Remembering Mahmoud Morsi: The Forest of Egyptian Cinema

Monday, April 24, 2023 10:00 AM

The artist, Mahmoud Morsi, felt tired, before the end of filming his role in the series “Summer Glow”, directed by Hisham Okasha, so he asked his only son Alaa, who accompanied his wife, journalist writer Amal Fawzy, and they rushed to him, and he was transferred to the Agricultural Hospital and on April 24, like this day, 2004, he left life without disturbing anyone, and his request was that there be no funeral and that we announce the news after his burial, and it was,” according to the artist, Samiha Ayoub, to journalist Sanaa El-Baisi, in her article, “He left in the summer glow” in Al-Ahram, September 6, 2014.

And while the sadness was over his departure as an exceptional artist, his obituary, which he wrote before his death, drew attention to what he was like as an honest person, in which it stated: Mahmoud Morsi, a friend of so-and-so, died, and I wrote the names of his closest friends, including the novelist Edward Al-Kharrat, the engineer Michel Morcos, and the artist Samiha Ayoub. His ex-wife, his only one, and the mother of his only son, Alaa »and Professor Muhammad Saeed Salama.

It was like a forest, according to critic Kamal Ramzy in his book “Egyptian Cinema.. Essence and Masks,” explaining: “Mahmoud Morsi, with his ambiguity and awe, his density, independence, and special character, and his charm represented in his ability to attract the interest of others and arouse their curiosity, reminds you of the forest, for it is a complete world. Opaque, full of shadows, it may seem still, quiet from the outside, but as soon as you penetrate into its forests, you will find shapes, types and colors of trees and creatures, plants that defend themselves against harm with pointed and firm thorns that strike their roots in the ground with force, and a third is gigantic, and a fourth is weak and meager. Some of the beings are peaceful, calm, amiable, kind, and gentle, while others are aggressive, savage in nature, extremely ferocious, predatory, and like the forest Mahmoud Morsi, sometimes like a beautiful, soft dream, and sometimes like a horrific, noisy, terrifying nightmare. It is an energy of tenderness, love, and mercy, when it wants, and a raging, destructive force that will storm everything around it immediately and without hesitation when it feels the desire for oppression and aggression. Ramzy adds: “The professor, in his talented, sober, conscious style, presented a wonderful embodiment of our forest with all its creatures, the domestic and the beast, the affectionate and the cruel, the fair and the unjust, the meek and the ferocious, the beautiful and the ugly, and what a valuable lesson.”

His “forest of life” began in Alexandria, on June 7, 1923, with a difficult childhood with the early separation of his parents, and according to the narration of his old friend, Michel Morcos, to Sanaa El Beisy: “His father, Morsi Bey Mahmoud, was the head of the Alexandria Bar Association in the twenties of the last century, a member of the Senate, and the owner of a weekly salon.” He is frequented every Thursday by friends of art, literature, culture, politics, and mirth, including Sheikh Sayed Darwish, who captured the groans and groans of the tearful, aggrieved avocado to turn it into a moan of pain: “I fell in love and finished, and why did the blame remain for the isolated?” The reason is that Marsa Bey was subjected to tremendous domestic pressure from the wife, the mother of six. Male children, to push him to divorce the beautiful, young wife of Al-Sirr, who a client came to him to file a case against the neighbors, so he fell in love with her and married her to give birth to Mahmoud, then she married the divorced, beautiful Lashin Bey Nassar, who gave birth to him Ismail, Salah and Mustafa.

He did not enjoy his childhood in the father’s house, so he joined the boarding school when he was five, and Al-Baisi remembered that this was in order to allow him to go out only twice, on Eid Al-Fitr and Al-Adha, and the father and Mahmoud died at the age of seven, so the mother’s husband, Lashin Nassar, accompanied him to walk behind the coffin next to his brothers as a kind of proof The validity of the lineage of the deceased.

This stage left its impact on him, so he rushed to be different, and he got first place in Qatar in high school despite obtaining it from home, then he excelled in studying philosophy with Alexandrian etiquette, which deepened his vision that every movement in life has a meaning, and in the university he excelled in his first steps. For art starring in the play Oedipus by Sophocles, translated by Dr. Taha Hussein, and the play succeeded.

He graduates from the university, then works for the British Broadcasting Station “BBC”, and resigns from it on the air because of the tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956, saying: “This is the last episode that I will present on this radio, because I cannot work and reside in the state of Chen.” An aggression against my family in Egypt, and I will return to my country to fight alongside my family, live with them and die with them.

He returns to Egypt, joins the radio as a director, then starts in the cinema as the hero of the movie “I Am the Fugitive” directed by Niazi Mustafa in 1962, and his championships continue to reach 25 films, in addition to his television works, and he receives the acting award for the movie “The Last Night” in 1964, and the best actor About the movie “Something of Fear” in 1969, and about his career, he mentions Kamal Ramzi in his study, “Mahmoud Morsi … the bird of heaven and hell”: “When I look at my artistic career, I feel happy, because of the many works that I presented. I humiliate myself and do not underestimate my colleagues. I may find myself dissatisfied with some of my work, but there is nothing to be ashamed of, and what I feel is enough for people’s love and fair appreciation for me.