I think a careful look at propaganda from different nations will turn up a consistent attempt to associate national values with primary personal emotions. It is generally not the case that personal events are given meaning by being turned into symbols for national events.

Which leads me to say that national events are not inherently important to human beings. Humans lived thousands of years without nation states, so obviously there is nothing terribly central about the human connection to a state consisting mostly of people one never meets. No one is born knowing what is important about a nation.. but everyone is born knowing what is important about a mother. States become important only as primary human emotions get read onto national values. One important way that happens.. one way that nationalism gets built.. is through works such as this one.

My idea continues to be that the 60s.. at least until the "catastrophe" of the 1967 war with Israel.. was a time of pretty intense optimism and nation building. That connection with optimism virtually defines what is "classic" about Egyptian films from this time.

It is worth remembering that these are films from the 60s. As I watch them, though, I compare them to American films in the 40s. That is partly a result of black & white film.. but it is also curious that the 40s was the period of "classic" American cinema.. or the "golden age of film." But by 1963 things were different. This is the year of Fellini's 8 1/2.. and in the following year would come Dr. Strangelove and the Beatles' Hard Day's Night. Which I guess is to say that for us these years mark a time of breaking up the "classic".. and that gives "classic" Egyptian films an oddly out of place feel, when considered from the vantage point of international cinema.