Vita;

The king of romance

Youssef Francis 1934-2001

By Nadia Abou El-Magd

"I was born drawing. Drawing is what I liked most as a child. I used to spread paper out on the floor and start drawing. I didn't cry or anything," Youssef Francis told Al-Ahram Weekly in an interview last year.

Francis also fell in love with letters, so he wrote books. He loved life, so he wrote screenplays and directed movies. But his love for colours and painting remained his first love until he died of a heart attack on Sunday in the Red Sea resort town of Hurghada. In the foreword to Francis' book Paris through the Back Door, eminent Akhbar Al-Youm writer Ahmed Ragab wrote of Francis: "He writes like a ballet dancer, paints like a poet and speaks like a philosopher."

His papers identify him as Youssef Francis, but his friends call him Joe. Born in 1934, Joe held his first exhibition in 1954 and graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in 1957. He began work as an artist at Rose El-Youssef magazine in 1958 and joined Al-Ahram in 1964. He started writing as early as 1965, but only tried his hand at directing in 1974. In Paris, he was the director of the Egyptian Cultural Centre for five years, starting in 1987.

His films, which include The Addict, Wild Flowers, My Friend, How Much Are You Worth? and A Bird from the East, engage social issues more explicitly than his paintings. He wrote the script of The Impossible in 1965, contributed to the script of the famous movie My Father Is Up the Tree in 1968 and also contributed to the script of another famous film, The Thin Line, in 1971. His latest movie, Habibati Man Takun (Who Is My Beloved), probes the question of what we can or should sacrifice in love. "We have to learn to love and lose with grace; we have to go back to chivalry, to the sentiments associated with knighthood," he once said. The film, whose script he also authored, took the gold at the Sixth Cairo Radio and Television Festival last August.

Last month, Francis held his 13th and final exhibition, entitled Wind and Sea. The 13 displayed portraits revolve around Francis' favourite themes: women, nature and men. "I like people to read my paintings," he once said. "I draw with my heart, not with my eye or my hand, and I like people to feel that." Asked why the women he painted were always beautiful, but melancholy, Francis said, "I don't know, but as far as I am concerned, only sad women are real. Laughing women don't attract me." He added: "Women should remain mysterious. Dozens of portraits shouldn't solve the mystery."

Perhaps the only thing that Francis dabbled in without success was poetry. "Poetry is the father of all the arts," he said. "Great pain produces poems, but my pain did not." But some might say he succeeded nonetheless. Ibrahim Abdel-Malak refers to Francis' portraits as "coloured poems."

A key adviser to Al-Ahram board chairman and chief editor Ibrahim Nafie, Francis was known to go to the movies with a pencil and notebook and jot down his favourite phrases. The quotes appeared every Wednesday on the cinema page of Al-Ahram. One of his favourites came from a film of French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo: "The best surprise is to wake up and find myself still there."

Francis is survived by his wife, journalist Mona Serag; his children, Asser, Ghada, Nesma and Rami; and grandchildren, Daniel and Michael.

The absence of Youssef Francis compels me to draw him over and over -- 10 times or more on the average day -- for it feels as if we haven't parted for half a century. When his likeness emerges on paper I sense his presence right there before me, as intense, almost, as it would be if he actually appeared. Francis will stay present for many years. His name will be joined with those of Sabry Ragheb, Hamid Nada and Abdel-Hadi El-Gazzar. Of that generation, he will be compared to the singer Abdel-Halim Hafez and the composer Baligh Hamdi. His paintings are like magic: they mix fantasy with (romantic) reality and beautiful ambiguity, like his life. By George Bahgory

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