"Whoever looks at the high social classes, their necks are bent."
A film from Youssef Chahine about a love triangle with elements of class, but for my money, Faten Hamama is the best thing about it. She plays a poor girl who's lost her parents and knows her lower class station in life, but that doesn't stop her from being feisty and standing up for herself. She tells a lazy rich guy (Ahmed Ramzy) that he doesn't recognize how lucky he is, and she resists the boorish possessiveness of a returning sailor (Omar Sharif). She's also quite beautiful, especially in that white dress blowing in the wind on the boat at night. The sailor's possessiveness is one of the things that's tough to like about the film - he's controlling, calls her a sl*t several times, and even hits her for going out on that boat, and yet he's the protagonist.
While the rich guy isn't completely likeable, he isn't unlikeable either. Yes, we feel the righteousness of Sharif's character when he tells him "You're nothing without the money that came to you out of nowhere," but unlike the sailor, he's expressed his love and sincere desire to marry the girl, despite the class difference. He doesn't really care about running the business or making more money, and he certainly comes off as entitled, but he just wants to enjoy his life, and there are several critical moments where he does the right thing, without regard for his own safety.
Meanwhile Sharif's character has the work ethic and is a natural leader of men, but he's quite regressive with women, and he threatens to kill both his friend and the girl if they end up together. To her mother, the girl says "Ragab treats me like an animal. When I say anything, he hits me. Mamdouh tells me I'm a princess." The sailor's idea of love is domination, perhaps best shown when he tries to r*e her after an all-night bender, and then later tries to kill her. It's a fine performance from Sharif, but an ugly character.
One of the more interesting statements about class that the film makes is how easily workers are manipulated - both the two groups of workers on the pier who are pitted against one another, as well as Sharif's character, whose jealousy is easily agitated by the same schemer and his henchman. Meanwhile there is certainly moral judgement meted out via Sharif on the rich father (Hussein Riad), who so easily turned his back on him and his mother for 25 years. Yes, there's a bombshell that the sailor is actually the guy's illegitimate son, that while he and his mother have been struggling to get by, he's been living in his mansion nearby without supporting them.
That leads to another of the film's issues, which is that it works too hard to try to patch up all sources of conflict so that it can present a happy ending on all fronts - the labor strife, the wrong man being assumed for a murderer, the possible death out in a boat fire, the future financial prospects for the mother, and the relationship between Sharif and Hamama's characters. All of these things are wrapped up with a giant bow which was tough to take, especially given the earlier displays of toxic masculinity.
