Cairo Station
Capsule by Jonathan Rosenbaum
From the Chicago Reader

Reportedly (and understandably) Youssef Chahine's most popular film among Egyptians, this gritty and relatively early (1958) black-and-white masterpiece also features his most impressive acting turn, as a crippled news vendor working at the title railroad station. The adroit interweaving of various miniplots around the station is matched by a heady mix of moods and genres: at various junctures this movie becomes a musical, a slasher film, a neorealist drama, a comedy, and a horror film--come to think of it, it's pretty noir as well. In Arabic with subtitles. 79 min. --Jonathan Rosenbaum

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