Egyptian Chronicles: No Director’s Cut

In 1953 the Egyptian cinema began to film the first bio film about an Egyptian leader. The film was about Mustafa Kamel. Its name was Mustafa Kamel chronicling the short life of the leader who revived the patriotic life in Egypt. The film cast as we know “I saw it from couple of years ago” were : One time actor/journalist at Kawkab magazine Anwar Ahmed ,Majda El-Sabahi and Hussein Riyadh . The story starts in the year 1919 where the old teacher of Mustafa Kamel tells his students about his young student Mustafa Kamel and how this young student managed to fight the British occupation.

Till now this is well known to all those who watched the film.

Well guess what ?? It seems that there was a modification in the scenario and extra scenes for another big actor then were removed deliberately for political reasons.

The scenes of legendary theatrical actor Zaki Tolimat portraying the role of President Mohamed Naguib were removed. This is according to Kawakab magazine in 1953.It was published among a feature about the coming Eid films. Already Tolimat did not look like Naguib and thus Make up would play mportant role here.The feature included a photo of Tolimat wearing the make up. I saw this in a TV show on Ch.1 of the national TV about old news from the Eid time. I search for online info but found none !!

It seems that scenes of Mohamed Naguib was removed in 1954 with a whole modification to the film. It is not a surprise to me because Naguib short era was erased totally by the regime of Nasser even the songs associated by his time in the Egyptian Radio “Laila Muard’s patriotic song”

It is not a surprise at all after all Nasser’s regime used to alter the films and songs of Farouk’s era either by editing the films and songs completely “Ya Salat El-Zin by Zachariah Ahmed*” and or even by shading the photos of Farouk in the films with ugly black pen just like in the case of the classical musical “Sugar Puff-Ghazal El-Banat’ starring Laila Muard and Naguib El-Rahani [The scene of Abdel Wahab‘s famous song “The Soul Lover” with the Egyptian Royal Opera Orchestra]

Fortunately we have Pre-Nasser regime unedited versions of those films and songs and thank God now we are enjoying them as part of our history but we won’t be lucky to see the scenes of Tolimat as Mohamed Naguib :(

It is an irony that Naguib was the first President of Egypt and he was also the first Egyptian President to be portrayed in the cinema in his rule

But unfortunately There is no director’s cut version I am afraid

*That song was initially composed by Ahmed to Um Kalthom to be sang in the King Farouk’s wedding from Queen Farida in 1938. The lyrics originally contained the names of Farida instead of Aziza and Abu Sada instead Farouk.