Among the famous shots on many social networking sites, the image of a star or star, after the train of life passed by, and time announced his word, attached to it an old picture of him in the prime of youth, brilliance and glare, and whenever the difference was vast, the image succeeded in achieving the “trend.” Thus, we saw many faces between yesterday and today, and it is – as you can see – a cheap investment in people’s feelings.
Someone took a “mobile” picture of the great star Mervat Amin, in the funeral of the late great director Ali Abdel Khaleq. Through the shooting angle, he succeeded in giving time a double imprint, which are well-known tricks that anyone who has ever held a “camera” knows.
The goal is to bemoan what the days have done, as if we are repeating what the poet Abu Al-Atahiya said: “If only the youth would come back one day… to tell him what the old man did.”
What happened after the photo was published on many sites, that we saw a demonstration of the overwhelming love for Mervat Amin, as if people were waiting for that opportunity to express their feelings.
On the Internet, programs are spread through which we can see our features, for example, after twenty years, or twenty or forty years ago, all of which are part of playing through digital “technologies.” And because Amr Diab, the more time passes, he deducts the years of his life, so he is the most star who has benefited from this program. He is currently over sixty, but he looks realistic in his forties. They published a picture of him that they expected of him at the age of eighty, so they presented a face to Amr Diab at the age of twenty!
Man and time remain in an intertwined relationship, wrinkles are imprints that we all have to live with. Every attempt to hide it is very expensive. Botox tightens the face, but it detracts from the actor’s ability to express, so he loses his most important weapon. We remember, for example, Sabah, and how in recent years her face has lost its luster due to the extravagance of these operations. One of the most famous international stars who resorted to “Botox”, Meryl Streep, confirmed that she regretted and did not repeat it, and said sarcastically: “I refuse to be a colorful ornamental fish in an aquarium.” This is – unfortunately – what those injections do to the faces of the stars. This does not mean that the matter is limited only to them, as some men and women in society have become prisoners of this type of operation, and there has also been a parallel to this, what they called the disease “Botox addiction”.
I had a friendship that I cherish with the late great artist Nadia Lutfi, who spent the last seven years of her life in Maadi Military Hospital, and found it okay to take pictures of her without makeup and publish on the “Internet”.
We often repeat this lie on the pages of newspapers, that Laila Murad wanted to preserve her features in the prime of youth, and that is why she retired from film acting in the mid-fifties, when she was thirty-five years old. This was not true. I recently listened to an old radio interview, which she conducted in the early seventies with Qatar Radio, in which she said that she had contacted the Egyptian Cinema Foundation at the time to star in more than one film, and had agreed with them on all the details. However, they retreated at the last moments, as she was not afraid that people would see her after she approached her fifties.
Faten Hamama recounted that she had to take a taxi, and the young driver did not recognize her at first, but after she spoke to him for a little while, he realized from her voice that she was Faten Hamama, so he hit – and the heartbreak filled him – palm with palm. Faten said to him immediately after the meaning reached her: “We are all going to grow up.”
He published Mervat Amin’s picture again, assuring her that she is a dream girl who has broken through all generations!