Pictured is a 27" x 39" Egyptian poster designed by Mahmoud Atef to
promote the 1961 137-minute Salah Abouseif black-and-white
film Hope against Hope [la tutfi al-shams] starring Faten
Hamama based on story and dialogue by Ihsan Abd al-Qudus, screenplay
by Lucien Lambert and cinematography by Abdelhalim Nasr. Plot summary:
This film is set in the time of the Tripartite Aggression; it tells
the story of an aristocratic family that has lost its breadwinner.
The oldest son Ahmed [Shukry Sarhan] enlists in the Egyptian army and
is shown in desert military action, but in his civilian life he slowly
develops a relationship with the a woman named Shahira [Nadia Lutfi],
which ends in marriage after a few relatively minor complications.
The daughter Layla [Faten Hamama] falls in love with her piano teacher
[Imad Hamdi], who is married. This relationship is fraught with
difficult moral and social problems that are never resolved. The
younger son Mamdouh [Ahmed Ramzi] is more concerned with the practical
matter of earning a livelihood; he serves a vehicle for showing how
class and social issues in Egypt can disrupt productive economic activity.
