Wife Number 13

Murad Salem is a rich man used to having what he wants the moment he wants it. Meeting a beautiful woman in Alexandria, he decides she will be his thirteenth wife. He buys his way into her affection and they marry. After the wedding, though, a former fiancée of his tells the new bride how many times the man has been divorced. From then on the bride sets up one ploy after another and keeps putting her husband off. The film puts at its centre not the man’s habit but the ways the woman finds. The answer given to a marriage arranged like a purchase is the real subject. Rushdy Abaza and Shadia appear in the black and white film. Fatin Abdel Wahab’s hundred and fifteen minute Egyptian film was completed in 1962.