Fatin abdel wahab biography template

Yvette K. Khoury (Blackfriars/University of Oxford, U.K.)

Literature/Film Quarterly, 2010, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2010), pp. 147-162 

The Egyptian film industry has produced five features based on The Taming of the Shrew—al-Zawjat al-Sabi'a (The Seventh Wife, 1950), Banat Hawwa (Daughters of Eve, 1954), Ah Min Hawwa (Beware of Eve, 1962), al-Mutamarrida (The Unruly Female, 1963), and Istakoza (1996),2—out of which Fatin ‘Abdel Wahab’s 1962 Hawwa seems most captivating.3 As a researcher in Arabic Shakespeare my initial reaction upon seeing Ah Min Hawwa was to question why this film should have escaped critical attention.

Fatin abdel wahab biography template

The big brother

House of ghosts

Tahera

The magic lamp

We cannot, with all honesty, claim that this black-and-white film is a great piece of art. Indeed, the cinematography and mise-en-scène are nothing to boast about: the majority of the action is taken in mid-to-wide shots, crosscuts are kept to a minimum, and the camera movement is largely static.

On the surface, then, ‘Abdel Wahab&rsquo