An early scene in Youssef Chahine’s Alexandria…Why?
might sum up its likeable haphazardness: a group of friends goes to the movies
in 1942 to see Ziegfeld Follies, a movie which wasn’t made until 1946,
and which is represented here in part by scenes from a different movie, and in clips lifted from
a 1970’s That’s Entertainment compilation, even leaving in a snatch of
Gene Kelly’s voice-over narration about Eleanor Powell. It’s an early tip-off
that the movie is best taken as a tumble of unreliable memories, one in which
basic narrative details are frequently unclear; the extreme over-reliance on
stock footage is objectively a weakness, but one which embodies the often
uncomprehending distance between people and the events that shape their lives.
The main focus is on teenage Yehia, fixated against the odds on becoming an
actor (his specific obsession with studying at the Pasadena Playhouse would
seem weirdly arbitrary, absent the knowledge that Chahine himself studied there
and is channeling his own life experience); the quest made all the more
quixotic by Mohsen Mohieddin’s often wild overacting in the role; other
plotlines include a wealthy uncle who abducts a drunken British soldier and
then falls for him, a Jewish family that leaves for Palestine, and various bits
of espionage and resistance. The storytelling is often extremely choppy, major
demarcation points coming and going, characters and concerns popping in and out,
ultimately all ending in rushed celebratory fashion as the family and its
contacts works every angle to help Yehia fulfil his dream, excess sentiment
held at bay by an utterly goofy final shot. In terms of the evolution of
Chahine’s work, the film holds up less well than its immediate predecessor Return
of the Prodigal Son, which exhibits many comparable weaknesses/oddities
while attaining greater overall resonance, the memory of its astounding, bitter
blood-spattered finale causing Alexandria…Why? to feel almost like
doodling by comparison.
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