ABSTRACT
Sometime in the mid-1990s, I “caught” two fi lms from Mexico within a few days: Miracle Alley (1995), directed by Jorge Fons; and Principio y Fin (The Beginning and the End ) (1993) directed by Arturo Ripstein. I was living in Los Angeles those days, so getting to watch two Mexican fi lms in quick succession was not that remarkable an experience. Miracle Alley, touted at the time as “the most awarded fi lm in Mexican history” (some forty-nine national and international accolades), and starring a young Salma Hayek, was released in theaters across the USA. Ripstein’s fi lm was screened at the University of Southern California’s famed School of Cinema-Television, where the director and his partner Paz Alicia Garciadiego were teaching classes as visiting faculty. What was extraordinary, though, was that both fi lms were based on the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz’s novels, Midaq Alley (1947) and The Beginning and the End (1950). This odd coincidence made me wonder: what was it about the Nobel Laureate’s works that inspired these transcultural adaptations, transposing Cairo to Mexico City and converting an Islamic milieu into a Catholic one?
