"(Among the best of the) extraordinary films from the second phase of Arab cinema°the 'liberation' phase, when many films explored concerns relating to post-colonial life, (is) The Beginning and the End, by Salah Abou Seif, the Egyptian master of realism." (Judith Miller, N.Y. Times) The first of the adaptations of this Naguib Mahfouz novel to the screen, it documents the inexorable slide of a middle-class family down the socioeconomic ladder. A plain daughter, seduced and abandoned, is forced into prostitution and her older brother finds no way to make a living except by dealing drugs. The two combine their earnings to send a younger sibling (Omar Sharif) to military school so that he can become a respectable officer. But it seems that none of them can truly escape the downward spiral of their lives; the opportunism of social mobility is starkly portrayed. Sharif's most powerful performance on the Egyptian screen is matched by Sana' Gamil's heartbreaking portrayal of the sister. (Alia Arasoughly)