Egypt in the 1950's

[newcastle]

Came across this B & W wide ranging video of Egypt in the 1950's

Hideous background music and an American commentary almost as dire.....but some interesting shots.

Have fun spotting the errors!

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(Click the picture to play the video)

[Winged Isis]

Thanks for that newcastle, very enjoyable.

I particularly liked seeing Abu Simbel as it was something that fascinated me as a child, seeing the evening news reports on TV as the project progressed. I was intrigued to finally see inside the Mausoleum in Aswan. I cannot remember ever seeing the fountain in the Nile at Cairo, despite having stayed at the Ramses Hilton near Cairo Tower, visible in the background) and having been on a felucca around there. If only the traffic in Alex and Cairo was still that orderly and light! And only 4 million population in Cairo! The "luxury hotel" mentioned was the Nile Hilton, where I stayed on my first trip. The motor boats looked more substantial and closed in. They remind me of the 'bateau mouche' of Paris.

I didn't find the music a problem, but the narrator's pronunciations of names was interesting. Of course we'll never know how they used to sound, but his was certainly very different to what we are used to. Such a pity the vision is so fuzzy now.

[Dusak]

Good find, I enjoyed watching it, love any kind of times gone by newsreels. I can only guess that when this was originally aired it created much more interest in Egypt for those that could afford to travel, quite the opposite from today.

[crewmeal]

There are several British Pathe silent clips that go back even further with one as far back as 1890.

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Plenty of other clips on youtube as well. I find them most enjoyable as well as educational.

[Hafiz]

Thanks. Everything looks clean and ordered (relatively) and the modern architecture vastly better than everything 'new' that replaced it. Alex really had a superb collection of late deco/moderne buildings - now bulldozed.

Odd isn't it. In this wild west unplanned economy/society (with lashed of colonial overlordship) things looked better designed and planned than after 70 years of absolutist military central planning.

(half joke) The Step Pyramid looked in better shape then than following Arab Contractors recent botch.

There seem more trees both adjacent to the Nile and in the fields beyond it.

[Dusak]

Good find. At the end of this clip you get a choice of other YT clips. One was ''the oldest known film clips of London. 1890, only two years after the Jack the Ripper murders. But the most interesting ones is where they split the screen, showing the same footage from then, and 2015. So much change, and yet so much the same. It was interesting to see Downing street fully accessible for free flow foot and vehicle traffic in 1920 I think it was.