The politics of the Faust legend on Arab Egyptian screen in pre- and post-Nasser postcolonial Egypt

This article examines the screening of the Faust legend in four Egyptian films: Ambassador of Hell (Safeer Jahannam, 1945); A Meeting with the Devil (Mawʿid mʿ Iblis, 1955); The Woman Who Defeated the Devil (al-Marʾah allati Ghalabat al-Shaytan, 1973); and The Disappearance of Ja‘far al-Masri (Ikhtifaʾ Jaʿfar al-Masri, 1998). These films employ the Devil character in order to condemn social ills such as poverty, feudalism, and the cruelty of capitalism in pre-Nasser and post-Nasser Egypt during the twentieth century. Although modern scholarship attributes the influence upon Egyptian screenwriters to Goethe’s Faust (1808/1832), this study demonstrates that Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1592) is another significant source for weaving the Faust-Devil confrontation into the Egyptian context. All Egyptian Fausts triumph over the Devil figures through the lens of Islamic Sufism, declaring reconciliation with God and themselves. The Faust legend also serves as a medium of political propaganda for Nasser’s anti-colonial politics, particularly against British colonialism in Egypt, as well as the political and social corruption that emerged in the post-Nasser era.