A Night of Love


A Night of Love is a 1951 Egyptian film directed by Ahmed Badrakhan and starring Mahmoud El-Meliguy. It was entered into the 1952 Cannes Film Festival. The film was written by Saleh Gawdat and Mohamed Abdelhalim Abdallah, and also stars Zeinab Sedky, Zouzou Nabil, Zouzou Hamdi El Hakim, Sanaa Samih, Sayed Abu Bakr, and Mohamed Abdel Muttalib.
Laila is a foundling girl raised in an orphanage. She works as a nurse, but her colleagues plot to expel her from the hospital. She meets a wealthy young man who sees a future with her, but his father refuses after discovering her secret, so she tries to find her real parents.

Plot

In the Kafr al-Ashraf neighborhood of Qalyub, a mother leaves her infant daughter in front of a mosque, where Sheikh Imran found her and handed her over to the house of worship. From there, she was transferred to an orphanage run by Asim Effendi and the director, who name her Laila Abdullah and entrust her to the wet nurse, Zainab. Dr. Kamal Al-Safty, who lives nearby and supervises the nurses at the orphanage, wishes to adopt Laila but demurs to avoid bothering his barren wife. Zainab continues to care for Laila but catches diphtheria from a recovering orphan named Jamila ; before Zainab dies of it, she asks Laila to call Zainab’s daughter Kawkab, who lives in the affluent Al-Munirah neighborhood of Cairo. Laila grows up to become a nurse and is recruited by Kamal to work in his hospital, earning the jealousy of her colleagues. Laila rents a room in Al-Munirah from Umm Soraya alongside milk seller Kawkab, who knows and keeps the secret of being Laila’s milk sibling. The nurse Samira is the ringleader of those who discover Laila’s secret and expel her by telling Kamal she was secretly claiming to be his own child. A jurist named Sayid Amir, who she operates on, helps her find work outside Cairo, specifically at Al Mouwasat University Hospital in Alexandria, while Kawkab gets married and joins her husband in Faiyum. Laila finds friendship and soon something more with Dr. Rushdi Abdellatif, bringing out jealousy once again from nurse Souad and mother in Faiyum. Rushdi tells his parents that Laila is the daughter of a wealthy man, but Kawkab innocently reveals otherwise, causing Abdellatif to reject Laila. Laila accepts this, not wanting to come between father and son, but Amir steps in and proclaims that if he can accept her as his daughter, Abdellatif can accept her as daughter-in-law, paving the way for the happy ending.

Cast