Film in Nağīb Maḥfūẓ’s Literary Experience
Film in Nağīb Maḥfūẓ’s Literary Experience

Summary/Abstract: Nağīb Maḥfūẓ remains most often identified with literary prose creativity, which clearly dominated his artistic output. We rarely reminisce about his dramatic works, and we occasionally return to the films that came out of his scripts. However, as we read in the memoirs of the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner, film was his first great passion. Maḥfūẓ, adoring the cinema, never wanted to become part of the world of the tenth muse and, incidentally, met in 1947 with the director Ṣalāḥ Abū Sayf, who offered him a collaboration. The romance of the famous Cairo Trilogy’s writer with the world of cinema lasted until 1959, bringing fruit in nearly thirty scenarios. Most of them brought popularity not so much to Maḥfūẓ himself as to the directors and actors who were cast in the main roles. Films such as Al-Fitiwwa, Ğa’alūnī muğriman, Al-Muḏnibūn or Rayā wa-Sakīna are considered to be the most important achievements of the Egyptian cinematography. This paper attempts to look critically at Nağīb Maḥfūẓ’s film output by placing scripts of the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner in the context of his literary prose.

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