The Blazing Sun (Youssef Chahine, 1954)

The Blazing Sun (Youssef Chahine, 1954)

Youssef Chahine’s 1954 classic The Blazing Sun (or, by its original Arabic title, ‘Conflict in the Valley’) seems on the face of it like a prestige Egyptian studio melodrama. The kind of tragic romance narrative that was the staple of the Egyptian film industry, only more beautifully photographed than most (on location in the Egyptian countryside and amid the ancient temples of Luxor) and with an impressive cast of stars (the star-crossed lovers are played by iconic actress Faten Hamama and her future husband the great Omar Sharif in his screen debut) and wonderful character actors (Zaki Rostom and Farid Shawqi as a villainous Pasha and his even more wicked nephew respectively). But there is plenty more to the story than that.

Chahine was an artist, an intellectual, a man who had the pulse of his beloved nation, and a great storyteller. So let me flesh out the context of The Blazing Sun by telling a story here. It begins in 1952. Well, it actually begins much earlier but every story has to start somewhere so let us start there. The King of Egypt, King Farouk, a rotund playboy who was politically incompetent and corrupt, has just been ousted by a coup, a revolution set in motion by a group of military leaders known as the ‘Free Officers’. This is a huge moment. The Egyptian monarchy had never succeeded in shaking off the stranglehold of British colonial power over the country. After decades and centuries of British occupation, of French imperialistic invasions, of Ottoman rule, of popular protests and demonstrations which came to too little, here at last came the symbolic foundation of an independent Egypt, a republic ready to stand on its own two feet.

The Free Officers sought to change things, to redistribute the wealth which had been so unjustly distributed ever since Ottoman days, to provide free education for all and modernise the country. They spoke of Arab nationalism, a much-needed boon for Egyptians and Arabs everywhere after the crushing defeat of the 1^st Arab-Israeli War just a few years earlier in 1948. Among the Free Officers, one in particular became the natural leader and the President of the new Egyptian republic, a tall charismatic Colonel who had fought in 1948. His name was Gamal Abdel-Nasser. It is difficult to underestimate the optimism and idealistic pride he injected into the Arab people in those days. By 1954, for artists like Youssef Chahine, Nasser represented hope for change and reform, a better, prouder and fairer Egypt.

Farid Shawqy as the villainous nephew of the Pasha

Ahmed (Omar Sharif) among his father and the local farmers

It is thanks to this context that The Blazing Sun is not quite like any melodrama made before. The film shows how Chahine was responding to these big changes, and becoming more implicated in social affairs. Omar Sharif’s character, Ahmed, is the son of a worker, a loyal employee on a sugar plantation owned by a Pasha, a rich landowner. Ahmed is lower-class, but he has just returned from studying agricultural engineering in college in Cairo. Ahmed brings with him new techniques that help to improve the crops of the impoverished farmers who live around the Pasha’s land. Already we have hope in progress, in modernity, in education. Hope in the lot of the poor rural peasants improving. In social mobility. Cue Faten Hamama’s character, the beautiful and kind-hearted daughter of that rich and powerful Pasha, who despite the class barriers loves Ahmed. This cross-class romance is not something that could even have been screened before the 1952 revolution.

But then, something the Pasha cannot abide happens. The sugar-buying companies deem that the best sugar crop that year is not the Pasha’s, but the local farmers’, thanks to Ahmed’s advice, and it is they who will receive the highest price for their crops. The Pasha’s own crops have to settle for a lower price. Greedy and willing to do anything to maintain his privilege, the Pasha is in many ways a hark back to King Farouk. Here, though, he is emboldened by his scheming nephew Riad, who is willing to act out his worst machinations of deliberately flooding the peasants’ crops, framing Ahmed’s father, and even committing murder. And so Chahine with this film opened a new era in his career, making not just another generic melodrama but one that is also commenting on the issues of the day.

The film was made post-revolution, but its story takes place pre-revolution (in 1951 as the courtroom scenes reveal). This serves to be both optimistic about the new era but also to warn against complacency. The Blazing Sun shows that positive change, meritocracy and even conciliation of the classes are all possible, but for them to be enabled will take some effort, some social reforms, some land & wealth redistribution. Why? Because the Pasha and his ilk will do whatever it takes to keep their power. “We must always remain the masters,” he admits in a telling speech late on in the film, when he confesses to his shocked daughter, “I did it all for you, so that my wealth can stay in your hands and even increase”. Clearly, Chahine is hoping that Nasser’s then-new regime will provide the necessary reform, making the Pasha and the exploitative corruption of his elite a thing of the past. Chahine’s hopes, as you probably well know, would later turn out to have been too idealistic and would morph into disillusionment. But that is another story, for another Chahine film.