Cairo Station (1958)

IMDb plot summary: A newspaper salesman at the train station in Cairo develops an unhealthy obsession with a woman who sells refreshments.

Directed by Youssef Chahine. Starring Farid Shaqi, Hind Rustum, and Youssef Chahine.

Cairo Station is set at a busy train station in Egypt in the 1950s, where we follow the lives of a few vendors at the station, most notably a newspaper seller and the beautiful drink vendor he becomes obsessed with, even though she is engaged to another man. This is, to my knowledge, my first Egyptian film I've ever seen, and I found it really captivating. It digs into the characters' darker motivations in a beautifully nuanced way that we don't always see in 1950s cinema. It's a lot more interesting than I've found a lot of similar crime-drama films to be.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Cairo Station > The Anderson Tapes

Cairo Station < The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Cairo Station < Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella (1997)

Cairo Station > Liberal Arts

Cairo Station < Aliens

Cairo Station > Rabbit Hole

Cairo Station > The Majestic

Cairo Station > Captains Courageous

Cairo Station > Albert Nobbs

Cairo Station < The Informer

Cairo Station > Sundown

Final spot: #1552 out of 3809, or 59%.