Cairo Station (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #25 extract: Cairo Station (1958)

Cairo Station, or, The Iron Gate, is tremendous film that follows a crippled man who is constantly rejected by the woman he has fallen for. 

With incredible cinematic language, this is then a very expressive projection of the Pandora's Box myth. In such, this story is about chaos being naively, or inadvertently, released onto the world. And the only way to stop this chaos is with a form of destruction or deception that, once the box is closed again, leaves hope sealed within. 

There is then no real blame in this story. There is provocation and there is tragedy; monsters emerge from the dark. This fundamental failed romance put in parallel with the socio-political elements of this film then produces a complex commentary on change and how Pandora's Box, once opened, may have to be opened many times over so that the monsters aren't all that emerge from the darkness.