Struggle in the Harbor (1956)

There is something about watching Omar Sharif in this - a bit like Sophia Loren and Ingrid Bergman he seems to actually radiate; and the camera loves it... That is just as well, really, because this is not particularly great piece of cinema. "Ragab" has been working at sea for three years before he returns to Egypt and to his bride-to-be Faten Hamamah ("Hamedah") who, in his absence, has had to make a living as best she can, living with his mother, near the harbour. He returns to great uncertainty about jobs and to a friendship between his fiancée and the son of the local bigwig "Mamdouh" (Ahmed Ramzy) that he suspects is far more! Though there is love between them - there is certainly an on-screen chemistry - "Ragab" is a rather a hot-tempered man and it isn't long before his suspicions manifest themselves in a much more physical fashion. The love-triangle story is pretty old-hat, but I have to say that although the fisticuffs are very much the stuff of a school play; the treatment of "Hamedah" as a glorified chattel made me wonder why she didn't just tell him to get lost early on... The version I saw was well enough subtitled, and the story moves along quickly enough but in the end I just didn't much care for any of the characters; they contrived a situation that made a violent resolution the only real possibility and by that time I felt that they all just about deserved each other.