Barsoum Looking for a Job (1923) User Reviews

First Egyptian movie

[luigicavaliere · 7/10 · 27 February 2019]

Barsoum looks for work to feed himself on a newspaper that costs him nothing. Barsoum collects newspapers thrown by a girl by the window. A boy enters the abandoned house where the protagonist sleeps in a straw den, but is beaten by a man who surprises him as he leaves. Barsoum makes the sign of the cross and prays in front of sacred Christian images and the photo of revolution leader Saad Zaghloul. Barsoum does not find bread and is in despair. Barsoum is invited to eat with another man by a wealthy gentleman and they eat with voraciousness and hunger, to the point of raising the food from the fork to the landlord and to a girl who is at the table. "Barsoum looking for a job" is the first Egyptian movie so the director,Mohamed Bayoumi is the father of Egyptian cinema.

Hunger Kills

[boblipton · 4/10 · 11 November 2018]

It's a comedy, of sorts, as Bishara Wakim wanders the streets of Cairo, looking for enough food to keep body and soul together, and a job that will pay for that luxury.

The titles are in Arabic and French, and there is undoubtedly a lot of context I am missing. A picture of Saad Zaghloul, is shown a couple of times, beneath it a slogan of his revolutionary Wafd party "Hunger Kills." Zaghloul was a Europeanized Egyptian who attempted reform as a member of the bureaucracy. He was a member of a delegation at Versailles demanding Egyptian freedom from the British, and a leader in the countrywide revolt in 1919. He was exiled, but returned to briefly lead the country in 1924, resigned, then returned in 1926 until his death the following year.

Given those facts, this is a comedy that doesn't seem funny to me. Wakim is too desperate, his plight too real. However, I have a full belly.