Baba Amin is the story of a Egyptian father who gets talked into a get-rich-quick scheme, which immediately goes awry. He then dies suddenly, and finds himself watching his family efforts to cope from the after-life. The premise is very much in the tradition of 'It's a Wonderful Life' or 'A Matter of Life and Death', which had both been popular a few years earlier. Director. Youssef Chahine, was known to admire classical Hollywood cinema, and his films were often described as imitating the work of Hollywood filmmakers. That is certainly evident here, in his first feature, but there are still hints of the individual style that he would develop later in his career. Certainly there elements specific to the Egyptian culture, particularly the musical numbers. There's nothing exactly original here, but Baba Amin holds up well against the Hollywood films of the era.
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