The Will (Kamal Selim, 1939)

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/11/15/the-youssef-chahine-film-club-the-will-kamal-selim-1939/ In Egypt, The Will is often voted the greatest Egyptian film of all time, one of the greatest ever anywhere, and a precursor to Italian neo-realism. Youssef Chahine recommended it and provided the impetus for our viewing. In this podcast we discuss how much we liked it (the representation of a whole way of life with its structures of feeling, the melodrama, the resonances it still has to contemporary life); the limits of its comparison to neo-realism; its influence on Chahine, particularly evident in Daddy Amin; and how and why its claims to being one of the greatest films of all time nonetheless seem lost on us.