If watching a film is like having a dream wide awake, I once read in Premiere Magazine, “then movie posters are invitations to those dreams ? a lot of weight for one image to carry.
The evolution of Egyptian film posters, from mere promotional items to a pricy, coveted collectibles, doesn’t only mirror the evolution of Egyptian film but is a tangible reflection of the social, cultural and economic changes the country has witnessed in the past century.
Dar El Shorouk s release Egyptian Film Poster, a collection of some of our most defining cinematic moments, vibrantly illustrates these changes while examining the trends that influenced cinema and the art of poster making over the years.
Film posters were born with the Arab World s biggest film industry at the beginning of the last century in Egypt.
In the early 30s film was fast-becoming the country s most popular source of entertainment. The only promotion available were crude, black and white handbills designed by advertising agencies which sketched film posters as if they were ads for regular products. Indeed for producers and artists of Egypt s earliest film era, the purpose of creating a poster was no different from the basic goal of selling any product in the market.
Little by little, poster production started to become more sophisticated, developing into a genuine popular art form.
The earliest posters mainly emphasized the names of the stars and the production company. This information surrounded the leading actors photographs or sketches. Lacking both detail and an authentic Arabic font written in harmony with other elements in the poster, the result reflected the general mood of those films.
Posters of Mohammed Abdel Wahab films, one of Egypt’s musical legends, rank among the finest of the 30s and early 40s. They were distinguished by their tasteful simplicity, avoiding the inclusion of the name of its stars, opting instead to underline the buoyancy and innocence of these films through unpretentious artwork.
Yahia El Hob (Hail Love) for example depicts a smiling Abdel Wahab delicately touching the hands of a young Laila Mourad in what looks a veranda crammed with flowers. The words Yahia El Hob appear like a subliminal comment on the state of the lovers.
Youm Saeed (Joyful Day) is more daring, featuring only the name of the movie written in large font displayed in front of a lake overshadowed by trees with no signs of the stars or their names. Yet the classically-designed poster is incredibly appealing and relaxing to the eye. The plain words are enough to tempt you to watch the film.
The use of caricature emerged at the beginning of the 50s with comedies boasting more than one lead actor. In Lilet El Gomaa (Friday Night), starring Anwar Wagdy, Ismail Yassin, Taheya Karioka, large faces are pasted on miniature figures. This approach would soon develop into unadulterated comic drawings most prominently in Ailet Zizi (Zizi s Family) and the Mad! Comics-like Miraaty Magnouna Magnouna Magnouna (My Wife s insane), both starring Fouad El-Mohandes.
Hand-sketched posters started to surface at the same time, gradually turning into a staple type of poster art that only began to lose prominence at the beginning of the last decade.
In Shatea El Gharam (Beach of Love), for example, Laila Mourad is sketched elegantly sitting on a rock next to a leaning Hussein Sedky. Both figures are roughly drawn against a picturesque beach background in Marsa Matrouh, their thin outlines of their bodies nearly merging into the surroundings.
The 50s were in fact the defining years for poster-making in the following decades.
Names of the stars began to be exhibited prominently later leading to rifts and lawsuits between performers in the 90s.
The craze of movie idols was also initiated in the 50s, illustrated in the book with sublime, larger-than-life posters of Anwar Wagdy s “Amir El Entikam (The Prince of Vengeance).
But these film idols weren’t only men. A large part of Egyptian cinema s poster cannon featured female stars starting with Mary Queeny to the self-proclaimed Egypt s premier star Nabila Ebeid.
Sett El Hosn (Beautiful Lady), starring Samia Gamal, was one of the first movies to have its female lead pictured solo on the poster. Gamal, bathed in golden yellow, green and a little stroke of red, looks iconic in her sexy posture.
Adaptations from American film posters was also common.
Qatar Al-Nada, starring Anwar Wagdy and Shadia, is a clear replica of Rita Hayworth s Gilda; Bi’er El-Hirman (Well of Deprivation) is copied from John Schlesinger s Far from the Madding Crowd while Hawaa wal Kerd (Eve & the Monkey) bears an uncanny resemblance to Raquel Welsh s One Million Years B.C.
These so-called Egyptianizations continued well into 2005 with Ahmed El Sakka’s starring vehicle Harb Atalia (Atalia War) that bluntly copies the Ocean s Eleven poster without acknowledging the source.
Names of the entire cast found their way to posters at the beginning of the 60s with the larger-than-life pictures of the stars on posters of films like El Naser Salah El-Din (Saladin) and the several Farid Shawky movies.
At that time, posters hardly reflected the themes of the movies they promoted and it wasn t until the mid 60s, after Egypt’s 1967 defeat against Israel, that the tone of films started to bleed on their posters.
By the 70s there was a feverish obsession with depicting the lead actors and posters became akin to pulp novels covers. These posters didn t only expose Egyptians’ need for distraction after the humiliating defeat of 1967, but also showed the sense of loss and uncertainty of the post-1973 victory age.
The most notable feature of the 70s and 80s posters is how sex grew to be one of the most vital ways of selling a film; a time before the wave of religiousness took over the country.
Nahed El-Sherif, Naglaa Fathy, Magda El-Khateeb, Mervat Amin and Nadia El-Guindy sold thousands of box office tickets with the power of their titillating pictures alone. One of the most shocking examples is Khataya Al-Hob (Sins of Love) that shows an almost naked Mervat Amin embracing a man from behind.
By the beginning of the 90s, posters stopped evolving. They presented no fresh ideas and lacked the zealousness that characterized the posters of the past decades. Strange enough, the commercial renaissance of the new century didn t leave a substantial impact on poster-making.
Egyptian Film Poster is canonical compilation every film-lover should own. It’s a nostalgic, historical document of the most unusual kind.
