TAXI DRIVER

1954 138’(133’) b&w Hindi

d/sc Chetan Anand pc Navketan co-st Uma Anand co-st/dial Vijay Anand lyr Sahir Ludhianvi c V. Ratra m S.D. Burman

lp Dev Anand, Kalpana Kartik, Sheila Ramani, Johnny Walker, Ratan Gaurang, Rashid Khan, M.A. Latif, Bhagwan Sinha, Krishna Dhawan, Parveen Paul, Hamid Sayani, Vernon Corke

Dev Anand’s best-known ‘proletarian’ performance as a taxi driver in a story inspired by film noir. Mangal, alias Hero (Anand), rescues Mala (Kartik) from some hoodlums. This act of chivalry leads to a series of encounters with a violent criminal gang who, later in the film, steal Mangal’s cab to commit a bank robbery. Mala, who has ambitions of becoming a singer in the movies, finds shelter in Mangal’s room, which also forces her, in the most dramatic part of the film involving a mysterious sister-in-law who appears and equally suddenly exits from the story, to cut her hair and to masquerade as a man. Mangal teaches her the foul-mouthed habits of the city’s proletariat, their swaggering gait and their way of lighting a cigarette. Much of the film’s action takes place in a nightclub where an Anglo-Indian cabaret dancer, Sylvie (Ramani), works and who is in love with Mangal. The film climaxes with a shoot-out in the club between the gang, aided by a bunch of film-industry types, and Mangal’s friends. The film’s explicit invocation of Hollywood is particularly well realised in the character of the flaxen-haired Anglo-Indian drummer in Sylvia’s band, Tony (Corke). He also washes cabs, helps to save Mangal’s life and, in a remarkable shot, lies resplendent on the roof of Mangal’s taxi in the background during a drunken chat between Mangal and his comic sidekick (Walker). Most of the songs were Ramani’s cabaret numbers with a few additions: the upbeat ‘socialist-realist’ taxi drivers’ number Chahe koi khush ho chahe galiyan hazaar de sung by Kishore Kumar and the tragic Jaye to jaye kahan sung by Talat Mahmood.

TODU DONGALU

1954 142’ b&w Telugu

d Yoganand p N.T. Rama Rao pc National Art Theatres s/lyr Samudrala Ramanujam c M.A. Rehman m T.V. Raju

lp N.T. Rama Rao, Gummadi Venkateshwara Rao, T.G. Kamaladevi, Hemalatha, Chalam, Rita, A. Pundarikakshayya, Sivaramakrishnaiah

Realist drama which helped define the image of Telugu megastar and politician NTR. He plays Paramesam, the corrupt manager of the Annapurna Rice Mills, in league with the owner Lokanatham (Gummadi). As a result of the brutal working conditions, the starving and unpaid worker Ramudu dies. The nasty duo get rid of Ramudu’s body and claim he committed suicide. However, Paramesam feels guilty and, when another worker helps him when he is ill, joins the workers demanding that the factory pay compensation to Ramudu’s family. Eventually Paramesam becomes the owner of the mill and the workers share in its prosperity. NTR’s first production flopped but is sometimes presented as a predecessor of the realist 70s New Indian Cinema in Telugu.

VIDUTHALAI

1954 170’ b&w Tamil

d K. Ramnoth pc New Era Prod. dial/co-lyr Velavan co-lyr Kothamangalam Subbu, Arumagam m Lakshman Raghunath

lp Chittor V. Nagaiah, Manohar, Peer Mohammed, Ganapati Bhatt, Krishnakumari, Vimala

Nagaiah’s last major film repeats his role in Ezhai Padum Padu (1950) for the same director. He plays a crooked lawyer, Periaswamy, who tries to get his brother Chellaiah (Manohar) off a murder charge by framing the poor Murugan (Mohammed), the driver of a horse carriage. Chellaiah, overcome with guilt, donates money he wins in a lottery to Murugan and confesses to his crime in a letter before committing suicide. Periaswamy tries to suppress the letter but he ends up in jail. In this melodrama Nagaiah tried to redefine his screen image but his career went into a long decline. The film included musical hits such as Nagaiah’s Iraivane.

VIPRANARAYANA

1954 183’ b&w Telugu

d P.S. Ramakrishna Rao pc Bharani Pics s/lyr Samudrala Raghavacharya c M.A. Rehman m Saluri Rajeshwara Rao

lp P. Bhanumathi, A. Nageshwara Rao, Relangi Venkatramaiah, Allu Ramalingaiah, Vimala, Rushyendramani, Sandhya, K.V. Subba Rao

Bhanumathi’s only major Telugu hit of the period continues the Bharani Studios’ love stories with her and Nageshwara Rao. A Brahmin maker of flower garlands (Nageshwara Rao) devotes his life to the god Ranganatha but he is seduced by a woman (Bhanumathi) determined to make him break his vow. The musical hit sees the Vijaya composer Rajeshwara Rao making his debut at Bharani replacing their usual composer Subburaman. One of the hits, Ooh tapovana, recalls the classic Ooh pavuram number from Swargaseema (1945) and was apparently composed, uncredited, by Rajanikanta Rao. A.M. Raja’s playback singing for the hero contributes to the film’s success, notably his duets with Bhanumathi including the adaptation of 12th C. poet Jayadeva’s composition Savirahe tava deena.

WARIS

1954?’ b&w Hindi

d/c Nitin Bose pc Minerva Movietone st Hakim Ahmed Shuja sc Arjun Dev Rashk lyr Qamar Jalalabadi, Majrooh Sultanpuri m Anil Biswas

lp Suraiya, Nadira, Talat Mahmood, Jagdish Sethi, Yakub, Sadat Ali, Achala Sachdev

An inheritance melodrama about Kunwar (Mahmood), the son of zamindar Rana Himmat Singh (Sethi). Kunwar marries Shobha (Suraiya) and is disinherited, forcing him to join the army during WW2. When he is reported lost and presumed dead, a repentant Rana invites Shobha to stay with him. However, it is Kanta (Nadira), a young woman betrayed by Rana’s villainous secretary Kailash (Yakub), who arrives at the house and is mistaken for Shobha. Masquerading as Shobha, who lives nearby in absolute poverty, Kanta moves in, causing a moral dilemma and generating suspense since she could be caught out any moment. Starring singing stars Talat Mahmood and Suraiya, the film includes several solos by each of them as well as some duets: Rahi matwale, Ghar tera apna ghar laage.

ALIBABAVUM NARPATHA THIRUDARGALUM

aka Alibaba and the Forty Thieves

1955 160’(155’) col Tamil

d T.R. Sundaram pc Modern Theatres s Modern Theatres Story Dept. dial Murasoli Maran lyr A. Marudakasi c W.R. Subba Rao m S. Dakshimanurthy

lp M.G. Ramachandran, P. Bhanumathi, K. Sarangapani, P.S. Veerappa, K.A. Thangavelu, M.G. Chakrapani, M.N. Rajam, P. Susheela, Waheeda Rehman, Vidyavati, Bhupati Nandram, O.A.K. Thevar,.K.K. Soundar

The 2nd major adaptation of the popular orientalist fantasy (the 1941 version starred N.S. Krishnan) and one of Modern Theatres’ best-known films, featuring MGR and his elder brother M.G. Chakrapani. When the soldier Sher Khan abducts the dancer Marjina (Bhanumathi) to Amir Kasim’s palace, Alibaba (MGR) rescues her. The woodcutter Alibaba, who is Amir Kasim’s brother, has been disinherited but is quickly reinstated after discovering the magical cave full of jewels. When Amir Kasim goes after the jewels, he is apprehended and killed by Abu Hussain (Veerappa), chief of the thieves. Alibaba and Marjina eventually get the thieves and the gold. The first South Indian Gevacolor feature is remembered mainly for MGR’s swashbuckling stunts (it is one of the star’s most characteristic 50s genre films), the elaborate group dances and Bhanumathi’s very popular song-and-dance routines (e.g. Unnai vidamatten, and Azhagana ponnutham before she tells the bandits to get into the barrels). Although the tale and costumes are pseudo-Arabic, Alibaba’s wife incongruously refers to Yama, the Hindu god of death. Irises and wipes in the film add to its sense of anachronism. This is probably the Hindi star Waheeda Rehman’s screen debut as a dancer.

ARDHANGI/PENNIN PERUMAI

1955 186’ b&w Telugu/Tamil

d P. Pullaiah pc Ragini Films s Manilal Gangopadhyay’s Bengali novel Swayamsiddha s/lyr Acharya Athreya c Madhav Bulbule m B. Narasimha Rao

lp A. Nageshwara Rao[Te]/Gemini Ganesh[Ta], K. Jaggaiah[Te], Sivaji Ganesan[Ta], Savitri, Surabhi Balasaraswathi, Shantakumari, S.V. Ranga Rao, Gummadi Venkateshwara Rao, Chittor V. Nagaiah

A hit Telugu and Tamil ruralist melodrama (the Tamil is technically a remake). The heroine (Savitri, in the film that established her reputation as an actress) is forced to marry a mentally retarded man (Nageshwara Rao/Ganesh) whom she eventually nurses back to health while teaching a lesson to her scheming mother-in-law (Shantakumari) and brother-in-law (Jaggaiah/Ganesan).

AZAD

1955 163’ b&w Hindi

d S.M. Sreeramulu Naidu pc Pakshiraja Studios st Namakkal dial/lyr Rajinder Krishen c Sailen Bose m C. Ramchandra

lp Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari, Shammi, Achala Sachdev, Pran, Om Prakash, Raj Mehra, Badri Prasad, Randhir, S. Nazir, Murad

Hindi remake of Pakshiraja Studio’s major M.G. Ramachandran hit, Malaikattan (1954). D. Kumar takes on the twin roles of Khan Saheb who is an urbane businessman by day but becomes the urban vigilante Azad by night. (It is instructive to note that at this time not even US comics had the temerity to cast businessmen as vigilante superheroes). Heroine Shobha (Kumari) is kidnapped by villains Sunder (Pran), Jagirdar (Murad) and Chunder (Nazir). Azad rescues her and she falls in love with him. Various efforts by the baddies to kidnap her again are foiled by Azad, as are other crimes, while Khan Saheb gives the cops (Prakash and Mehra) the runaround before explaining everything to them. Rather than serving MGR’s particular political agenda, the Hindi version portrays capitalist entrepreneurs as the guardians of society. Remembered mainly for Dilip Kumar’s change of image and for Ramchandra’s songs (including Kitna haseen hai mausam, sung by the composer with Lata Mangeshkar, Radha na bole re and Aplam chaplam). The film also relies on the staccato editing prevalent in 50s Madras cinema.

BANDISH

1955 129’ b&w Hindi

d Satyen Bose pc Basu Chitra Mandir s Jyotirmoy Roy’s novel Chheley Kar? lyr Jan Nissar Akhtar c Madan Sinha m Hemanta Mukherjee

lp Ashok Kumar, Meena Kumari, Daisy Irani, Roop Kumar, Bhanu Bannerjee, Bipin Gupta, Pratima Devi, Nasir Hussain, Sajjan, Shammi, Indira Bansal, Mehmood, Narmada Shankar

S. Bose’s directorial debut in Hindi is a sentimental comedy about an orphan called Tomato (Irani). Looking for a more congenial guardian in a park, Tomato selects Kamal (A. Kumar) and turns him into her father. Kamal is a blackmail victim and is burdened by many other problems but he and his girlfriend Usha (Kumari) find themselves having to look after the child. In the end, the child helps resolve all the problems. The precocious performance by Daisy Irani, Hindi cinema’s best-known child actress, was the film’s main highlight.

CARNIVAL QUEEN

1955?’ b&w Hindi

d Noshir Engineer pc Jewel Pics s Adi Marzban dial/lyr Pritam Dehlvi c Aga Hasham, Jehangir Mistry m Shafi M. Nagri

lp Fearless Nadia, John Cawas, Shanti Madhok, Habib, Sheikh, Prakash, M.S. Khan, Shafi, Aftab, Pritam Dehlvi, Aga Miraz

This late Nadia-Cawas stunt movie sees her as Asha, a champion with the six-shooter displaying her marksmanship in her father’s Great Jewel Carnival. To boost income and to pay off the Carnival’s debt to the villain Prasad, she hires the motor-bike stunt rider Ashok (Cawas). Prasad tries sabotaging the bike and various other villainies but Asha eventually catches him after a long chase sequence. Scripted by noted Parsee Theatre director Adi Marzban.

DEVDAS

1955 159’ b&w Hindi

d/p Bimal Roy pc Bimal Roy Prod. st Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s novel sc Nabendu Ghosh dial Rajinder Singh Bedi lyr Sahir Ludhianvi c Kamal Bose m S.D. Burman

lp Dilip Kumar, Suchitra Sen, Vyjayanthimala, Motilal, Kanhaiyalal, Nasir Hussain

This remake of Barua’s Devdas which Roy had shot in 1935 is dedicated to Barua and to K.L. Saigal. Roy’s version is presented as a formal/technical modernisation of the famous legend, allowing for an extensive use of deep focus and the naturalist underacting of both Dilip Kumar and Motilal, the latter in the role of the corrupting sidekick, Chunni Babu. Paro is played by the Bengali star S. Sen, and Vyjayanthimala is the prostitute Chandramukhi, each bringing with them the connotations accumulated in their respective generic star images. The new approach provides a more resonant historical background to a story usually focused almost exclusively on Devdas’s psychological obsessions. In the famous train sequences when Devdas runs away from himself, eventually to die at Paro’s doorstep, Roy’s version conveys the sense of a savagely tragic journey through an Indian nation determined to rule out the possibility of the hero finding happiness.

DONGA RAMUDU

1955 197’ b&w Telugu

d/co-st K.V. Reddy p A. Nageshwara Rao pc Annapurna Pics co-st D. Madhusudhana Rao co-st/dial D.V. Narasaraju lyr Samudrala Raghavacharya c Adi M. Irani m Pendyala Nageshwara Rao

lp A. Nageshwara Rao, Savitri, Jamuna, Rajanala Nageshwara Rao, S.V. Ranga Rao, Surabhi Balasaraswathi, Relangi Venkatramaiah, K. Jaggaiah, Vangara, Suryakantam

The debut production of Nageshwara Rao’s company is a melodrama about a good-hearted thief who steals to support his sister. Jailed, and often accused of crimes he did not commit, he is blamed for a murder but eventually succeeds in unmasking the real criminal. One of composer Pendyala’s better-known films.

ERA BATOR SUR

1955?’ b&w Assamese

d/s/lyr/m Bhupen Hazarika c Anil Gupta

lp Phani Sarma, Bishnu Rabha, Bijoy Shankar, Tasadduf Yusuf, Anil Das, Preetidhara, Chhaya Devi, Eva Achaw, Rebecca Achaw, Balraj Sahni

Hazarika’s debut as director tells of Jayanta (Shankar), a researcher into folk art and music who meets a young flautist (Das) in an Assamese tea garden. They fall in love with the same woman (Preetidhara), but the researcher withdraws, saying that he is expendable whereas the ‘young man’s flute must not be silenced’. Eva Achaw played the owner of the tea garden. Most of the film features the cultural traditions of the labourers in Assam’s famous tea gardens and their celebrated folk music.

GARAM COAT

aka The Clerk and the Coat

1955 129’(80’) b&w Hindi

d Amar Kumar p/s Rajinder Singh Bedi pc Cine Co-op st N. Gogol’s The Overcoat lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c Vaikunth Kunkalekar m Amarnath

lp Balraj Sahni, Nirupa Roy, Vijayalakshmi, Jayant, Rashid Khan, Baij Sharma, Baby Chand Seminal realist melodrama written, produced and effectively directed by Rajinder Singh Bedi. The postal clerk Giridhari (Sahni) does not have a proper winter coat and cannot afford the tweed jacket displayed in the window of tailor Mirazuddin’s shop. During the day, he loses a Rs 100 note, recovers it from an erring customer and loses it again. Desperate and paranoid, he starts imagining that his wife Geeta (Roy), who tries to earn extra money doing odd jobs, has become a prostitute. He is about to throw himself under a train when he finds the money in the lining of his old coat. The film relocates Gogol’s story in a post-Partition North India in economic crisis, human goodness crumbling in the face of a growing cynicism about state institutions. Depending mainly on Sahni’s performance, the film has a notable soundtrack (e.g. the sound of trains merged into the voice of a woman singing). Jayant played the major role of the hero’s Pathan friend Sher Khan. An 80’ version entitled The Clerk and the Coat was made for international release.

HOUSE NUMBER 44

aka Ghar Number 44

1955?’ b&w Hindi

d M.K. Burman pc Navketan s Vishwamitter Adil lyr Sahir Ludhianvi c V. Ratra m S.D. Burman

lp Dev Anand, Kalpana Kartik, K.N. Singh, Rashid Khan, Anand Pal, Bhagwan Sinha, Kumkum, Sheila Vaz, Zamboora

Continuing in the vein of his Taxi Driver (1954) image, Anand plays the part of Ashok, a pavement-dweller and pickpocket who falls in with a gang whose hideout is house no. 44. The gang’s pretty stooge Nimmo (Kartik) becomes his beloved and, to escape their life of crime, Ashok turns informer. Chased by the gang boss’s henchmen and a mysterious figure called Captain, Ashok has to face a kangaroo court at the house but he eventually fights his way to freedom.

INSANIYAT

1955 185’ b&w Hindi

d S.S. Vasan pc Gemini s Gemini Studio story dept dial Ramanand Sagar, T. Mukherjee lyr Rajinder Krishen c P. Ellappa m C. Ramchandra

lp Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Bina Rai, Vijayalakshmi, Jayant, Jairaj, Shobhana Samarth, Badri Prasad, Kumar, Agha, Mohana

A rural adventure drama with Western overtones and the only time the two leading stars of the 50s, D. Kumar and D. Anand, appeared together. Mangal (D. Kumar) is the hero opposing the bandit chief Zangoora (Jayant) and his right-hand man Bhanu (Anand). When Bhanu raids a village, Mangal persuades Bhanu to renounce banditry and Bhanu becomes a leader of the villagers. Zangoora captures Bhanu and, in trying to rescue him and his child, Mangal is killed.

KALVANIN KADHALI

1955 190’ b&w Tamil

d V.S. Raghavan p Revathi Prod. sc Kalki from his novel dial S.D. Sundaram m Govindrajulu Naidu, Ghantasala

lp Sivaji Ganesan, K. Sarangapani, T.R. Ramachandran, T.S. Dorairaj, P. Bhanumathi, Kushala Kumari, K.R. Selvan

Muthayyan (Sivaji) is torn between his love for two women: he is determined not to marry before his beloved sister Abirami (Kuchalakumari), but unless he agrees to elope with his lover Kalyani (Bhanumati), she is due to marry an old man. The hero’s devotion to his sister wins out and the two leave town, Muthayyan going to work for Karwar Sangapillai (Dorairaj) who begins to lust after Abirami. As for Kalyani, she has no option but to marry the old man, which she does with a marked lack of enthusiasm for her marital obligations, causing her aged husband to become very suspicious. The old man nevertheless agrees to dissolve the marriage in exchange for a father-daughter relationship and Abirami gratefully nurses the old man until he dies. When Sangapillai is caught by the hero trying to rape Abirami, he defends himself by accusing Muthayyan of theft and having him jailed. A gypsy helps him to escape and he turns into a burglar. When Kalyani catches the hero in the exercise of his new profession, the former lovers seek to rekindle their affair, but then Muthayyam is shot dead by the police, after which Kalyani shoots herself so that her body falls on the corpse of her lover.

MANGAYAR THILAKAM

1955 194’ b&w Tamil

d L.V. Prasad p Vaidya Films st C.V. Sridhar dial Valampuri Somanathan m S. Dakshinamurthy

lp S.V. Subbaiah, Sivaji Ganesan, Thangavelu, K. Sarangapani, Padmini, M.N. Rajam, Ragini

Vasu (Sivaji), married to the haughty Prabha (Rajan), selects Sulochana (Padmini) as a suitably maternal figure to marry his beloved brother Karunakaran (Subbaiah). She reciprocates by accepting Vasu as her ‘son’ and she treasures his gifts, to the annoyance of Vasu’s wife. Even Vasu and Prabha’s son Ravi seems more attached to aunt Sulochana than to his own mother, and it is his aunt who rushes him to the temple when Ravi falls ill. However, though Ravi is saved, the rush to the temple causes Sulochana to drop dead. When her body is cremated on the funeral pyre, the bangles Vasu had given her remain uncharred by the fire.

MISSAMMA/MISSIAMMA

1955 181’[Te]/179’[Ta] b&w Telugu/Tamil

d L.V. Prasad pc Vijaya co-p B. Nagi Reddy co-p/s Chakrapani lyr[Te] Pingali Nagendra Rao dial/lyr[Ta] Thanjai Ramaiyadas c Marcus Bartley m Saluri Rajeshwara Rao

lp Savitri, Jamuna, Rushyendramani, S.V. Ranga Rao, Doraiswamy, N.T. Rama Rao[Te], A. Nageshwara Rao[Te], Relangi Venkatramaiah[Te], Balkrishna[Te], Ramana Reddy[Te], Gummadi Venkateshwara Rao[Te], Gemini Ganesh[Ta], K.A. Thangavelu[Ta], K. Sarangapani[Ta], M.N. Nambiar[Ta], A. Karunanidhi[Ta], V.M. Ezhumalai[Ta], Santhanam[Ta], Meenakshi[Ta]

Hit comedy about a village zamindar (Ranga Rao) who advertises for a married couple to run a school set up in memory of his long-lost daughter. The unemployed Rao (NTR/Ganesh) and Mary (Savitri) pretend to be married to get the job. Annoyed by Rao’s interest in the zamindar’s other daughter (Jamuna in her debut), Mary starts teaching music to an amateur detective and the zamindar’s future son-in-law (Nageshwara Rao/Thangavelu). Mary feigns pregnancy while the zamindar tries to convert her to Hinduism. Eventually Mary turns out to be the zamindar’s lost daughter and she marries Rao. The Ghantasala/P. Susheela duet Varaya vennilave was especially popular. The film, which established Gemini Ganesh and Savitri as a lead pair, adapts Jyotish Bannerjee’s classic Bengali comedy Manmoyee Girls’ School (1935). Prasad remade his own version at the AVM Studio in Hindi as Miss Mary (1957) starring Meena Kumari. Anant Mane also did a Marathi version of the story, Jhakli Mooth (1957).

MR AND MRS ’55

1955 157’ b&w Hindi

d/p Guru Dutt pc Guru Dutt Films dial Abrar Alvi lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c V.K. Murthy m O.P. Nayyar

lp Guru Dutt, Madhubala, Lalita Pawar, Johnny Walker, Kumkum, Cuckoo, Agha, Yasmin, Uma Devi, Radhika, Anwari, Harun, Moni Chatterjee, Roop Lakshmi, Beer Sakhuja, Al Nasir

Guru Dutt’s 5th film as director is a classic social comedy relying on a familiar plot: the heroine must fulfil the terms of her father’s will to inherit his wealth. Dutt uses this plot to satirise the reformism of India’s urban upper class. Anita (Madhubala) must marry quickly to inherit her father’s estate. Her aunt, the authoritarian champion of women’s rights, Seeta Devi (Pawar), plots to find a needy bachelor who will marry Anita for money and divorce her immediately afterwards. A poor but lovable scrounger and cartoonist, Preetam Kumar (Dutt), agrees to the plan but he and Anita then fall in love. Pressured by Seeta Devi, Preetam eventually goes through with the divorce and even furnishes faked photographs compromising himself. When Anita discovers the truth, she and Preetam decide to stay together. Dutt’s inventiveness is given free rein, esp. in the song picturisations. As the British critic Geoff Brown pointed out: ‘Dutt realises the cinematic advantages of India’s playback system. The camera never stands still. The first, in which Preetam tells his friend about meeting the heroine, starts in a bar, proceeds to a bus stop and continues on the bus, from which the couple are eventually thrown off. Another song - an argumentative duet between hero and heroine - is imaginatively performed among women drying and shaking out saris. But the most exhilarating number is the heroine’s swimming pool song, performed with a smiling chorus line of girls twirling umbrellas, parading around the pool in deliriously tilted shots.’ The film included hits such as Udhar tum haseen ho, Jaane kahan mera jigargaya ji (both sung by Geeta Dutt and Mohammed Rafi) and Thandi hawa kali ghata (sung by Geeta Dutt).

MODALATEDI/MUDHAL THEDI

aka The First Day of the Month

1955 165’[K]/145’[Ta] b&w Kannada/Tamil

d/s P. Neelakantan pc Padmini Pics st Raja Nene’s Pehli Tareekh (1954) c V. Ramamurthy m T.G. Lingappa

lp Sivaji Ganesan[Ta], B.R. Panthulu[K], M.V. Rajamma[K], M. Madhava Rao[K], Revathi[K], H.R. Sastry[K], Master Hiranayya[K], N.S. Krishnan[Ta], R. Balasubramanyam[Ta], Anjali Devi[Ta], T.A. Mathuram[Ta]

Kannada hit and debut production of Panthulu’s Padmini Pics. A stoic reply to Capra’s sentimental optimism, showing that a petty-bourgeois life is far from wonderful. Shivram (Panthulu)/Sivagnanam (Ganesan) is a lowly teller in a bank that goes bust and, unable to find work, he commits suicide so that his wife and children may get the insurance money. In heaven, at the court of Yama, the lord of death, he is punished for his irresponsibility: he is sent back as a disembodied spirit to witness what happens to the family. His son is imprisoned for stealing food, his daughter is molested and his wife, having murdered the molester, drowns herself in a well. Sivagnanam then wakes up screaming, realises it was all a dream and vows to face life’s difficulties with courage. The film’s style is conventional with elementary studio sets and painted backdrops, often using irises for shot transitions. The novel introduction of mythological elements into the realist tale is handled with much more aplomb in the South Indian version than in the original Hindi (Pehli Tareekh, 1954) which was mostly a Nirupa Roy melodrama. Here Brahma, lord of creation, becomes the mouthpiece to state the conditions of an unjust world. In the Tamil version the legendary comedy duo Krishnan (playing a carefree government clerk) and Mathuram assume the kattiyankaran role of traditional drama, providing comedy relief while offering social comment. Carnatic musician Dandapani Desigar sang two songs in the Tamil. One especially, Onnil iruthu irupathu varaikum, was especially successful. Ganesan, the lead in the Tamil version appears in a minor role in the Kannada version.

MULU MANEK

1955 137’ b&w Gujarati

d/sc Manhar Raskapur pc Vikram Chitra st/dial Gunwantrai Acharya from his play Allaheli lyr Karsandas Manek c Manek Mehta m Indukumar

lp Shanta Apte, Arvind Pandya, Champsibhai Nagda, Shalini, Champak Lala, Ulhas

This film of Acharya’s anti-imperialist play, first staged by the IPTA, opens Raskapur’s series of tales about valorous Rajput clans resisting the British conquest (cf. Kadu Makrani, 1960). Set in Okha, Kathiawar, a region taken by the British and controlled by the Gaekwad royalty, in the period preceding and during the 1857 mutiny. In his fight against the British and the Gaekwad family, the courageous Mulu Manek becomes a bandit. The antagonism is exacerbated when the hero’s childhood friend Devba joins the enemy after being rejected by Mulu’s sister. This is Marathi and Hindi singing star Apte’s only Gujarati film. It was remade by Manibhai Vyas in 1977.

MUNIMJI

1955 163’ b&w Hindi

d/co-sc Subodh Mukherjee pc Filmistan st Ranjan co-sc/co-dial Nasir Hussain co-dial Qamar Jalalabadi lyr Shailendra, Sahir Ludhianvi c Marshall Braganza m S.D. Bur man

lp Dev Anand, Nalini Jaywant, Nirupa Roy, Pran, Amita, S.L. Puri, Prabhu Dayal, Kanu Roy, Samar Chatterjee

Whereas most Western melodramas would represent good and evil as conflicting forces within one character, this movie distributes the moral conflict across two half-brothers, Ratan (Pran) and Amar (Anand). The film then goes on to multiply this splitting device to the point of vertigo, making it a text eminently suitable for psychoanalytic interpretation. The process starts with Ram fathering a second son with his second wife. He then repudiates his first wife Malati (N. Roy), but she switches the two infants so that her son Ratan grows up as the heir while Malati and the second son, Amar, become servants in Ram’s household. When the two boys grow up, each begins to lead a double life: Amar is a clerk who wears a disguise to hide his good looks, revealing them only when courting the haughty Roopa (Jaywant); Ratan, who is betrothed to Roopa, is also the notorious bandit and blackmailer Kala Ghoda whose schemes are often foiled by Amar. In the end, when Ratan tries to blackmail his own family, Malati denounces him as her real son. The film included the hit Jeevan ke safar mein rahi sung by Kishore Kumar.

(From left) Dev Anand, Ameeta and Nalini Jaywant in Munimji

NEWSPAPER BOY

1955 120’ b&w Malayalam

d/sc P. Ramadas p N. Subramanyam pc Adarsha Kala Mandir dial Nagavalli R.S. Kurup lyr K.L. Pukundam c P.K. Madhavan Nair m A. Vijayan, A. Ramachandran lyr K.L. Poonkunnam m A. Vijayan, A. Ramchandran

lp Master Moni, Narendran, Venkateswaran, Mohan, Baby Usha, Nagavalli R.S. Kurup, Veeran

A highly acclaimed neo-realist experiment telling of Appu (Moni), the son of an industrial worker and a maid. When the father has an accident, is sacked and later dies of tuberculosis, Appu has to leave school and become the breadwinner, looking after his two even younger siblings when his mother dies as well. He works as a domestic servant in a rich household and eventually becomes a newspaper vendor. The film adapted the commercially successful ‘realist’ Bengali-Hindi tearjerker Babla (1951), esp. in modelling Master Moni’s tragic and incorruptible determination to succeed and vindicate his family’s good name in the style of Niren Bhattacharya. The director and production unit had no previous film-making experience.

NIMILA ANKA

1955? b&w Assamese

d/s Lakhyadhar Choudhury pc Nilachal Chitrapeeth c Nalin Duara m Purshottam Das

lp Anupama Bhattacharya, Girija Das, Begum, Kamal Narayan Choudhury, Lakhyadhar Choudhury, Sarat Das, Muazzin Ali, Jibeshwar Chakraborty

Theatrical melodrama featuring the anxieties of a retired clerk who faces the degrading consequences of poverty. The director and most of the cast were well known Assamese stage personalities.

PATHER PANCHALI

aka Song of the Little Road aka Song of the Road

1955 122’(115’) b&w Bengali

d/sc Satyajit Ray pc West Bengal Govt st Bibhutibhushan Bannerjee’s novel (1929) c Subrata Mitra m Ravi Shankar

lp Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Chunibala Devi, Uma Dasgupta, Subir Bannerjee, Tulsi Chakraborty, Runki Bannerjee, Aparna Devi, Binoy Mukherjee, Haren Bannerjee, Harimohan Nag, Nibhanani Devi, Ksirodh Roy, Ruma Ganguly

Ray’s classic, internationally successful debut initiated the Apu trilogy (Aparajito, 1956; Apur Sansar, 1959) featuring young Apu (S. Bannerjee) and his impoverished family in the Bengali village of Nischintpur in the early 20th C. The Brahmin priest Harihar Rai (Kanu Bannerjee) goes to the city in search of employment, leaving behind his two children Apu and Durga (Uma Dasgupta), his wife (Karuna Bannerjee) and an ancient aunt, Indira Thakurain (Chunibala Devi). At the end of the film, Durga dies and the family leaves the village, moving to Benares. Ray used this meagre plot to elaborate a strikingly innovative narrative, evoking the classic symbols of a newly independent nation, the aftermath of the war and the shift towards Nehruite industrialism. The major scenes in the film, including the children’s romp in the fields where they first encounter a telegraph pole and a train belching clouds of smoke, and the death of the old aunt followed by that of Durga after her rain dance, were spectacularly filmed by the debuting Mitra. The final scene of the family leaving in a cart shows the three faces of father, mother and son, virtually summing up the film’s achievement: the father’s contorted self-pity evokes a long tradition of the pitiable protagonist in Bengali melodrama, while the mother’s expression signals ‘fortitude’, hiding a tragedy too grim for words. Apu, in sharp contrast, cut off at the neck by the frameline in the lower left-hand corner, stares without expression into the distance, suggesting curiosity as well as apprehension at what the future may bring. Ray claimed the influence of Italian neo-realism in what was, despite the presence of several well-known names from Bengali theatre and film, a revolutionary use of performance, and in his shooting style. Within India, the film signals one of the artistic pinnacles of a specifically modernist art enterprise inaugurated by post-war Nehruite nationalism. In the context of later historical developments and the work of the Subaltern Studies group, the film’s deployment of a secular, Enlightenment liberalism institutionalised by Nehru combined with a fantasy of pre-industrial village innocence inaugurated a trend in Indian cinema which has been increasingly critiqued. A 115’ version was prepared for circulation outside Bengal.

Chunibala Devi (left) and Uma Dasgupta in Pather Panchali

PIOLI PHUKAN

1955?’ b&w Assamese

d/s Phani Sarma pc Rupjyoti Prod., Tezpur c Subodh Bannerjee lyr/m Bhupen Hazarika

lp Phani Sarma, Chandradhar Goswami, Hiren Choudhury, Eva Achaw, Jnanada Kakoti, Rebecca Achaw, Bina Das

Nationalist Assamese film providing a fictional account of a legendary Assamese anti-imperialist figure. Pioli Phukan (Sarma), a somewhat wayward ‘prince’, is transformed into a radical nationalist eventually hanged by the British. The noose turns into a halo as he accepts his fate.

RAILWAY PLATFORM

1955 162’ b&w Hindi

d/s Ramesh Saigal pc Saigal Prod. lyr Sahir Ludhianvi c Dronacharya m Madan Mohan

lp Nalini Jaywant, Sunil Dutt, Sheila Ramani, Johnny Walker, Manmohan Krishna, Leela Mishra, Nisha, Nana Palsikar, Jagdeep

Melodramatic parable in a social-realist idiom. A flood forces a train to stop for 24 hours at a remote railway station in the Andher Nagari (land of darkness) kingdom ruled by an authoritarian king whose daughter Princess Indira (Ramani) is among the passengers. Other passengers include the unemployed Ramu (Dutt), his sister and aged mother; Kavi, a long-haired and cynical poet; a laundryman and his formidable wife; and an avaricious Marwari businessman, Nasibchand. When the food runs out, Nasibchand buys the local grocery shop and starts a black market. A Westernised clique, keeping their distance from the others, starts dancing and drinking while a Brahmin priest charges money to perform mandatory religious rituals. Indira falls in love with Ramu and wants to marry him right away, although the grocer’s poor daughter Naina (Jaywant) also loves him. The marriage is interrupted by the arrival of Indira’s royal father. Eventually Ramu and Naina get married. The film included the hit Basti basti parbat parbat (sung by Mohammed Rafi) and several catchy numbers by Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle.

ROJULU MARAYI/KALAM MARIPOCHU

1955 190’[Te]/211’[Ta] b&w Telugu/Tamil

d/co-st Tapi Chanakya pc Sarathi Pics co-st K.L. Narayana, C.V.R. Prasad dial/co-lyr[Te] Tapi Dharma Rao co-lyr[Te] Kosaraju dial/lyr [Ta] M. Rajamanikam c Kamal Ghosh m Master Venu

lp A. Nageshwara Rao[Te], Gemini Ganesh[Ta], Sowcar Janaki, Perumalu, Hemalatha, Relangi Venkatramaiah, C.S.R. Anjaneyulu[Te], T.S. Balaiah[Ta], Waheeda Rehman

Major Telugu/Tamil hit musical and reformist rural melodrama often cited as the film which redefined the formula for commercial success in 50s Telugu cinema. The peasant hero Venu (Nageshwara Rao/Ganesh) takes on the oppressive might of the zamindar (Anjaneyulu/Baliah) and succeeds, helped by a sympathetic police force, in redistributing the land to the peasants. The hero also marries a low-caste woman (Janaki) rejected by his parents. The film was apparently inspired by the Avadi Congress (1955) where Nehru called for a ‘socialist pattern of society in which the principle means of production are under social ownership’, a view replicated in the film’s dialogues and lyrics. The song Eruvaka sagaloi, picturised on Waheeda Rehman who thus became a star, was a megahit in Telugu and is regarded as signalling the advent of a new generation. According to V.A.K. Ranga Rao, the song’s tune had been used by C.R. Subburaman in Shri Lakshmamma Katha (1950), where the folk-singers Seeta and Ansuya claimed authorship, although it was probably adapted from a 20s HMV recording by their teacher Valluri Jagannatha Rao. When the M.G. Ramachandran hit Madurai Veeran (1956) used a similar tune, the producer was sued for plagiarism. The tune was later used for other South Indian lyrics and by S.D. Burman in Bambai Ka Babu (1960) for Asha Bhosle’s rendition of Dekhne mein bhola hai, dil ka salona.

SANTHANAM

1955 187’ b&w Telugu

d C.V. Ranganatha Das pc Sadhana Prod. co-dial/lyr Anisetty, Pinisetty m S. Dakshinamurthy c Rehman, Prasad, Rajamani

lp A. Nageshwara Rao, S.V. Ranga Rao, Amarnath, Chalam, Ramana Reddy, Savitri, Relangi Venkatramaiah, Sriranjani Jr., Mikkilineni

Melodrama about a sister and two brothers who believe themselves to be orphans. They grow up doing odd jobs and the elder brother becomes the manager of a touring theatre group, the younger a wrestler and the sister a maid in a rich household. They eventually trace their father and the family is reunited. Lata Mangeshkar sang her first Telugu film song, Nidurapora thammuda. L.V. Prasad is credited with ‘direction supervision’.

SHAP MOCHAN

1955? b&w Bengali

d/p Sudhir Mukherjee pc Production Syndicate st Phalguni Mukherjee sc Nripendra lyr Bimala c Deojibhai m Hemanta Mukherjee

lp Uttam Kumar, Pahadi Sanyal, Suchitra Sen, Kamal Mitra, Bikash Roy, Gangapada Basu, Suprobha Devi, Jiben, Amar, Deepak, Tapati, Banani, Nitish

An early example of a Kumar-Sen romance of star-crossed lovers. Mahendra (Kumar) belongs to a family of musicians cursed because an ancestor once humiliated his guru (shown in the film’s opening sequence). Mahendra’s elder brother Debendra (Sanyal) became blind and to avoid the same fate, Mahendra promises to abandon the family vocation and moves to Calcutta to live with the rich Umeshchandra (Mitra), whose daughter Madhuri (Sen) tries to make a bourgeois gentleman out of him. However, the impecunious Mahendra sees himself forced to return to music and he vents his anger at urban values with the film’s hit song Suno bandhu suno (sung by Hemanta Mukherjee). The curse strikes and he falls dangerously ill, but is rescued by a now-chastened Madhuri. The hit followed on the success of Pinaki Mukherjee’s Dhuli (1954) and continued the famous theme of musicians who physically suffer the clash between traditional values and urbanisation (cf. Anjan Choudhury’s Guru Dakshina 1987).

SHRI 420

aka Mr 420

1955 177’ b&w Hindi

d/p Raj Kapoor pc R.K. Films st/co-sc K.A. Abbas co-sc V.P. Sathe lyr Shailendra, Hasratjaipuri c Radhu Karmakar m Shankar-Jaikishen

lp Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Nadira, Nemo, Lalita Pawar, M. Kumar, Hari Shivdasani, Nana Palsikar, Bhudo Advani, Iftikhar, Sheila Vaz, Ramesh Sinha, Rashid Khan, Pesi Patel

Having played a tramp in Awara (1951), Kapoor elaborates his vagabond image further with this sentimental story about Raju (Kapoor), a country boy carrying the archetypal bundle on the end of a stick over his shoulder, who tries to make his fortune in Bombay. The city is presented in terms of Abbas’s familiar stereotypical contrast between the corruption of the urban rich and the warm-hearted poor (e.g. Pawar as the fruit-seller). Raju falls in love with Vidya (Nargis), a poor schoolteacher who has a paralysed father. Maya (Nadira) is the femme fatale who embroils Raju in a decadent life. Raju is seen gambling, playing the trumpet in a club, surrounded by dancing-girls (the number Mudmud ke na dekh), and he becomes a conman in the employ of Maya’s friend Seth Dharmanand, a ruthless capitalist.

When he is used to swindle the homeless, Raju rebels and a lively chase involving a bag of money provides the bridge to the happy ending. Opening with the Chaplin number Mera Joota hai japani (sung by Mukesh), the film includes some of the star’s most famous star songs: the carnivalesque Dil ka haal sune dilwala (sung by Manna Dey) and the best-known Kapoor-Nargis duet, performed in the rain as they fall in love, Pyar hua ikraar hua (sung by Manna Dey and Lata Mangeshkar).

UDAN KHATOLA

1955 151’ b&w Hindi

d S.U. Sunny pc Sunny Art Prod. s Azmi Bazidpuri lyr Shakeel Badayuni c Jal Mistry m/p Naushad

lp Dilip Kumar, Nimmi, Jeevan, T. Suryakumari, Agha, Nawab, Roopmala, Tuntun

Musical hit adapting Capra’s Lost Horizon (1937). An aeroplane crashes in the lost island of Shanga. Only Kashi (D. Kumar) is saved by Soni (Nimmi), the daughter of the peshwa, i.e. the minister. The two fall in love causing problems for her fiance Shangu (Jeevan). Kashi needs the queen’s (Suryakumari) permission to settle in the village but complications arise when the queen falls in love with him too. The queen manipulates a situation in which Soni is sacrificed (set to the song hit O door ke musafir), which is followed by the death of the hero as well. Produced by Naushad for the director’s company, it includes some of the composer’s famous songs: Mera salaam leja and the two numbers sung by Lata Mangeshkar, Hamare dil se na jana and Duba tara ummeedonse chhut gaya. Dubbed in Tamil and released successfully as Vanaratham (1956) with new lyrics by Kambadasan.

AMARA DEEPAM

aka The Eternal Lamp

1956 162’ b&w Tamil

d T. Prakash Rao pc Venus Pics p Venus Krishnamurthy s C.V. Sridhar lyr K.P. Kamakshi, A. Marudakasi, K.S. Gopalakrishnan c A. Vincent m T. Chalapathi Rao

lp Sivaji Ganesan, M.N. Nambiar, K.A. Thangavelu, Savitri, Padmini, Chittor V. Nagaiah, E.V. Saroja

While rescuing Aruna (Savitri) from kidnappers, Ashok (Ganesan) is hit by a car and loses his memory. Having joined a group of nomads, the gypsy singer Rupa (Padmini) falls for him and her love eventually helps cure his amnesia. He returns to Aruna and Rupa, who turns out to be Aruna’s sister, kidnapped as a child, is shot trying to save him from the villains. Scenarist Sridhar later wrote and directed several triangular love stories. The Carnatic music maestro G.N. Balasubramanyam and G. Ramanathan each contributed one composition. One of the songs refers to the landowner-peasant conflict at Thanjavur and the hero, employed for a while in a factory there, is allowed to express some dissatisfaction with the capitalist ethos. An adaptation of Mervyn LeRoy’s Random Harvest (1942), which was much more faithfully translated into Bengali the following year (Harano Sur, 1957). The director remade this Tamil hit into Hindi, Amar Deep (1958) with Dev Anand and Vyjayanthimala, produced by the Tamil version’s star Ganesan.

APARAJITO

aka The Unvanquished

1956 127’(113’) b&w Bengali

d/sc Satyajit Ray pc Epic Films st Bibhutibhushan Bannerjee’s novels Pather Panchali and Aparajito c Subrata Mitra m Ravi Shankar

lp Kamu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Pinaki Sen Gupta, Smaran Ghoshal, Santi Gupta, Ramani Sengupta, Ranibala, Sudipta Roy, Ajay Mitra, Charuprakash Ghosh, Subodh Ganguly, Mani Srimani, Hemanta Chatterjee, Kali Bannerjee, Kalicharan Roy, Kamala Adhikari, Lalchand Bannerjee, K.S. Pandey, Meenakshi Devi, Anil Mukherjee, Harendrakumar Chakravarty, Bhaganu Palwan

Following on from Pather Panchali (1955), Apu (Pinaki Sen Gupta/Smaran Ghoshal) comes of age. His father, the Brahmin Harihar Rai (Kanu Bannerjee), dies in the family’s new home near Benares and his mother, Sarbajaya (Karuna Bannerjee), is forced to accept the charity of a rich uncle (R. Sengupta) in another village in order to educate her son. Apu’s insistence on going to school rather than taking up his family’s priestly vocation sows the seeds of further tragedy. His departure for a Calcutta college is followed, inevitably, by the death of his mother. The film is more extensively plotted than its predecessor and more melodramatic, e.g. making Apu’s refusal to stay with his mother a personal rather than a historical conflict. His life in Calcutta, studying by day and working in a printing press by night, is juxtaposed with his mother’s wasting illness. Ray also uses with greater freedom a directly romantic brand of symbolism, such as the mother festooning the house with lights for the Diwali festival shortly before her husband dies, the latter being accompanied by a shot of rising pigeons at dawn. Ray noted that several problems prevented a full realisation of the script, including a defective Arriflex, the need to rush through the editing and difficulties with composer Ravi Shankar which created ‘blank moments, [s]lowing down the film’. However, his contemporary Ghatak admired precisely this musical sparseness: ‘Sarbajaya and Apu are returning to the village from Benares; the train leaves the village behind; soon through the windows one can see the landscape of Bengal. [J]ust then on the soundtrack you hear that [Pather Panehah] theme tune. Just once for the whole length of the film, but once is enough. A [c]orrelative between the past and present floods your mind with memories of Nischintpur and Durga and the white cotton fields’ (‘Sound In Film’, in Ghatak, 1987). With the help of Ray’s regular art director Bansi Chandragupta, Mitra pioneered the use of bounce lighting to suggest the ambience of Benares houses on studio sets. The film flopped but was re-evaluated after its critical success in Europe.

AWAAZ

1956 146’ b&w Hindi

d/s/co-lyr Zia Sarhadi pc Mehboob Prod. lyr Shailendra, Vishwamitter Adil, Prem Dhawan m Salil Choudhury

lp Nalini Jaywant, Usha Kiron, Zul Velani, Rajendra Kumar, Nasir Hussain, Anwar Hussain, Sapru

Sarhadi’s best-known melodrama drew on Pudovkin and Donskoi-style Soviet realism to tell of an oppressive industrialist (Sapru), his trusted foreman, Bhatnagar (N. Hussain) and the lives of Bhatnagar’s family. The foreman obsessed with his daughter Bela’s (Kiron) marriage, pretends to have a large sum set aside to secure her future. When the father of her fiance, Ashok (R. Kumar), claims a large dowry, Bhatnagar is distraught. He loses his job and dies of the shock. His son Kishen (Velani), who resented that money had allegedly been saved for his sister, now discovers that there is no money and, in a drunken moment, accuses his own wife Jamuna (Jaywant) of having stolen the cash. Desperate to raise the dowry, Jamuna does odd jobs and falls into the clutches of the old industrialist who had sacked her father. The man promises to give her the money in exchange for sex. She takes the money and then commits suicide. The film contains many references to Soviet film styles, including the heavy-handed use of low and high angles, e.g. the shots of the overcoat-wearing Banke (A. Hussain), a figure representing the organised proletariat (esp. in the militant workers’ song Araram tararam duniya he kaise kaise gam) and the family’s self-appointed protector. The only print currently available has been reconstructed from fragments of original prints.

AYODHYAPATI

1956?’ b&w Hindi

d S. Fattelal pc Pushpa Pics s Pushpa Pics Story Dept lyr Saraswati Kumar Deepak c P. Isaac m Ravi

lp Raaj Kumar, Anant Kumar, Balraj Mehta, Ratnamala, Kanchanmala, Rajan Haksar, Gadadhar Sharma, Dar Kashmiri, Amrit Rana, Heera, Nalini, Bhalerao, Dabboo, Roshan Kumari, Kiran, Asha

Fattelal made this mythological after he left the Prabhat Studio. The film shows the decay of a genre in which Fattelal used to excel. The story, featuring early episodes from the Ramayana, tells how Kaikeyi saves the life of King Dasharatha in a celestial battle between gods and demons and wins two boons. The rest of the story narrates the early life and adventures of Rama.

CHINTAMANI

1956 158’ b&w Telugu

d P.S. Ramakrishna Rao pc Bharani Pics s/lyr Ravoor Venkata Satyanarayana Rao c Sridhar m P. Bhanumathi, Addepalli Rama Rao

lp P. Bhanumathi, N.T. Rama Rao, Jamuna, S.V. Ranga Rao, Relangi Venkatramaiah, Kalyanam Raghuramaiah, Rushyendramani, Lakshmikantam

Bharani Studios’ remake of Y.V. Rao’s Tamil mythological, Chintamani (1937). Chintamani (Bhanumathi), forced into prostitution by her mother, falls in love with the merchant Bilwamangal (NTR). The latter reciprocates her feelings, which leads to much tragedy, revealed in mystical imagery: his wife’s corpse and a python help Bilwamangal cross a river to be with his beloved. Chintamani is disillusioned, prompting the gods Krishna and Rukmini to descend to earth to show her the right path. The legend was filmed repeatedly, some versions presenting it as a biography of the saint poet Surdas (Homi Master’s silent Bilwamangal, 1929; Madan Theatres’ Bilwamangal, 1932). Most Hindi and Bengali versions tell the story from the male perspective, following Girish Ghosh’s famous play Bilwamangal (1886), but the South Indian films narrate Chintamani’s tale. Although at times accused of plagiarising C. Ramchandra’s Hindi compositions from Azad (1955), Bhanumathi’s score is successful (e.g. Ravoyi ravoyi, Punnami chakorinoyi). Kannada actress B. Saroja Devi repeated the title role the following year.

CHORI CHORI

1956 158’ b&w Hindi

d Anant Thakur pc AVM s Aga Jani Kashmiri lyr Hasrat Jaipuri, Shailendra c V.N. Reddy m Shankar-Jaikishen

lp Nargis, Raj Kapoor, Gope, Master Bhagwan, Johnny Walker, David, Mukri, Raj Mehra, Pran, Indira Bansal, Amir Bano, Rajasulochana, Kumari Kamala, Sayee, Subbulakshmi

A lively comedy derived from Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934). A millionaire’s daughter affectionately nicknamed Baby (Nargis) wants to marry a man her father knows to be a gold-digger. Annoyed by her father, she runs away and meets the impoverished journalist Suman (Kapoor). Together they journey through South India and they fall in love. This is the last of the romantic duos between Nargis and Kapoor. Nargis only appeared once more in his films: Jagte Raho (1956) as a final tribute to her collaboration with RK Films.

CID

1956 146’ b&w Hindi

d Raj Khosla pc Guru Dutt Films s Inder Raj Anand lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri, Jan Nissar Akhtar c V.K. Murthy m O.P. Nayyar

lp Dev Anand, Shakila, Waheeda Rehman, Johnny Walker, Kumkum, K.N. Singh, Bir Sakhuja, Jagdish, Prabhuji, Uma Devi, Rajesh Sharma, Paul Sharma

Khosla’s first successful film, made in the crime movie tradition of Navketan inflected by Guru Dutt’s influence. Police Inspector Shekhar (Anand) investigates the death of a newspaper editor when he meets Rekha (Shakila), the daughter of the commissioner (K.N. Singh). Shekhar keeps running into a mysterious woman (Rehman) who, in a cloak-and-dagger encounter, tries to bribe him to release a crook. He meets her again at Rekha’s birthday party. The crook she wants released is mysteriously killed in jail and Shekhar is blamed for police torture. He goes into hiding, pursued by the murderer he was investigating as well as by the police. He eventually solves the case in hospital. The film is dominated by Rehman’s luminous presence in her first Hindi role, the camera enhancing her mystery with soft-focus over-the-shoulder shots. Her sensuality is particularly well rendered in the scenes where she tries to seduce the crime boss (with the song Kahin pe nigahen) in order to facilitate the hero’s escape.

HATIMTAI

1956?’ col Hindi

d Homi Wadia pc Basant Pics s J.B.H. Wadia, Hakim Lala lyr Raza Mehdi, Akhtar Roomani, B.D. Mishra, Chand Pandit c Anant Wadadekar m S.N. Tripathi

lp Jairaj, Shakila, B.M. Vyas, Naina, Meenakshi, Krishna Kumari, Sheikh, S.N. Tripathi

An Arabian Nights tale first filmed by Prafulla Ghosh as a silent 4-part serial in 1929. It tells, in Gevacolor, the story of Hatim who travels in the poverty-stricken Muflisganj, giving clothes and alms to the needy. He meets the Munir Shami, the impoverished prince of Kharzaman. The prince tells Hatim his story: the prince was to marry the daughter of Shah Saudagar Barzukh, but when the shah had cast his ‘evil eye’ on the fairy Gulnar the fairy turned to stone, promising that the shah’s own daughter will also turn to stone on the day of her marriage unless someone solves the Seven Riddles that will free both Gulnar and the princess. Hatim, after many adventures in enchanted woods meeting fairies and giants, solves riddles like ‘What I experience once I want to experience again’ or ‘Do good deeds and throw them in the water’.

JAGTE RAHO/EK DIN RAATRE

aka Stay Awake aka Under Cover of Night aka A Night in the City

1956 149’[H]/153’[B] b&w Hindi/Bengali

d/s Sombhu Mitra, Amit Moitra p Raj Kapoor pc R.K. Films dial K.A. Abbas[H] lyr Shailendra, Prem Dhawan[H] c Radhu Karmakar m Salil Choudhury

lp Raj Kapoor, Pradeep Kumar, Sumitra Devi, Smriti Biswas, Pahadi Sanyal, Nemo, Iftikhar, Sulochana Chatterjee, Daisy Irani, Nana Palsikar, Motilal[H]/Chhabi Biswas[B], Moni Chatterjee, Bikram Kapoor, Bhupendra Kapoor, Bhudo Advani, Krishnakant, Pran, Ratan Gaurang, Rashid Khan, Nargis

Two major figures from the Bengali IPTA, actor-director Sombhu Mitra and composer Salil Choudhury, collaborated with Raj Kapoor on this expressionist effort that became successful only after a 115’ version of the film received the main prize at the Karlovy Vary festival in 1957. Kapoor plays a ‘thirsty peasant’ wandering through Calcutta looking for a drink of water. He breaks into an apartment block but is discovered and has to dodge the residents, an ingenious narrative device to move the hero from one flat and one milieu to another, allowing for a comic yet critical survey of middle-class Bengali life. The film ends with the hero’s searing denunciation of a class that places no value on honesty and a fantasy sequence in which Nargis finally offers him water to the tune of a song heralding the dawn, Jago ujiyara chhaye. The British critic Geoff Brown noted: ‘Kapoor’s character is cut from Chaplin’s cloth. He starts out sharing food with a dog, squatting on the pavement, and spends most of the film acting in pantomime, darting in and out of rooms, hiding in a drum, shinnying down a drainpipe, periodically pursued by a lively crowd of residents wielding anything from sticks to stringless tennis racquets. The result is one of Kapoor’s most diverting films.’

Raj Kapoor in Jagte Raho

KABULIWALA

1956 116’ b&w Bengali

d/sc Tapan Sinha pc Charuchitra st Rabindranath Tagore c Subodh Ray m Ravi Shankar

lp Chhabi Biswas, Tinku Thakur, Radhamohan Bhattacharya, Manju Dey

Sinha’s version of the Tagore short story (pub. 1918) about an Afghan tribesman, Rehmat (Biswas), who sells spices in Calcutta and befriends a little girl (Thakur, sister of Sharmila Tagore in her only film role, in an uninhibited performance) who reminds him of the daughter he left behind. Having killed a man who tried to cheat him, the Kabuliwala is jailed for many years and on his release he finds that the little girl has grown up, prompting the realisation that his own daughter has probably forgotten him. Radhamohan Bhattacharya (cf. Udayer Patbey, 1944) played the girl’s father and Manju Dey her mother, both evoking a sentimentalised history of Calcutta’s bhadralok. The story was remade in Hindi by Hemen Gupta (1961) starring Balraj Sahni in a Bimal Roy production.

KULADAIVAM

1956? b&w Tamil

d Krishnan-Panju p S.K. Pics. s Murasoli Maran m Sudarshanam

lp T. Balasubramaniam, S.V. Sahasranamam, Rajagopal, S.S. Rajendran, Mustafa, T.R. Natarajan, Pandharibai, M.N. Rajam, Mainavadi, Vijayakumari

The educated, middle-class Shantha (Pandharibai), the pride of her family, marries the lower middle-class owner of a textile shop, Muthaiyya (Sahasranamam) and starts to run her new family, consisting of an aged aunt, three brothers-in-law, one of which has a little stepson called Kanmani, and a widowed young cousin, Latha (Mainavadi). The family comes under stress with the wedding of two brothers-in-law, prompting the elder one to move to a village taking his wife, son and aunt. When he is on his deathbed, Shantha strives successfully to reunite the family.

MADURAI VEERAN

aka The Soldier of Madurai

1956 199’(165’) b&w Tamil

d Yoganand pc Krishna Pics, p Lena Chettiar s/co-lyr Kannadasan co-lyr Udumalai Narayana Kavi, Thanjai Ramaiyadas c M.A. Rehman m S. Dakshinamurthy

lp M.G. Ramachandran, N.S. Krishnan, P. Bhanumathi, Padmini, E.V. Saroja, T.A. Mathuram

A megahit version of the legend of Madurai Veeran (played by actor-politician MGR), a a popular Tamil Nadu village deity and the subject of numerous ballads and plays. Set in the 17th C. court of the Poligars, the story starts with Veeran, rather like Oedipus, being abandoned in a forest as an infant because of a bad omen, but he is protected by the wild animals and later adopted, amid much celebration, by a cobbler and his wife (Krishnan and Mathuram). He rescues and falls in love with Princess Bommi (Bhanumathi), who is promised, by convention, to her maternal uncle. Just before her forced marriage, he abducts her, while she, in turn, rescues him from atop an elephant when he is sentenced to death. The happy end is in sight when, in tune with the MGR narrative showing two women vying for the unreachable hero, he also falls for Velaiammal (Padmini), causing a love triangle which ends when the hero’s body is mutilated, and he becomes - with his two consorts - the icon of Tamil Nadu. The film belongs to the type of action spectacular made popular by the Gemini and Vijaya studios, but extends into a rampant animism as all of (studio-bound) nature participates in and applauds the hero performing death-defying feats shot in ways that often recall the late silent era (cf. Hamir’s acrobatics in Diler Jigar, 1931). Extending the resemblance is the film’s use of framing devices, presented frontally before an unusually submissive, imagined audience, and underlined by its final image: the prone, foreshortened body of the hero flanked by two mourning women, flowers raining down on the trio from the heavens as metallic statuettes of the threesome emerge. The narrative, however, takes on a new dimension by equating the hero’s physical mobility with the character’s movement from underdog to tragic lover to nobleman and eventually to divine status. It was written by the noted DMK rationalist poet Kannadasan, and is an early example of the political appropriation of Tamil folk ballads praising heroes like Chinnadan, Chinnathambi, Jambulingam and others. Most of these heroes, according to Vanamamalai (1981) quoted by Pandian (1992), are low-caste men who protect crops, protect the cattle, protect the rights of lower-caste women, challenge sexual norms, challenge the privilege of higher-caste groups and demand equal rights for the lower-caste men with talent and skill’.

MALELA JIV

1956 141’ b&w Gujarati

d/sc Mannar Raskapur pc Sadhana Chitra st/dial/co-lyr Pannalal Patel c Bipin Gajjar, Manek Mehta co-lyr/m Avinash Vyas

lp Dina Gandhi, Mahesh, Champsibhai Nagda, Vishnukumar Vyas, Babu Raje, Pratap Ojha, Chandrika Thakore, Champak Lala, Tarla Mehta, Leela Jariwala, Vijay Bhatt, Kamlesh Thakkar, Manjula, Shobha Joshi, Narmadashankar, Naran Rajgor, Chandrakant Sangani, Baby Purnima

Love story scripted by the prominent Gujarati novelist Patel. The hero Kanji, separated from his lower-caste girlfriend Jivi, tries to persuade her into a pro-forma wedding which, he hopes, will allow the couple to continue their relationship. Things take a tragic turn as Kanji is forced to leave the village and Jivi commits suicide. The earthy realism of Patel’s descriptions and language is substantially retained.

NEW DELHI

1956 176’ b&w Hindi

d Mohan Segal pc Deluxe Films s Inder Raj Anand, Radhakishen lyr Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri c K.H. Kapadia m Shankar-Jaikishen

lp Vyjayanthimala, Kishore Kumar, Jabeen, Radhakishen, Nasir Hussain, Dhoomal

Segal’s remarkable satire, continuing his work with Kishore Kumar, advocates national unity. The North Indian Daulatram Khanna (N. Hussain) opposes the marriage of his son Anand (K. Kumar) with Janaki (Vyjayanthimala), the daughter of the South Indian Mr Subramanyam. He throws out the Bengali painter Ashok who loves Khanna’s other daughter, Nikki (Jabeen). The musical highlight of the deliberate cultural pot-pourri is Kishore Kumar dressed as Fred Astaire with a cane and a top hat singing Nakhrewali to an indigenous dance number by Vyjayanthimala. The film included several topical references to contemporary politics.

RANGOON RADHA

1956 192’ b&w Tamil

d A. Kasilingam pc Mekala Pics st C.N. Annadurai sc/dial/co-lyr M. Karunanidhi co-lyr Athmanathan, Pattukotai Kalyanasundaram, Subramanya Bharati c G. Durai m T.R. Papa

lp Sivaji Ganesan, S.S. Rajendran, P. Bhanumathi, M.N. Rajam, Rajasulochana, N.S. Krishnan

Complicated adventure and murder mystery attacking feudal superstition. A flashback reveals the evil designs of Dharmalinga Mudaliar (Ganesan): though married to Rangam (Bhanumathi), he now wants to marry her sister Thangam (Rajam) as well in order to get their ancestral property. Mudaliar’s wife, locked in a room and declared insane, gives birth to a son before she escapes in disguise. She witnesses her husband murdering a tantric conman who promised to reinvigorate Mudaliar’s sex drive. In Rangoon, she is protected by Naidu (Krishnan) and gives birth to a daughter named Radha (Rajasulochana). When the film moves to the present, Nagasundaram (Rajendran), the man who falls in love with the grown-up Radha, is revealed to be the son of Mudaliar. Eventually the two unmask the villain and avenge their mother. Apparently inspired by Gaslight (1940), the film offers a rare example of Tamil star Ganesan in a negative role.

RARICHAN ENNA PAURAN

aka Citizen Rarichan

1956 166’ b&w Malayalam

d/lyr P. Bhaskaran p T.K. Pareekutty pc Chandrathara Prod., Vauhini s Uroob c B.J. Reddy m K. Raghavan

lp Vilasini, Prema, Miss K.P. Raman Nair, Master Latif, K.P. Oomer, J.A.R. Anand, P. Kunjava, Ramu Kariat, Kochappan, Kalamandalam Kalyanikutty Amma, Padmanabhan, Manavalan Joseph

Rarichan (Latif) is an orphan employed by a kindly widow and her daughter in their teashop. When he saves the day by producing the daughter’s dowry enabling her to get married, it turns out he stole it and is arrested. Lyricist Bhaskaran’s first solo as director in many ways continues the Newspaper Boy (1955) type of realism, but in more melodramatic form using more songs (including some lilting Mappila folk music from North Malabar). The other film that probably inaugurated this trend of ‘heartwarming’ realist films featuring children performing adult tasks was Boot Polish (1954).

SAGARIKA

1956 152’ b&w Bengali

d/sc Agragami pc S.C. Prod. p Sukumar Kumar st/dial/co-lyr Nitai Bhattacharya co-lyr Pranab Roy, Gouriprasanna Majumdar c Bijoy Ghosh m Robin Chattopadhyay

lp Suchitra Sen, Uttam Kumar, Jamuna Singha, Namita Sinha, Tapati Ghosh, Kamal Mitra, Jahar Ganguly, Pahadi Sanyal, Anup Kumar, Sabita Bhattacharya, Manjushree Ghatak, Jiban Bose, Nitish Mukhopadhyay, Santosh Sinha, Salil Dutta

Classic Sen/Kumar melodrama evoking e.g. Nitin Bose’s love tragedies with Dilip Kumar. Impoverished and orphaned medical student Arun (U. Kumar) falls in love with colleague Sagarika (Sen). Following an act of perfidy by Arun’s cousin Sipra (Sinha), who is also in love with him, Arun loses a scholarship to go to England and has to borrow money on condition that he marry Basanti (Singha) on his return. The suffering Sagarika has to look after the illiterate Basanti, which means writing Basanti’s love-letters to Arun. Arun goes blind after an accident, and on his return Sagarika nurses him back to health, pretending to be Basanti. In the end, the lead couple unite. As in the Kapoor/Nargis love stories of the same period, this film is famous for the ecstatic, soft-focus close-ups of the lead pair and esp. of Suchitra Sen, which became classic icons in Bengali popular culture, transcending the characters and suggesting a fantasy of romance in which love can, by its own internal strength, develop an independent destiny. The monologues, esp. of Uttam Kumar as a voice on the soundtrack, contribute to the lyrical scene transitions, a style which evolved further with e.g. Ajoy Kar (cf. Saptapadi, 1961), Salil Dutta and Asit Sen generating the finest examples of popular film’s absorption of the Bengali romantic literary tradition. These films, and others such as Saat Pake Bandha (1963), are further enhanced by their contrast to the resurgence of traditional values in 80s Bengali cinema, partly through assimilating the ‘social’ contemporary Jatra, and partly as a means of keeping a distance from the influence of Hindi film.

TAKSAAL

aka The Mint

1956?’ b&w Hindi

d/p/s Hemen Gupta pc Hemen Gupta Prod. lyr Prem Dhawan c V.N. Reddy m Roshan

lp Balraj Sahni, Nirupa Roy, Smriti Biswas, Radhakrishen, Master Jayant

A ‘realist’ melodrama, independently produced by Gupta in Bombay, bemoaning the power of money. The lawyer Jatin Mukherjee (Sahni) is beset by disasters because of his lack of money: his son dies, his unmarried sister is raped by her employer and commits suicide. These events lead him to believe that only wealth can secure happiness and he proceeds to acquire it through crime.

TENALI RAMAKRISHNA/TENALI RAMAN

1956 204’[Te]/195’[Ta] b&w Telugu/Tamil/Kannada

d/p/c B.S. Ranga pc Vikram Prod, st Based on C.K. Venkataramaiah’s play sc/dial[Te]/lyr[Te] Samudrala Raghavacharya dial[Ta] Kannadasan, Murugadasa m Vishwanathan-Ramamurthy

lp P. Bhanumathi, Jamuna, N.T. Rama Rao, A. Nageshwara Rao[Te], Chittor V. Nagaiah[Te], Surabhi Balasaraswathi[Te], Sivaji Ganesan[Ta], T.S. Dorairaj[Ta], Rajkumar[K], Balkrishna[K], Sandhya, K. Mukkamala

Megabudget trilingual featuring the legendary folk hero and jester in the government of Krishnadeva Raya, king of the Vijayanagara Empire 1509–30. The Bahamani Kingdom, in a protracted war with Vijayanagara, sends the dancer and courtesan Krishnasani (Bhanumathi) to seduce the king (NTR) and to spy on him. The king falls in love with her and only an elaborate ruse by Tenali Ramakrishna (Nageshwara Rao/Ganesan/Rajkumar) and Chief Minister Timmarasu (Nagaiah/Dorairaj/Balkrishna), another legendary figure (and the subject of an independent film biography by K. Kameshwara Rao in 1962), in which they disguise themselves as a holy man and his disciple, enables the king to realise the truth. Bhanumathi’s musical presence was again the film’s star attraction. The story had been filmed by H.M. Reddy in 1941.

ADARSHA HINDU HOTEL

1957 141’ b&w Bengali

d Ardhendu Sen pc Sreelekha Pics st Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel (1940) sc Jyotirmoy Roy lyr Manabendra Mukherjee m Ali Akbar Khan

lp Chhabi Biswas, Dhiraj Bhattacharya, Jahar Ganguly, Tulsi Chakraborty, Jahar Roy, Anup Kumar, Sandhyarani, Sabitri Chatterjee, Sikha Bag, Sova Sen

Based on a minor novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, the author of Pather Panchali (1929), Hotel had already been successfully adapted to the stage for the Rangmahal theatre in Calcutta (1953). The plot revolves around two rival hotels at the Ranaghat railway station. The establishment run by Bechu Chakraborty (Ganguly) is winning because of its excellent cook, Hajari Thakur (Bhattacharya). The maidservant Padma (Sandhyarani), envious of the cook’s reputation, steals some utensils from the kitchen and frames the cook, who is arrested. On his release, he starts the Adarsha Hindu Hotel. It becomes popular and he wins the contract to start a restaurant at the railway station itself. In the end, he has the satisfaction of employing his former boss as well as the troublesome Padma, which he does without losing his humility.

AJANTRIK

aka Pathetic Fallacy aka The Unmechanical

1957 120’(102’) b&w Bengali

d/sc Ritwik Ghatak pc L.B. Films st Subodh Ghosh c Dinen Gupta m Ali Akbar Khan

lp Kali Bannerjee, Kajal Gupta, Shriman Deepak, Gyanesh Mukherjee, Keshto Mukherjee, Gangapada Basu, Satindra Bhattacharya, Tulsi Chakraborty, Jhurni, Anil Chatterjee, Seeta Mukherjee

Ghatak’s 2nd major film explores the romantic trope of the pathetic fallacy (making nature into a metaphor for human emotions), a figure often used in Indian literature and cinema (cf. the films of Shantaram or Kidar Sharma). However, Ghatak modifies the trope, endowing it with complex historical resonances as tribal culture (here the Oraon culture) and a motor car are put on the side of nature while the ‘human emotion’ side of the trope is represented by greed in the form of rampant capitalism and industrialisation in the shape of bulldozers and the mining town of Ranchi. The plot revolves around Bimal (K. Bannerjee) and his battered taxi, an old Chevrolet he calls Jagaddal. Because he takes his car to be a living being, many believe Bimal to be mad. In a long sequence, Bimal plies his trade, his world intersecting at various points with that of the Oraon tribals. Industrialisation proceeds relentlessly, sowing discord among the tribals, and Jagaddal breaks down irretrievably. It has to be dismantled and sold for scrap. In the end, a child finds the car horn on the street and plays with it, making it emit the call of the ‘Oraon’ horn. Many parallel storylines are interwoven into the basic plot, along with extensive sequences and repeated images of both tribal cultures and landscapes. These strands come together in a scene where Bimal first shares in an Oraon feast and then literally burdens his car with objects of nature after which the car breaks down. The other side of the complex trope is represented by imagery evoking the speed of technologically driven change: electric telegraph wires, a train, the village madman’s (K. Mukherjee) metal basin which is replaced by a gleaming new one at the end. Ghatak commented in 1958: ‘The idea of the machine has always had an association of monstrosity for us. It devours all that is good, all that is contemplative and spiritual. It is something that is alien. [T]his apathy may be due to the fact that all change and the very introduction of the machine age was the handiwork of foreign overlords. It may have more comprehensive causes, encompassing all the pangs of Western civilisation. But the end-product of all these causes seems to be an ideological streak which is doing immense harm in all practical spheres of life’ (‘Some Thoughts on Ajantrik’, in Ghatak, 1987). The film itself suggests a more complex position on the question of industrialisation: not that machines are monstrous (Jagaddal is Bimal’s love object) but that the forces driving the speed of change disregard and thus destroy the slower, more human tempo at which people adopt and incorporate change into their networks of social relations.

AASHA

1957 171* b&w/col Hindi

d M.V. Raman pc Raman Studios s Jawar Seetaraman dial/lyr Rajinder Krishen c S. Hardip, Fali Mistry m C. Ramchandra

lp Vyjayanthimala, Kishore Kumar, Pran, Raj Mehra, Minoo Mumtaz, Randhir, Naina, Shivraj, Patanjal, Lalita Pawar, Om Prakash

Partly made in colour, this love story and crime drama is a comedy variation of the Hamlet theme. The story revolves around an old landowner, Hasmukhlal (Prakash), his son Kishore (K. Kumar) who is accused of murder, and the villain Raj (Pran) who is Kishore’s cousin. The love object is Nirmala (Vyjayanthimala), the niece of a millionaire coveted by Raj. Kishore, masquerading as an Arab, launches a theatre company and resolves the conflicts by performing a play in front of the ‘real-life’ characters to whom the fiction is addressed. Director Raman, star Vyjayanthimala and writer Jawar Seetaraman enlivened a standard AVM plot, with Ramchandra’s fast-paced music and Kishore Kumar’s mainly slapstick acting and relying on his pioneering singing style culminating in the foot-stomping and ever popular number Ina Mina Dika (sung in two versions, one by Kishore Kumar and the female version by Asha Bhosle).

AMBIKAPATHY

1957 187’ b&w/col Tamil

d/dial P. Neelakantan pc A.L.S. Prod. p V. Arunachalam sc Sakthi Krishnaswamy, Chinna Annamalai, M. Lakshmanan lyr Thanjai Ramaiyadas, Kannadasan, K.D. Santhanam, K.M. Balasubramanyam, Pattukotai Kalyanasundaram, Adimoolam Gopalakrishnan, K.S. Krishnamurthy c V. Ramamurthy m G. Ramanathan

lp P. Bhanumathi, Sivaji Ganesan, M.K. Radha, M.N. Nambiar, Rajasulochana, N.S. Krishnan, T.A. Mathuram, Chittor V. Nagaiah, K.A. Thangavelu, A. Karunanidhi, Santhanam, Kannan, Natarajan

Legendary tale about the 11th C. court poet Kambar, a plot used earlier by Duncan (1937). The love story between the lower-caste poet Ambikapathy (Ganesan) and Princess Amaravati (Bhanumathi) is mapped on to a disagreement between Kambar, who is translating the Ramayana into Tamil, and his son and ‘modern’ disciple, Ambikapathy, who critiques the translation for its acceptance of caste divisions. The spectacular end has the king challenging Ambikapathy to improvise 108 songs in praise of chaste love. The poet miscalculates and his last song is a passionate love song addressed to the princess, for which he is sentenced to death.

BANDI

1957?’ b&w Hindi

d Satyen Bose pc Shri Pics dial Mahendra Pran lyr Rajinder Krishen c Madan Sinha m Hemanta Mukherjee

lp Ashok Kumar, Bina Rai, Kishore Kumar, Anoop Kumar, Nanda, Shyama, Kanhaiyalal, Kammo, Mishra, Banerjee, Krishnakant

Satyen Bose’s melodrama, based on Sailajananda Mukherjee’s Bengali film Bondi (1942), features the Kumar brothers (Ashok, Kishore and Anup). Madhav (Kishore Kumar) is the innocent and illiterate brother of the educated and married Shankar (Ashok Kumar) who works for an eccentric zamindar, becoming the object of the affections of the zamindar’s daughter Mala (Rai). The villain of the piece, Choubeji (Mishra), causes Shankar to be jailed for 15 years. Shankar’s wife (Shyama) dies and his younger brother Madhav, now the guardian of Shankar’s daughter (Nanda), arranges her marriage to a boy who happens to be the villain’s son. When Shankar is released, he marries Mala and sets out to avenge himself on Choubeji, causing violent conflicts in which he nearly kills his own brother. There are several Kishore Kumar solos in this film remembered as one of the comic star’s few ‘serious’ roles. Director Bose immediately went on to cast the three Kumar brothers in the farce Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (1958).

BHAGYA REKHA

1957 176’ b&w Telugu

d B.N. Reddi pc Ponnaluri Bros s Palagummi Padmaraju lyr Devulapalli Krishna Sastry, Kosaraju, Adisesha Reddy c B.N. Konda Reddy m Pendyala Nageshwara Rao

lp N.T. Rama Rao, Jamuna, D. Hemalatha, Govindrajulu Subba Rao, Sowcar Janaki, Relangi Venkatramaiah, Lakshmikantam, E.V. Saroja

Reddi’s hit film (one of the few films he did not produce himself) tells of the orphan Lakshmi (Jamuna) who is raised by her kindly uncle Nayarana Rao and her evil aunt Jagadamba. Narayana Rao and Jagadamba already have two children: the boy Kotaiah who runs away to join the army and the spoilt daughter Kalyani who wants to marry the manager of a cinema theatre. When Kalyani’s fiance falls in love with Lakshmi, Lakshmi leaves and finds a second home when she restores a lost child to its mother. While Lakshmi works as a tutor to a rich girl whose brother Ravi (NTR) falls in love with her, aunt Jagadamba starts spreading malicious rumours, preventing the lovers from marrying and driving Lakshmi away again. Ravi falls ill with frustration but eventually things are set right when the son Kotaiah returns home and discovers the injustice his mother inflicted on the heroine.

CHAKRAVARTHI THIRUMAGAL

1957 ? b&w Tamil

d P. Neelakantan p A.L.S. Prod, Lena Pics. st P.A. Kumar dial Elangovan

m G. Ramanathan

lp M.G. Ramachandran, P.S. Veerappa, Anjali Devi, S. Varalakshmi

In a tough swayamvar (contest to win the bride), Prince Udayan Suriyan (MGR) of Kaveripattinam wins Princess Kalamalini (Anjali Devi) of Maruda Nadu by defeating the Maruda general Bhairavan (Veerappa). The latter plots with Durga (Varalakshmi), the princess’s best friend who also loves Udayan, to abduct Kalamalini on her wedding night while Durga takes her place in the marital bed. However, Udayan notices the difference. When Kalamalini escapes from captivity and returns to the palace disguised as a dancer, she discovers the truth and together with Udayan she regains her rightful position.

CHINTAMANI

1957 187’ col/b&w Kannada

d/s M.N. Basavarajaiah pc Lokeshwari Pics ph Kotnis

lp B. Saroja Devi, Ashwath, Narasimhraju, Lakshmidevi, Balkrishna, M.S.S. Pandit, Master Hirannayya, Sampath, Rajakumari

Kannada remake of the Bhanumathi hit (1956), emphasising the melodramatic rather than the mythological aspects of the legend. The prostitute Chintamani (Saroja Devi) entices the saintly Bilwamangal (Ashwath) away from his wife. He is, however, returned to his true purpose in life following a series of calamities including his father’s death and wife’s suicide. He blinds himself in remorse before reuniting with his lover. The film was also an early experiment in colour in Kannada.

DEKH KABIRA ROYA

1957 141’ b&w Hindi

d Amiya Chakravarty pc Shrirangam st Manoranjan Ghosh sc Chandrakant lyr Rajinder Krishen c Ajit Kumar m R.L. Suri

lp Anita Guha, Amita, Anoop Kumar, Daljit, Jawahar Kaul, Shubha Khote, Sundar

A romance masquerading as a debate on art. A painter, a writer and a singer meet three women, each of whom loves one of the art forms they practise. Unfortunately, they are mismatched. The ensuing misunderstandings are resolved only after their respective soul mates have been discovered and their marriages arranged. This is one the the last independent films by A. Chakravarty, formerly of Bombay Talkies and the man who discovered Dilip Kumar in his first film, Jwar Bhata (1944).

DILER DAKU

1957?’ b&w Hindi

d Noshir Engineer pc Basant Pics s Boman Shroff co-dial/lyr Chand Pandit co-dial Pritam Dehlvi c Anant Wadadekar m Shafi M. Nagri

lp Fearless Nadia, John Cawas, Samar Roy, Chanda, Boy Prithvi, Julian Gaikwad, Hira Sawant, Sheikh, Kallu Ustad, Rajni, Sardar Mansoor, Boy Sikandar, S. Advani, Vijaya Choudhury, Baby Mangala, Abdulla, Yadav

Remake of the Wadia Bros’ 1931 debut feature which launched the stunt genre most closely associated with Wadia Movietone and its fearless female star. When the king is overthrown by his commander-in-chief and his minister, Princess Farida (Nadia) is rescued and raised by the old Chacha. Farida becomes an expert swordfighter and horsewoman. With the help of Kamran (Cawas), the minister’s good son, she retakes the palace and punishes the villains in hand-to-hand combat.

DO AANKHEN BARAH HAATH

aka Two Eyes Twelve Hands

1957 155’(124’) b&w Hindi

d V. Shantaram pc Rajkamal Kalamandir s G.D. Madgulkar lyr Bharat Vyas c G. Balakrishna m Vasant Desai

lp V. Shantaram, Sandhya, Uhlas, B.M. Vyas, Baburao Pendharkar, Paul Sharma, S.K. Singh, Gajendra, G. Invagle, Keshavrao Date, Chandorkar, Thyagaraj, S. Bhosle, Asha Devi, Samar, Suneel

Stylised parable about human virtue. An idealistic cop, Adinath (Shantaram), believing people to be fundamentally good, takes six simple-minded murderers to a desolate area and sets up a farming commune. In spite of the threats of violence, they produce a decent farm and come into conflict with the ‘virtuous’ citizens in a nearby village who see their economic interests threatened and reveal themselves to be the real nasties. Shantaram’s characteristic neo-expressionist imagery is much in evidence, e.g. juxtaposing eyes and palm prints with prison bars, patches of light on parts of the hero’s mouth and eyes. In one of the more successful sequences, armed men are depicted in looming shadows against the threatened hero shown in extreme long shot. Sandhya plays Champa, an itinerant seller of children’s toys who befriends all the prisoners and the only female in this oppressively male world. About her, Godard reported in a telegram from the Berlin Film Festival (1958): ‘Sandhya charming in story Indian jailer.’ A 124’ version was shown at the San Francisco Festival that same year.

HARANO SUR

1957 162’ b&w Bengali

d/c Ajoy Kar pc Alochhaya Prod, p Uttam Kumar sc Nripendra Krishna Chattopadhyay lyr Gouriprasanna Majumdar m Hemanta Mukherjee

lp Suchitra Sen, Uttam Kumar, Pahadi Sanyal, Dipak Mukherjee, Utpal Dutt, Sisir Batabyal, Dhiraj Das, Preeti Majumdar, Sailen Mukherjee, Chandrabati Devi

The amnesiac Aloke (Kumar) is rescued from the asylum by doctor Roma (Sen) who takes him to her father’s (Sanyal) edenic country house. They marry, but a second accident, and a new bout of amnesia, makes him forget her and recall instead his earlier life as a rich businessman in Calcutta. When Roma follows him there, he does not remember her, but he hires her as governess to his niece, causing her considerable anguish. Moinak Biswas characterised the film as a domestic melodrama of ‘a subordinate woman winning over her boss’s heart’, in the genre of English novels such as Richardson’s Pamela (Biswas, ‘The Couple and Their Spaces: Harano Suras Melodrama’, 1995). Roma keeps trying to stimulate the hero’s memory, using e.g. the refrain of their wedding song (and the film’s musical hit) Tumi je amar, but is unable to reply when Aloke, haunted by her presence, asks ‘Who are you?’. The plot provides a schematic version of the classic Kumar-Sen romance with a medical angle (cf. Sagarika, 1956; Deep Jweley Jai, 1959), many lavishly mounted scenes of windswept expanses, fluttering curtains, incense and mnemonic objects such as a bunch of tube-roses, countered by two abrupt eruptions of realist outdoor locations (when Aloke first recovers his memory, and when Roma follows him into his Calcutta office). The film was adapted from Mervyn LeRoy’s Random Harvest (1942).

KARPURAKARASI

1957 ? b&w Tamil

d/co-sc A.S.A. Sami p Jupiter Films

co-sc Aroor Ramanathan m G. Ramanathan

lp Gemini Ganesan, M.R. Radha, M.N. Nambiar, Thangavelu, G. Varalakshmi, Savithri, E.V. Saroja, Mohana

A fairy tale in which a wizard tries to gain power over the heavens in order to obtain possession of a beautiful devathai (fairy). He gives Mohana (Mohana) the appearance of her cousin Queen Chandrika (Varalakshmi), substitutes his creature on the throne and drowns the Queen in a river. However, the Queen is saved by a ‘rishi’. While the King (Radha) remains blissfully unaware of the switch, Mohana, the false Queen, bears a nasty son, Jegaveeran (Nambiar), while the real Queen bears the fine son Veerapradapan (Ganesan). When the latter learns of the family history, he journeys across the seas to fetch a magical fruit that will restore everyone to their rightful position. The wizard’s plans also include disposing of the King, but Veerapradapan arrives in time, together with his mother, to eliminate the evil wizard along with the nasty Jegaveeran, obtaining his reward: Manjula (Savithri), the daughter of the Chief Minister of the realm.

KATHPUTLI

1957 160’(152’) b&w Hindi

co-d/s Amiya Chakravarty co-d Nitin Bose pc Shrirangam dial Chandrakant

lyr Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri c V. Babasaheb m Shankar-Jaikishen

lp Vyjayanthimala, Kumari Kamala, Balraj Sahni, Jawahar Kaul, Agha, Sheila Kashmiri, Poonam

Chakravarty’s last film was completed after his death by Bose. It is a melodrama about Pushpa (Vyjayanthimala) who loves and marries a small-time puppeteer (Kaul). She becomes a famous dancer in the theatre of the benevolent Loknath (Sahni) and gets embroiled in the man’s tragic life, estranging her from her husband. A Vyjayanthimala vehicle, the film consists of expensively staged dance sequences loosely strung together, including the hit number Bagad bam baaje damaroo.

LAL BATTI

1957 ?’ b&w Hindi

co-d/s Balraj Sahni co-d Krishen Chopra

pc Cine Co-op p Rajinder Singh Bedi

lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c K. Vaikunth m Salil Choudhury

lp Balraj Sahni, Mala Sinha, Jawahar Kaul, Shashikala, Kamal, Rashid Khan, Sulochana

Sahni’s only film as director is a suspense movie. It is set in a train and on a lonely railway platform where passengers are forced to spend a night at the time of India’s Independence.

MAKKALAI PETRA MAHARASI

1957 ? b&w Tamil

d K. Somu p Sri Lakshmi Pics.

sc A.P. Nagarajan m K.V Mahadevan

lp Sivaji Ganesan, M.N. Nambiar, P. Kannamba, P. Bhanumathi, V.K. Ramaswamy, M.N. Rajam

Angamma (Kannamba) hates her brother the zamindar for driving her husband out of the village. Her son Chengodayyan (Ganesan) sweats in the fields to enable his sister Thangam (Rajam) to come home, which she does in the company of her boyfriend, the zamindar’s educated son Kannan (Nambiar). To persuade their divided family to reunite and give their blessing to the marriage, the young couple feign suicide. The stratagem succeeds. The dramatic climax comes when a rival suitor of Thangam, Mayandi, throws a knife at Chengodayyan but kills Angamma when she shields her son.

MAYA BAZAAR

1957 192’ b&w Telugu/Tamil

d K.V. Reddy pc Vijaya s Chakrapani

lyr Pingali Nagendra Rao c Marcus Bartley m Ghantasala Venkateshwara Rao

lp N.T. Rama Rao, S.V. Ranga Rao, A. Nageshwara Rao[Te]/Gemini Ganesh[Ta], Relangi Venkatramaiah, Gummadi Venkateshwara Rao, K. Mukkamala, C.S.R. Anjaneyulu[Te]/M.N. Nambiar[Ta], Rajanala Nageshwara Rao, Vangara, Balakrishna, Savitri, Rushyendramani, Suryakantam, Chhaya Devi, Sandhya

Major Vijaya mythological following on from Reddy’s hit fantasy, Patala Bhairavi (1951). Taken from the Mahabharata, it tells the legend of Abhimanyu’s (Nageshwara Rao/Gemini Ganesh) marriage to Sasirekha (Vatsala in the Tamil version) (Savitri), assisted by Bhima’s son Ghatotkacha (Ranga Rao) and opposed by the wily Shakuni (Anjaneyulu/Nambiar) who wants Sasirekha to marry one of the Kauravas. The film featured NTR in his first role as the Hindu god Krishna and includes an early version of one of Indian cinema’s favourite special effects: magic arrows spewing fire and water. One of the musical highlights is the wedding feast number Vivaha bhojanam. The Tamil version was credited to Chakrapani’s direction, which had a slightly different cast, and some compositions by Saluri Rajeshwara Rao.

MINNAMINUNG

aka The Fire Fly

1957 ?’ b&w Malayalam

d/co-p/co-sc Ramu Kariat co-p Sreenivasan

pc Chitra Keralam co-sc Rafi dial K.S.K. Thalikulam lyr

P. Bhaskaran c B.J. Reddy m Baburaj

lp Damayanthi, Seeta, Padmam, Menon, Santha Devi, Mary Eddy, Maggie, Vasudev, Vipin, Lateef, Vakkachhan, Balakrishna Menon, Premji

Mysore’s Premier Studio’s melodrama about a young woman, Ammini, orphaned because of a greedy doctor’s negligence. She becomes a maid and surrogate mother in the new doctor’s household but the man’s wife feels threatened and has Ammini sacked. However, misunderstandings are cleared up, and in the end Ammini is happily absorbed into the doctor’s family and the villagers bid a tearful farewell to the group when the doctor is transferred. The virtually unknown cast is handled competently by the young Kariat who was to develop into one of Kerala’s main filmmakers. The film was not successful.

MOTHER INDIA

aka Bharat Mata

1957 168’(152’)(120’) col Hindi

d/s/p Mehboob Khan pc Mehboob Prod. dial Wajahat Mirza, S. Ali Raza lyr Shakeel

Badayuni c Faredoon Irani m Naushad

lp Nargis, Sunil Dutt, Raaj Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Kanhaiyalal, Jilloo, Kumkum, Master Sajid, Sitara Devi

This film has acquired the status of an Indian Gone with the Wind (1939), massively successful and seen as a national epic, although formally the film’s rhythms and lyrical ruralism seem closer to Dovzhenko’s later work finished by Yulia Solntseva. Radha (Nargis), now an old woman, remembers her past: her married life with two sons in a village. The family have to work extremely hard to pay off the avaricious moneylender, Sukhilala (Kanhaiyalal) and her husband (Raaj Kumar), having lost both arms in an accident, leaves her. Alone, she has to raise the children while fending off the financial as well as sexual pressures from Sukhilala. One son dies in a flood and in later years her son Birju (Dutt, Nargis’s later husband) becomes a rebel committed to direct, violent action, while the other one, Ramu (Rajendra Kumar), remains a dutiful son. In the end, the long-suffering Mother India can only put an end to her rebellious son’s activities by killing him, as his blood fertilises the soil. The film is a remake in colour and with drastically different imagery of Mehboob’s own Aurat (1940), notably in the heavy use of psychoanalytic and other kinds of symbolism (the peasants forming a chorus outlining a map of India). Its spectacular commercial success was ironically noted in Vijay Anand’s Kala Bazaar (1960) when Dev Anand is shown selling tickets on the black market for Mother India’s premiere. Mother India’s plot and characters became the models for many subsequent films, including Ganga Jumna (1961) and Deewar (1975).

MUSAFIR

aka Traveller

1957 151’ b&w Hindi

d/s/co-sc Hrishikesh Mukherjee pc Film

Group co-sc Ritwik Ghatak dial Rajinder Singh Bedi lyr Shailendra c Kamal Bose m Salil Choudhury

lp Suchitra Sen, Shekhar, Bipin Gupta, Durga Khote, Kishore Kumar, Nirupa Roy, Nasir Hussain, Keshto Mukherjee, Hira Sawant, Daisy Irani, Dilip Kumar, Usha Kiron, Paul Mahendra, Mohan Choti, David, Rajlakshmi, Baby Naaz, Rashid Khan

The experienced editor Mukherjee’s directorial debut constituted an important attempt to carve out a viable independent production sector in the Hindi cinema at the time. The film was made by a loose collective of mainly Bengali film people, including Ghatak and composer Choudhury who shared a background in radical theatre and were in Bombay mainly through Bimal Roy’s patronage. Many of them worked together again on Madhumati (1958). Set in an old suburban house, presumably in Calcutta, the film narrates three tenuously related Chekhovian stories about three sets of the house’s occupants. The first has the Bengali star S. Sen as an orphaned young woman, Shakuntala, who desperately wants her husband Ajay (Shekhar) to make up with his estranged parents so that she may belong to a family once more. The second story has a wayward young man, Bhanu (K. Kumar), desperate to find a job to support his aged father (Hussain) and his widowed sister-in-law (N. Roy). The third and longest story focuses on the shadowy figure of a neighbourhood ‘madman’ (D. Kumar) who crops up in the previous stories as well. He was in love with Uma (Kiron) who lived in the house but disappeared just before their wedding day. In the end, the madman’s death and the miraculous recovery of Uma’s paralysed son coincide. The stories invoke a cyclical sequence of marriage, birth, death and rebirth, enhanced by Choudhury’s score and some remarkable camerawork.

NAU DO GYARAH

1957 170’ b&w Hindi

d/s Vijay Anand p Dev Anand pc Navketan

lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c V. Ratra m S.D. Burman

lp Dev Anand, Kalpana Kartik, Shashikala, Jeevan, Krishna Dhawan, Madan Puri, Rashid Khan, Lalita Pawar, Helen, M.A. Latif

Raksha (Kartik) runs away from an arranged marriage to Surjit and meets Madan (Anand) on the road. Madan is on his way to collect an inheritance but he finds that his foster-aunt and cousin Kuldeep (Jeevan) have stolen it. In order to locate the original will, Madan and Raksha disguise themselves and pretend to be married. Madan is later arrested, charged with abducting Raksha but she continues the search for the will and to learn the truth about the death of Madan’s uncle. Songs included Hum hain rahipyar ke (sung by Kishore Kumar) and Ankhon mein kyaji (sung by Asha Bhosle and Kishore Kumar). Like Chori Chori (1956), this film seems to have borrowed plot elements from Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934).

NAUSHERWAN-E-ADIL

aka Farz Aur Mohabbat

1957 137’ b&w Urdu/Persian

d/p Sohrab Modi pc Minerva Movietone

st/dial Shams Lucknowi lyr Parvez Shamshi

c Lateef, Bhandare m C. Ramchandra

lp Sohrab Modi, Naseem Banu, Mala Sinha, Raaj Kumar, Bipin Gupta, Murad, Agha, Shammi, Niranjan Sharma, Amirbano, Sheelabano, Hira Sawant, Ranjana Shukla, Niloufer, Pali

Persian King Nausherwan-e-Adil (Modi) passes judgement sentencing all males who seduce maidens to death. His son and heir Naushazad (Kumar) rescues and courts Marcia (Sinha), the daughter of a Christian doctor, David (Gupta), and transgresses the law. The dramatic pivot is provided by the Malka-e-Iran, the Queen (Banu), herself a Christian, when she forbids her son to convert to Christianity. In the end, Naushazad and Marcia die in each other’s arms while the Queen is imprisoned by her husband. The plot rehearses many of Modi’s favourite motifs (cf. Pukar, 1939) as the patriarch victimised by his own law, but the film comes alive mainly in its delirious song picturisations, esp. the hit Taron kijawanpar hai mohabbat ki kahani (sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi), picturised on a boat on a moonlit studio river.

NAYA DAUR

1957 173’ b&w Hindi

d/p B.R. Chopra pc B.R. Films s Akhtar Mirza dial Kamil Rashid lyr Sahir Ludhianvi

c M.N. Malhotra m O.P. Nayyar

lp Dilip Kumar, Vyjayanthimala, Ajit, Chand Usmani, Jeevan, Manmohan Krishna, Nasir Hussain, Leela Chitnis, Pratima Devi, Johnny Walker, Daisy Irani, Radhakrishen, Kumkum, Minoo Mumtaz

A melodrama about the perils of progress: villain Kundan (Jeevan) introduces an electric saw and cars into an isolated, sylvan village while economic, caste and religious divisions between the rurals are woven into the main story of the rivalry between Shankar (D. Kumar) and Krishna (Ajit) over the heroine Rajani (Vyjayanthimala). The dramatic high point sees everyone joining forces to build a road to prove (via a race between a bus and a horsedrawn carriage) that traditional technology is just as good as the new machinery. Ironically, the nationalist modernisation argument is advanced by the villain while the benevolent father-figure Seth Maganlal (Hussain) hopes that a humanist attitude will abolish all class divisions. The hero Shankar argues for collectivisation as the proletarian way of managing new technology. Classic Nayyar numbers included Reshmi salwar kurta jaali ka (sung by Asha Bhosle and Shamshad Begum), Saathi haath badhana (sung by Mohammed Rafi and Asha Bhosle) and the Rafi solo Main bambai ka babu.

PADATHA PAINGILI

aka The Parrot That Never Sings

1957 182’ b&w Malayalam

d/p P. Subramanyam pc Neela Prod.

s Mutatthu Varkey lyr Thirunayanar Kurichi, Madhavan Nair c N.S. Mani m Brother Lakshmanan

Ajit and Dilip Kumar in Naya Daur

lp Prem Nazir, Kumari, Kottarakkara Sridharan Nair, S.P. Pillai, Vanakutty, Pankajavalli, K.V. Shanti, Muthaiah, Shanta, Aranmulla Ponnamma, Adoor Pankajam, Bahadur

Marriage melodrama around dowry problems. Thankachan (Nazir) wants to marry the poor Chinnamma (Kumari) but his rich father wants a big dowry for the eligible young man. Thankachan’s marriage is arranged with Lucy, daughter of a millionaire, on the same day on which Chinnamma is scheduled to marry a poor worker from a beedi factoiy. Lucy, however, resolves the matter by becoming a nun, leaving the lovers free to marry. One of the first major films featuring the scripts of Mutatthu Varkey, in the paingili brand of popular fiction in Malayalam that later also influenced star Prem Nazir’s screen persona.

PARASH PATHAR

aka The Philosopher’s Stone

1957 111’ b&w Bengali

d/sc Satyajit Ray p Promod Lahiri pc L.B. Films st Rajasekhar Bose [aka Parashuram] c Subrata Mitra m Ravi Shankar

lp Tulsi Chakraborty, Ranibala Devi, Kali Bannerjee, Gangapada Basu, Haridhan, Jahar Roy, Bireshwar Sen, Mani Srimani, Chhabi Biswas, Jahar Ganguly, Pahadi Sanyal, Kamal Mitra, Tulsi Lahiri, Amar Mullick, Nitish Mukherjee, Subodh Ganguly

Ray’s first comedy is a low-budget quickie because of the delay on his more ambitious Jalsaghar (1958). Bank clerk Paresh Dutta (Chakraborty) finds a magic stone that can turn things into gold and becomes a rich man. When Dutta drunkenly reveals his secret at a cocktail party, his downfall follows as he is arrested for gold smuggling. Eventually the stone is swallowed and digested by his lovelorn secretary Priyatosh Henry Biswas (Bannerjee), turning all Dutta’s gold back into iron to the delight of his wife. Relying at times on silent film comedy techniques (stop motion, speeded-up movement), the film adapts the short story of Rajasekhar Bose, a famous Bengali humorist, evoking, (mainly via Chakraborty’s spectacular performance) a tradition of popular satire featuring the colonial bhadralok (upper middle class): e.g. when the clerk imagines his own heavily garlanded statue amid those of British politicians in Calcutta. Ray later also adapted Parashuram’s Birinchi Baba in Mahapurush (1964).

PARDESI

aka Khozheniye Za Tri Morya aka The Foreigner

1957 110’(76’) col Hindi/Russian

co-d/co-sc K.A. Abbas co-d Vassily M. Pronin pc Naya Sansar, Mosfilm co-sc Maria Smirnova lyr Prem Dhawan, Ali Sardar Jafri c E. Andrikaniz, V. Nikolaev, Ramchandra Singh m Anil Biswas

lp Nargis, Oleg Strizhenov, Balraj Sahni, Prithviraj Kapoor, Jairaj, David, Achala Sachdev, Manmohan Krishna, Padmini, V. Obuchova, V. Beliachov, S. Kayukov, N. Zhivago

A Nehruite Indo-Soviet co-production made in the wake of the Khrushchov ‘thaw’ about the first Russian to set up a trading mission in India in the 15th C. The Muscovite Afanasi (Oleg) travels to India down the Volga, across Iran’s deserts and the Arabian sea. In India he meets the fair maiden Champa (Nargis) through whom he discovers Indian civilisation. The film was shot on numerous tourist locations in India. The Russian version ran for 76’ only. Pronin is known mainly for making an early Tadzhik feature in 1947 (Son of Tadzhikistan) and the first Kirghiz feature, Saltanat (1955).

PAYING GUEST

1957 157’ b&w Hindi

d/s Subodh Mukherjee pc Filmistan dial Nasir Hussain lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c Dronacharya m S.D. Burman

lp Dev Anand, Nutan, Gajananjagirdar, Sajjan, Shubha Khote, Gyani, Dulari, Rajinder, Chaman Puri, Sailen Bose, Yakub

A mixture of romance and crime with Nutan giving an uninhibited performance in one of her best roles outside Bimal Roy’s socials. Hero Ramesh (Anand) masquerades as an old man to be near his beloved Shanti (Nutan). The crime plot in the latter half of the film concerns the faithless Chanchal (Khote) who is disinherited by her husband Dayal and teams up with Shanti’s brother-in-law, the villainous Prakash. Shanti is later accused of having murdered Prakash but her innocence is finally established. Dev Anand’s antics include an elaborately staged fight between his two guises: as the old man Mirza and as the frisky Ramesh. Kishore Kumar sings some of his best-known Dev Anand playback numbers including Mana janab nepukara nahin, Chhod do aanchal zamana kya kahega (with Asha Bhosle) and O nigahen mastana. Chandphir nikla was sung by Lata Mangeshkar.

PYAASA

aka Eternal Thirst aka The Thirsty One

1957 153’(139’) b&w Hindi

d/p Guru Dutt pc Guru Dutt Films dial Abrar Alvi lyr Sahir Ludhianvi c V.K. Murthy m S.D. Burman

lp Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman, Mala Sinha, Johnny Walker, Rehman, Kumkum, Shyam, Leela Mishra, Rajinder, Mayadass, Mehmood, Radheshyam, Ashita, Moni Chatterjee

Dutt’s classic melodrama inspired by Saratchandra’s novel Srikanta was the first in a series addressing the state of the nation and the displaced romantic artist (cf. Kaagaz Ke Phool, 1959). Vijay (Dutt) is an unsuccessful poet whose work is sold by his brothers as waste paper. Unable to bear the reigning philistinism, he elects to live on the streets where a young prostitute, Gulab (W. Rehman), falls in love with him and his poetry while Vijay’s former girlfriend Meena (Sinha) marries an arrogant publisher, Mr Ghosh (Rehman), for comfort and security. When a dead beggar to whom Vijay gave his coat is mistaken for Vijay, Gulab has his poetry published in a book which becomes a best seller. Everyone who previously rejected Vijay now gathers to pay tribute to the dead poet. Vijay disrupts the celebration with a passionate song denouncing hypocrisy and calling for the violent destruction of a corrupt world (Jala do ise phook daloyeh duniya). According to Dutt the inspiration for this film came from a lyric referring to Homer: ‘Seven cities claimed Homer dead/While the living Homer begged his bread’ (cf. his essay ‘Classics And Cash’, in Rangoonwala, 1973). The comic relief scenes with Johnny Walker as Abdul Sattar, an eccentric masseur, do not always fit smoothly into the rest of the film, but Dutt’s exploration of the tragic idiom is unprecedented in Hindi cinema and can be compared to some of Ritwik Ghatak’s work in the powerful use of a musical chorus and the presentation of characters as archetypes (Vijay repeatedly evokes Christ imagery, e.g. in the songjaane woh kaise and his appearance at the memorial celebration). The film, shot mostly on sets, makes no specific reference to its location but audiences would be able to note the significance of Vijay as an Urdu poet belonging to a Bengali family or the figure of Mr Ghosh evoking a Calcutta or Delhi businessman. Several sequences testify to an astonishing cinematic mastery: the crane movements during Gulab’s tender and hesitant move towards a Vijay absorbed in his own thoughts (set to the song Aaj sajan moheang lagalo) or when Vijay staggers through the red-light district protesting (in the song Jinhe naaz hai hind par woh kahan hain) against the existence of such exploitation in a newly independent India.

SUVARNA SUNDARI/MANALANE MANGAYIN BHAGYAM

1957 209’[Te]/211’[Ta] b&w Telugu/Hindi/Tamil

d/sc Vedantam Raghavaiah pc Anjali Pictures

p Adi Narayana Rao st/dial/co-lyr[Te]

Samudrala Raghavacharya co-lyr[Te]

Samudrala Jr., Kosaraju lyr[H] Bharat Vyas c M.A. Rehman m Adi Narayana Rao

lp A. Nageshwara Rao, Anjali Devi, Relangi Venkatramaiah[Te], Mahankali Venkayya[Te], Rajasulochana[Te], C.S.R. Anjaneyulu[Te], Gummadi Venkateshwara Rao[Te], Ramana Reddy[Te], Balakrishna[Te], Peketi[Te], Shyama[H], Kumkum[H], Daisy Irani[H], Mohana[H], Suryakala[H], Agha[H], Mukri[H], Dhumal[H], Randhir[H], Bipin Gupta[H], Niranjan Sharma[H], Gemini Ganesh[Ta], M.V. Rajamma[Ta], B. Saroja Devi[Ta]

Anjali Devi repeated her role from Balaramaiah’s Swapna Sundari (1950) in this megabudget trilingual fantasy produced by her studio. A celestial fairy descends to earth and is captivated by the charms of a young man. The god Indra puts a curse on the fairy and converts her earthling lover into a stone statue. This is one of the major 50s productions in the uniquely Telugu fantasy-legend genre (cf. K.V. Reddy’s work or Bhanumathi’s hit Raksharekba, 1949). However, when Anjali Pic repeated the formula again with Raghavaiah’s Swarnamanjari/Mangayir Ullam Mangada Selvam (1962), starring NTR, it flopped.

TUMSA NAHIN DEKHA

1957 156’ b&w/col Hindi

d/s Nasir Hussain pc Filmistan lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c Marshall Braganza m O.P. Nayyar

lp Shammi Kapoor, Amita, Pran, B.M. Vyas, Raj Mehra, Sheela Vaz, S.K. Singh, Kanu Roy, Ram Avtar, Anjali Devi, Rajinder, Shetty, S.L. Puri

Hussain’s directorial debut, a musical partly shot in colour, transformed Shammi Kapoor into a loose-limbed, hip-swinging hero (esp. in the song Chupne wale samne ad). The sympathetic criminal Gopal kills his nasty partner and has to go on the run, abandoning his wife and baby son. Twenty years later, safely hidden as a reclusive landlord in Assam, Gopal betrays his whereabouts to his wife via a job advertisement. His grown-up son Shankar (Kapoor), who hates his father for having abandoned his family, applies for the job carrying a letter of introduction from his mother. However, the villainous Sohan (Pran) who covets Gopal’s property intercepts and copies the letter so that two young men recommended by his wife turn up on Gopal’s doorstep. The old man doesn’t know which is his son and which the impostor. Sohan’s intrigues are intercut with numerous musical interludes as Shankar woos Meena (Ameeta), Gopal’s adopted daughter. The final conflict between the good guys and the bad guys includes several hill tribesmen led by fight-director Shetty. The title number, Yun to humne lakh haseen dekhe hain, tumsa nahin dekha, was one of Mohammed Rafi’s biggest hits ever. Hussain remade the story as Dil Deke Dekho (1959)

APPU CHESI PAPPU KOODU/KADAN VANGI KALYANAM

1958 176’[Te]/185’[Ta] b&w/col Telugu/Tamil

d/co-s L.V. Prasad pc Vijaya co-s Chakrapani co-s/dial Sadasiva Brahmam lyr Pingali Nagendra Rao c Marcus Bartley m Saluri Rajeshwara Rao

lp S.V. Ranga Rao, Savitri, Jamuna, E.V. Saroja, N.T. Rama Rao[Te], K. Jaggaiah[Te], Relangi Venkatramaiah[Te], C.S.R. Anjaneyulu[Te], Ramana Reddy[Te], K. Siva Rao[Te], Girija, Suryakantam[Te], Gemini Ganesh[Ta], T.R. Ramchandran[Ta], K.A. Thangavelu[Ta], T.S. Balaiah[Ta], Meenakshi[Ta], Rajanala Nageshwara Rao[Te]

Prasad’s comedy stages the victory of a nationalist-modern alliance over decadent feudalism, with all the popular ingredients of comic social melodrama. The villain is a Zamindar, Ramadasu (Anjaneyulu), who has recently acquired the colonial title of Rao Bahadur and lives in borrowed splendour, hosting lavish dinners while, in a back room, his wily manager Bhajagovindam (Relangi) keeps a crowd of creditors at bay with intimidation and false promises. His son Raghu (Jaggaiah) is scheduled to return from England, but the father has reduced Raghu’s wife Leela (Jamuna) to penury, planning instead a new, more profitable alliance for his foreign-educated son with Manjiri (Savitri), the daughter of Diwan Bahadur Mukunda Rao (Ranga Rao). The unsuspecting Diwan Bahadur supports the marriage, but Manjiri knows the truth. Leela’s brother Raja Rao (NTR), an imprisoned freedom fighter, is Manjiri’s lover. On the day of his release from prison, Manjiri explains the situation to him and emphasises the need to reform the family before reforming the nation. With the help of Bhajagovindam, revealed as a schizophrenic character who doubles as friend of the goodies as well as the sutradhara (chorus), they stage a drama in order to reform the families and restore order and justice. Bhajagovindam then takes charge of the plot. Leela refuses to leave her husband’s home and the Rao Bahadur allows her to remain as a mute maid servant. The England-returned Raghu, a modern figure who, although opposed to his father’s machinations and aware of the mute maid’s real identity, nevertheless continues to play his assigned role by wooing Manjiri, occasioning a few ‘safely’ erotic scenes as Manjiri is courted by two men. As the narrative progresses, Raja Rao and Bhajagovindam adopt different disguises and enact several didactic-comic episodes intended to expose greed: Raghu produces a demanding foreign wife who forces the Rao Bahadur to devise various methods of raising money until his creditors eventually catch up with him. As in the earlier Petti Chesi Choodu (1952), three couples are formed or reunited at the end. The film’s most remarkable sections focus mainly on the multiple roles of Bhajagovindam, extending to the staging of a play within the plot, which is itself ‘staged’ by his presence as the commentator/chorus. The barely coherent plot is given a semblance of unity by Relangi’s initial declaration that a didactic plot is to be staged, which in turn allows various characters to indulge in actions that would be considered ‘unbecoming’ in a more realist idiom.

AVAN AMARAN

aka He Is Immortal

1958 199’ b&w Tamil

d/m S. Balachander pc People’s Films s S. Nagarajan lyr Kuyilan c Nemai Ghosh

lp K.R. Ramaswamy, T.S. Balaiah, S.V. Subbaiah, Rajasulochana, P. Kannamba

Written by a CP ideologue, the plot concerns Arul, the bright son of a mill worker, who marries the mill owner’s daughter Lily, becomes a barrister and ends up leading an amalgamation of mill workers’ unions in a strike against the introduction of new machinery. He dies while preventing the mill owner from dynamiting a bridge filled with protesting workers. The Veena master Balachander, fresh from his successful Andha Naal (1954), achieves some excellent sequences (the workers passing over the Hamilton Bridge near Fort St George in Madras) shot by the Bengali director turned Tamil cameraman Ghosh. The censors cut 1034ft out of the film, including a series of lines spoken by the hero in a court scene and references to class struggle and economic inequality. People’s Films with its Mosfilm-type logo is an early effort to define a Tamil Communist cinema, briefly sustained by Ghosh.

BHAKTA PRAHLADA

1958 179’ b&w Kannada

d H.S. Krishnaswamy, M.V. Subbaiah Naidu pc Shri Sahitya Samrajya Nataka Mandali s M.S. Bangaramma lyr G. Mahalinga Bhagavathar c K. Balu m L. Mallesh Rao

lp M.V. Subbaiah Naidu, Lakshmibai, Udaya Kumar, Leelavathi, Narasimhraju, G. Mahalinga Bhagavathar, P.R. Venugopal, Master Loknath

Subbaiah Naidu and R. Nagendra Rao’s theatre company staged many mythologicals which had a major influence on South Indian cinema, including Bhakta Prahlada and Bhukailasa. K. Shankar and AVM made the best-known film adaptation of Bhukailasa (1958), while S. Naidu and Nagendra Rao themselves made the screen adaptation of Bhakta Prahlada, their best-known filmed mythological. It tells the Ramayands Vishnu Purana legend of the demon Hiranyakashapu, his son Prahlada, a devotee of Vishnu, and Vishnu’s eventual triumph over the demon in his man-lion avatar.

BHUKAILASA

1958 174’[Te]/169’[K] b&w Telugu/Kannada

d K. Shankar AVM dial/lyr Samudrala Raghavacharya[Te], K.R. Seetarama Sastry[K] c Madhav Bulbule m R. Sudarshanam, R. Govardhanam

lp Jamuna, B. Saroja Devi, S.V. Ranga Rao, N.T. Rama Rao[Te], A. Nageshwara Rao[Te], Vijayanirmala[Te], Rajkumar[K], Kalyana Kumar[K], Ashwath[K]

Third and biggest film (cf. versions of 1938 and 1940) based on the Ramayana story originally staged by R. Nagendra Rao and Subbaiah Naidu. Intended as a major remake of A.V. Meiyappan’s 1940 Telugu hit. Ravana, king of Lanka, propitiates the god Shiva and, when he wins a boon, claims in return the latter’s phallic powers and his consort Parvati. Narada tells Ravana that the Parvati who has been sent is merely the shadow of the goddess. Ravana marries Mandodhiri believing her to be Parvati, but he is condemned by his mother Kaikasi. As for the atma-linga, the symbol of Shiva’s magical powers, it is donated on condition that it never be set down on earth. Ravana cannot fulfil the condition and has to accept defeat. Dubbed versions in Tamil (Bhakta Ravana) and Hindi (Bhakti Mahimd) were also released.

CHALTI KA NAAM GAADI

1958 173’ b&w Hindi

d Satyen Bose pc K.H. Pics dial Ramesh Pant, Gobind Moonis lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c Aloke Dasgupta m S.D. Burman

lp Kishore Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Anoop Kumar, Madhubala, Sajjan, K.N. Singh, Veena, Sahira, Helen, Cuckoo, Mohan Choti, S.N. Bannerjee

Following on from Bandi (1957), Bose made this crazy comedy with the brothers Kumar which became their best-known ensemble production. The eldest brother (Ashok Kumar) is a misogynist; the second one, Jaggu (Anoop Kumar) is the bumbler and the youngest, Mannu (Kishore Kumar), is the romantic. Together they run a garage. Mannu meets Renu (Madhubala) when she arrives in the dead of night to get her car repaired and they fall in love. With the help of the other brothers, they have fight off a gang led by Raja Hardayal Singh (K.N. Singh) and his son Kumar Pradeep (Sajjan) before they can live happily ever after. The film resorts to silent Hollywood comedy techniques like speeded up action and back projection (e.g. the race won by the trio in their ancient 1928 Chevrolet which gives the film its title), and freely digresses into scenes only tenuously related to the narrative (the great-lovers-in-history number, Paanch rupaiya bara anna). It features several of Kishore Kumar’s jazzy numbers, such as Babu samjho ishare, horn pukare, Hum the woh thi woh thi hum the. Very soon after it starts, the film signals its disregard for chronological consistency.

CHENCHULAKSHMI

1958 162’[Te]/190’[Ta] b&w Telugu/Tamil

d/p B.A. Subba Rao pc B.A.S. Prod.

st/dial/co-lyr V. Sadasiva Brahmam

co-lyr Arudra, Kosaraju, Samudrala Raghavacharya c C. Nageshwara Rao m Saluri Rajeshwara Rao

lp A. Nageshwara Rao, Anjali Devi, Relangi Venkatramaiah, S.V. Ranga Rao, Gummadi Venkateshwara Rao, Pushpavalli, Sandhya, Nagabhushanam, Master Babji

Musical mythological, remade from S. Soundararajan’s hit of 1943, featuring Vishnu (Nageshwara Rao) in his two best-known incarnations: the boar (Varaha) and the man-lion (Narasimha). Not invited to the celestial marriage of Vishnu and Lakshmi (Anjali Devi), Durvasa banishes Lakshmi’s parents to earth as common people. There, Lakshmi is reborn as a tribal. The film intercuts her story on earth with the heavenly tale of Hiranyakashapu (Ranga Rao) who cannot be killed by man or beast. The demon’s son Prahlada (Balaji), devoted to Vishnu, survives several murder attempts by his own father until finally Vishnu kills Hiranyakashapu using his Narasimha avatar. The heaven-earth split allows the film to deploy two narrative styles: the mythological one and a folk idiom (cf. Anjali Devi as a restrained goddess and a coquettish earthling). Her performance and Rajeshwara Rao’s music helped the film’s commercial success.

ETTUKU PAI ETTU

1958 ?’ b&w Telugu

d Tapi Chanakya pc Sarathi Pics s/co-lyr Tapi Dharma Rao, Kondepudi, Chiranjeevi co-lyr Kosaraju m Master Venu

lp T.S. Balaiah, Sowkar Janaki, C.S.R. Anjaneyulu, Gummadi Venkateshwara Rao, Relangi Venkatramaiah, Latehmirajyam, V. Narasimha Rao, Chittor V. Nagaiah, Chhaya Devi, Hemalatha

Considered an avant-garde film at the time for casting unknown actors in a realist story of two warring elders, Kailasam (Anjaneyulu) and Govindaiah (Gummadi), who are eventually brought together by their sons. The film made Balaiah a star.

HOWRAH BRIDGE

1958 153’ b&w Hindi

d/p Shakti Samanta pc Shakti Films s Ranjan Bose dial Vrajendra Gaud lyr Qamar Jalalabadi, Hasrat Jaipuri c Chandu m O.P. Nayyar

lp Ashok Kumar, Madhubala, Dhumal, K.N. Singh, Om Prakash, Helen, Kammo, Madan Puri, Sundar, Krishnakant, Kundan, Bhagwan Sinha, Sailen Bose

This crime movie was one of the first to assimilate the Hong Kong cinema’s influence, a trend continued by Samanta’s China Town (1962). Rakesh (Kumar), the son of a Rangoon merchant, comes to Calcutta in search of his brother’s killer. With the help of Joe, a restaurant manager, and Edna (Madhubala), a cabaret dancer, he routs the villains Pyarelal (K.N. Singh) and Chiang (Puri). The film ends with a chase sequence over the famous Howrah Bridge in Calcutta and includes Geeta Dutt’s famous cabaret number Mera naam Chin Chin Choo … Hello mister, how do you do? performed in the film by Helen.

JAILOR

1958 ?’ b&w Hindi

d Sohrab Modi pc Minerva Movietone

st/dial Kamal Amrohi sc J.K. Nanda lyr Rajinder Krishen c Y.D. Sarpotdar m Madan Mohan

lp Sohrab Modi, Kamini Kaushal, Geeta Bali, Abhi Bhattacharya, Nana Palsikar, Daisy Irani, Eruch Tarapore, Pratima Devi

Modi’s remake of his own 1938 film starring himself as the humanitarian prison warden Dilip whose wife Kanwal (Kaushal) elopes with Dr Ramesh (Bhattacharya), triggering Dilip’s transformation into a viciously oppressive maniac (whose image recalls the Hollywood versions of Mr Hyde). Geeta Bali plays the virtuous Chhaya, Dilip’s own temptation.

JALSAGHAR

aka The Music Room

1958 100’ b&w Bengali

d/p/sc Satyajit Ray pc Aurora Film Co.

st Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay’s stories Raibari and Jalsaghar c Subrata Mitra m Ustad Vilayat Khan

lp Chhabi Biswas, Padmadevi, Pinaki Sengupta, Gangapada Basu, Tulsi Lahiri, Kali Sarkar, Waheed Khan, Roshan Kumari, Bismillah Khan

Ray’s critique of decadent colonial feudalism, shot on the property of a zamindar at Nimtita near the river Padma on the (current) border between India and Bangladesh (by coincidence the very family on which novelist Bannerjee had based his fiction). The ageing Bishwambar Roy (Biswas) pawns the family jewels to keep up with the opulence of his ancestors and with his rich upstart neighbour Mahim Ganguly (Basu). Roy’s reputation is based on the spectacular concerts of classical music and dance he once hosted, featuring Lucknow’s great Kathak dancers and thumri singers, one of which is shown in flashback. Another concert, amid ominous thunder and lightning, is followed by news of the death of his wife and son. He withdraws into complete seclusion, only to resurface when his neighbour invites him yet again, and hosts his final show explicitly to upstage Ganguly’s. Eventually he rides off on his horse, a shadow of his former grandeur, and dies by the hull of an upturned boat. Ray’s nostalgic portrayal of the end of an era that saw feudal oppression but also sustained India’s classical arts is often compared to Guru Dutt’s film on the same theme, Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962), both portraying the feudal elite in sensual terms, reclining amid silk cushions, smoking hookahs and drinking, and because both directors rely on straightforwardly melodramatic idioms. Jalsaghar is heavy on symbols: shots of rain announcing death, an insect trapped in a glass, a decaying palace, the neighbour’s trucks kicking up dust and obscuring Roy’s view of his elephant grazing in the distance, the upturned boat at the end of the patriarch’s life. Unlike the rest of the film, which was shot on location, the key locale of the music room was created on sets by Bansi Chandragupta. Ray included a concert by Begum Akhtar, India’s greatest 20th C. ghazal singer. Other featured artists were shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan, singer Waheed Khan and dancer Roshan Kumari. The film boasts Chhabi Biswas’s best-known screen performance.

KALA PANI

1958 164’ b&w Hindi

d Raj Khosla pc Navketan st Anand Pal sc G.R. Kamat dial Bappi Sonie lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c V. Ratra m S.D. Burman

lp Dev Anand, Madhubala, Nalini Jaywant, Kishore Sahu, Nasir Hussain, Sapru, Krishna Dhawan, M.A. Latif, Rashid Khan, Beer Sakhuja, Mukri, Agha

A crime movie about institutionalised corruption. Hero Karan (Anand) discovers that his father, believed dead, is in fact in jail for a murder he did not commit. Karan sets out to prove his father’s innocence with the help of a fearless journalist, Asha (Madhubala). The villain is the corrupt public prosecutor (Sahu). The key witness is a dancer, Kishori, played by Nalini Jaywant who elevates the film beyond its plot. Her own desire, rendered in the hit Asha Bhosle number Nazar laagi raja tore bangle pe, makes for an ambiguous love triangle that also provides other reasons to that of the hero’s vendetta for seeking out the truth. The other song hit Hum bekhudi me tumkopukare (sung by Mohammed Rafi), in which Kishori unleashes her charms on the drunken hero, was described by Mahesh Bhatt (1993) as ‘a typical example of a Raj Khosla song and his unique attitude towards sex on the Indian screen’.

LAJWANTI

1958 120’ b&w Hindi

d Narendra Suri pc Delux Films s Sachin Bhan lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c M. Malhotra m S.D. Burman

lp Nargis, Baby Naaz, Balraj Sahni, Prabhu Dayal, Radhakrishen

Suri’s family movie echoes Andaz (1949): a husband (Sahni) believes his wife (Nargis) to be having an affair with an artist friend and throws her out. In fact, she was having her portrait painted. When a decade later the two get together again, she has to win over her grown-up daughter (Baby Naaz) which she does only when she’s on the verge of suicide. Sahni’s naturalism as usual considerably tones down the emotional pitch.

MADHUMATI

1958 179’(165’) b&w Hindi

d/p Bimal Roy pc Bimal Roy Prod. s Ritwik Ghatak dial Rajinder Singh Bedi lyr Shailendra c Dilip Gupta m Salil Choudhury

lp Dilip Kumar, Vyjayanthimala, Johnny Walker, Pran, Jayant, Tiwari, Mishra, Baij Sharma, Bhudo Advani, Jagdish, Sagar, Ranjeet Sud, Sheojibhai, Tarun Bose

A reincarnation story with the lead actors in multiple roles. Devendra (D. Kumar) shelters from a storm in a deserted house and believes he hears a woman crying. Exploring the house, he finds a painting of its former owner Raja Ugranarayan. Devendra feels he must have painted the portrait in a previous life when he was called Anand. This cues a flashback to Anand’s life when he worked as a foreman on a plantation and loved a woman from the village, Madhumati (Vyjayanthimala), who died escaping from the libidinous Raja Ugranarayan (Pran). Then a trap is set for the Raja by means of another woman, Madhavi (Vyjayanthimala again), who looks like the dead Madhumati and could be her reincarnation. The happy ending arrives when the original Madhumati returns from the dead to take her revenge. The film deploys an eerily romantic atmosphere, enhanced by Choudhury’s background score and Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s editing. Its songs have remained enduringly popular. The film includes the famous Aja repardesi sung by Lata Mangeshkar. It was Bimal Roy’s biggest commercial success, scripted by Ghatak. Many of the people involved in this film had worked together on Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Musafir (1957), also based on a Ghatak story. The imagery at times evokes Ghatak’s Ajantrik (1957), linking the beautiful Madhumati with nature and tribal cultures beyond the grasp of capitalist appropriation.

MAYA BAZAAR

1958 ?’ b&w Hindi

d/sc Babubhai Mistri pc Wadia Movietone st Vishwanath Pande dial C.K. Mast lyr Gopal Singhnepali, Saraswati Kumar Deepak, Indivar c N. Satyanarayan m Chitragupta

lp Anita Guha, Mahipal, Vasant Pahelwan, Raaj Kumar, Ulhas, B.M. Vyas, Ram Singh, Indira

Director Mistri created the special effects for his best-known mythological narrating episodes from the Mahabharata-. e.g. the Rajasuya Yagna, Krishna’s killing of Shishupal, the game of dice, and Abhimanyu and Ghatotkach’s rescue of Balaram’s daughter Surekha from the Kauravas. Mistri remade it in colour in 1984.

NADODI MANNAN

1958 220’ b&w/col Tamil

d/p M.G. Ramachandran pc Emgeeyar Pics

st R.M. Veerappan, V. Lakshmanan, S.K.D. Sami co-dial/co-lyr Kannadasan co-dial Ravindran co-lyr Suradha c G.K. Ramu m S.M. Subbaiah, N.S. Balakrishnan

lp M.G. Ramachandran, P. Bhanumathi, P.S. Veerappa, M.N. Rajam, M.N. Nambiar, Chandrababu, T.K. Balachandran, B. Saroja Devi, T.P. Muthulakshmi, M.G. Chakrapani

MGR’s period adventure fantasy, with 19 songs, and important DMK propaganda film repeating his successful screen pairing with Bhanumathi (Alibabavum Narpatha Thirudargalum, 1955 and Madurai Veeran, 1956) in a style derived from Gemini’s post -Chandralekha (1948) films. The good king Marthandan (MGR) is dethroned by the Rajguru (Veerappa) and replaced by a double, the commoner Veerangam (MGR again). Nakedly propagandist (e.g. colour sequences showing the red and black DMK flag and its rising sun party symbol), the film presents the good guys as waiting to overthrow the Rajguru’s corrupt rule, a thinly disguised reference to the Congress Party. Inaugurating MGR’s personal political programme with songs like Thoongathe thambi thoongathe (‘Don’t sleep, young brother’), its commercial success was followed by a public reception for MGR by the DMK Party, taking him in procession in a ‘chariot drawn by four horses, thronged by the people. The chariot had a background of a rising sun on a lotus. At the beginning of the procession there were party volunteers carrying festoons. Elephants garlanded MGR twice’ (M.S.S. Pandian, 1992). Apparently Karunanidhi read out a poem he wrote about the film at the festivities. The film’s success was a turning point in the star’s film and political career marking him as the Puratchi thalaivar (revolutionary leader).

NEEL AKASHER NEECHEY

aka Under the Blue Sky

1958 133’ b&w Bengali

d/sc Mrinal Sen p/m Hemanta Mukherjee pc Hemanta Bela Prod, st Mahadevi Verma’s story Chini Pheriwala lyr Gouriprasanna Chattopadhyay c Sailaja Chatterjee

lp Kali Bannerjee, Manju Dey, Bikash Roy, Smriti Biswas, Ajit Chatterjee, Suruchi Sengupta

Sen’s first commercial success, after his financially disastrous debut Raat Bhore (1956). Produced by the composer Hemanta Mukherjee, the film is set in the 30s and tells of an honest Chinese hawker, Wang Lu (Bannerjee), who sells silk in Calcutta’s streets while refusing to get involved in the opium trade run by his fellow countrymen. A flashback reveals his past history in China’s Shantung province: a cruel landlord blackmailed Wang Lu’s sister into prostitution, resulting in her suicide. The sequence, including documentary footage shot by Sen in China, is recalled when Wang Lu feels a brotherly affection for Basanti (Dey), the wife of a Calcutta lawyer (Roy). Basanti is committed to Swadeshi and has political disagreements with her husband, who blames Wang Lu for this. Basanti is arrested and imprisoned, causing Wang Lu to become more involved with her political group. When she is released, in 1931, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria makes Wang Lu go back and join the resistance. The story attempts to link India’s independence struggle with China’s fight against Japan. Sen said that the 30s, which formed much of the CPFs theory on imperialism, was ‘enormously exciting … [w]ith an element of nostalgia’ and he returned to the period several times (cf. Matir Manisba, 1966). However, the film’s non-chauvinist end is as significant as its internationalism in the anti-Chinese hysteria preceding the India-China War of 1962. The sentimental film is remembered mainly for one of composer-singer Mukherjee’s most famous songs, O nadire ekti katha sudhai, and for Kali Bannerjee’s remarkable performance. Shot mainly on sets, the dialogue evokes political and class stereotypes while inscribing several political references, e.g. Basanti’s use of homespun Khadi cloth when Wang Lu offers her a piece of silk.

PHIR SUBAH HOGI

1958 168’(154’) b&w Hindi

d/co-sc Ramesh Saigal pc Parijat Pics

st Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment co-sc Mubarak dial D.N. Madhok lyr Sahir Ludhianvi c Krishan Saigal m Khayyam

lp Raj Kapoor, Mala Sinha, Rehman, Leela Chitnis, Mubarak, Nana Palsikar, Jagdish Sethi, Kamal Kapoor, Mishra

Dostoevsky’s story provides only the bare outlines of this emotional plea for social justice in ‘Nehruite’ India by an influential film-maker of the genre (cf. Railway Platform, 1955). Ramu (Kapoor) is a poor law student in love with the even poorer Sohni (Sinha). Sohni’s father (Palsikar) is an alcoholic tailor in debt to the villainous Harbanslal who demands to marry Sohni. Ramu must pay off the villain if he is to win Sohni. He is caught robbing the safe of a vicious old moneylender and kills the man in self-defence. When the wrong man is arrested for the crime, a police detective puts pressure on Ramu to confess and save the innocent man from the gallows. Ramu eventually confesses and makes a moving plea on behalf of the dispossessed’s right to defend themselves against the real villains in society. The film includes the poet Sahir Ludhianvi’s famous critique of Nehru’s non-aligned liberalism: Chin-o-Arab hamara, with an opening stanza declaring ‘China and Arabia are ours/India is ours/We have no roof over our heads/The whole world is ours’ (China and Arabia being references to Zhou En-Lai and Nasser). This song is picturised at night in Bombay’s easily recognisable square opposite the Victoria Terminus where even today, as Kapoor does in the film, one may sleep on the pavement without police interference. Other classic numbers include Aasman pe hai khuda aur zameen pe hum (‘The Lord is in the heavens and we on earth/And these days He doesn’t look our way very often’) sung by Kapoor to a cabaret dancer and intercut with the death of Sohni’s father. The best-known number is the title refrain heralding a new dawn, Woh subah kabhi to aayegi.

(From left) Raj Kapoor, Mubarak and Rehman in Phir Subah Hogi

POST BOX 999

1958 ?’ b&w Hindi

d Ravindra Dave pc Nagina Films

s/lyr P.L. Santoshi c M.W. Mukadam

m Kalyanji Veerji Shah

lp Sunil Dutt, Shakila, Purnima, Leela Chitnis, Manorama, Krishnakant, Gulab, Sadhana, Anwari, Amarnath

Apparently inspired by Hathaway’s Call Northside 777 (1947), this is the best-known and the most successful of Dave’s crime thrillers. Journalist Vikas (Dutt) is hired by an old woman (Chitnis) to prove the innocence of her wrongly convicted son Mohan. The investigation of the villainous hotel owner Banarasilal involves Vikas and his girlfriend Nilima (Shakila) posing as magicians while the intrepid mother helps out by going to work in the villain’s bird-shop. Mohan’s innocence can only be proved via the testimony of Bindiya, supposedly long since dead but believed to be still alive by the investigators.

PUBERUN

1958 139’ b&w Assamese

d/sc Prabhat Mukherjee pc Kathakali Cine st Khagen Roy c Ajoy Mitra m Faizuddin Ahmed

lp Jnanada Kakoti, Beena Devi, Margaret, Rebecca Achaw, Gautam Borbora, Radha Gobinda Barua, Tasadduf Yusuf, Khagen Roy

Assamese melodrama about motherhood set in the hill-station of Shillong. The mother (Kakoti) extends her love for her child to that of the children of a Christian orphanage. Kakoti’s performance was critically acclaimed.

RAI DAICH

1958 112’ b&w Sindhi

d J.B. Lulla pc Atu Lalwani, D.D. Kripalani s Ram Panjwani lyr Parsram Zia c Chandu m Bulo C. Rani

lp Shanti Ramchandani, Veena Makhijani, Atu Lalwani, Pratap Maniar, Chandu Shivdasani, Kanmohan, Sajju Kripalani, Minoo Kripalani, Tuntun, Bhudo Advani

Sindhi folk-tale adapting the Moses and Krishna legends to Rai Daich (Lalwani), the king of Junagadh, who, it is predicted, will be killed by his sister’s son. The sister hands her newborn son to her maid who floats him in a box down the river where he is rescued and raised by a shepherd. He grows up to become Bijal (Maniar) whose girlfriend Kamodini (Ramchandani), at the rival King Anerai of Gujarat’s request, agrees on Bijal’s behalf to behead Rai Daich. Bijal sings before Rai Daich, wins a boon, and asks for his head, triggering a war. Bijal’s song suddenly has Anerai’s castle bursting into flames. The war is constructed on the editing table with stock shots. This unusual Sindhi film is known mainly for Rani’s music.

RAJ TILAK

1958 171’ b&w Hindi

d S.S. Vasan pc Gemini cost Kothamangalam Subbu co-st/dial Ramanand Sagar cost/sc K.J. Mahadevan lyr P.L. Santoshi c P. Ellappa m C. Ramchandra

lp Gemini Ganesh, Vyjayanthimala, Pran, Padmini, Gajanan Jagirdar, Bipin Gupta

Gemini’s fairy-tale adventure continued in the vein of Chandralekha (1948) and Apoorva Sahodarargal (1949), involving the same writer (K. Subbu) and art director (A.K. Sekhar). Chander (Ganesh), rescued when still a child from a drifting raft, falls foul of a villainous senapati (chieftain) (Pran). Exiled to a desolate island, he learns that he is the son of the good Sardar Mangal Sen (Jagirdar). He jumps into the sea whence he is rescued by a foreign ship which takes him to its home port. There Chander falls in love with the local princess, Mandakini (Vyjayanthimala). Returning to his homeland, Chander finds that his father has been imprisoned by the villain. To set things right he has to overcome the might of the state.

RANDIDANGAZHI

aka Two Measures of Paddy

1958 174’ b&w Malayalam

d/p P. Subramanyam pc Neela Prod.

s Thakazhy Shivashankar Pillai based on his novel lyr Thirunayanar Kurichi, Madhavan Nair c N.S. Mani m Brother Lakshmanan

lp Kumari, P.J. Anthony, T.S. Muthiah, Thikkurisi Sukumaran Nair, Kottarakkara Sridharan Nair, S.P. Pillai, Bahadur, Adoor Pankajam, J.A.R. Anand

Seminal political movie by a director better known for mythologicals. Set among the conditions of bonded labour in the Kuttanad province, it tells the story of the peasant Koran, who fights the oppression of the landlord Yusuf along with his wife Chirutha and friend Chatthan. He eventually organises the first peasant union in his area, leading the labourers to freedom. The film was dominated by its script, written by the major novelist Pillai, and prefigures the later achievement of Kariat’s Chemmeen (1965). The genre was akin to many of the stage productions of the radical KPAC (cf. IPTA), as was some of the music.

RANGA POLICE

1958 ?’ b&w Assamese

d Nip Barua pc Milita Silpi Cine s Ramesh Sarin c Nalin Duara m Nizamuddin Hazarika

lp Jnananda Kakoti, Nip Barua, Munin Burman, Abdul Majid, Syed Abdul Malik, Bhola Kakoti, Bina Das

Best-known Assamese director Nip Barua’s first major film, made for an amateur theatre group turned film company. Melodrama about an honest policeman who has to weigh his principles against the difficulties faced by his impoverished family. One of the first Assamese films to receive critical attention outside the region. The composer, noted for scoring several numbers in the popular Jyoti Sangeet idiom, is a former colleague of Jyotiprasad Agarwala.

SCHOOL MASTER/BADI PANTALU

1958 185’ b&w/col Kannada/Hindi/Telugu

d B.R. Panthulu pc Padmini Pics dial Kanagal Prabhakara Sastry c W.R. Subba Rao m T.G. Lingappa

lp B.R. Panthulu, M.V. Rajamma, Dikki Madhava Rao, Udaya Kumar, Sowcar Janaki, B. Saroja Devi, Sivaji Ganesan, Balkrishna, Narasimhraju, Gemini Ganesh

Panthulu’s best-known Kannada film is a reform drama featuring an old but committed schoolteacher (Panthulu) who transforms the students of his native village though his own sons abandon him. He builds a new school, but succumbs to the villainy of the leader of the village panchayat (council) until the entire village comes to his support. Ganesan played a guest role as a police officer. Apparently inspired by the Raja Paranjpe melodrama Oon Paoos (1954), Panthulu dubbed the film in Hindi (1958) and remade it in Tamil (1973), while his disciple Puttanna Kanagal made it in Malayalam (1964).

M. V. Rajamma (second from left) and B. R. Panthulu (right) in School Master

SONE KI CHIDIYA

1958 171’ b&w Hindi

d Shaheed Latif pc Filmindia Corp. s/p Ismat Chughtai lyr Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Kaifi Azmi c Nariman A. Irani m O.P. Nayyar

lp Nutan, Balraj Sahni, Talat Mahmood, Altaf, Amar, Bikram Kapoor, Pratima Devi, Chandabai, Sarita Devi, Baij Sharma, Hammad Jafri, Zebunissa, Dhumal

The orphaned Lakshmi (Nutan), unwanted by either of her two aunts, suddenly becomes a film star. Her relatives now vie with each other to exploit her new-found earning capacity. Lakshmi falls in love with Amar, a gossip journalist (Mahmood), who ditches her when he realises that Lakshmi’s wealth is controlled by her greedy family. On the point of committing suicide, Lakshmi hears the hope-filled song Raat bhar ka yeh mehmaan andhera [Darkness is only a guest for the night] (written by Ludhianvi and sung by Mohammed Rafi) and meets the radical poet Shrikant (Sahni) whom she has idolised for years. After a long digression stigmatising the way the film industry exploits its workforce, Shrikant falls in love with Lakshmi, but when Lakshmi’s brothers offer him money to abandon her, he accepts the money and donates it to the Junior Artists’ Fund. Lakshmi, believing herself betrayed yet again, realises the truth only at the end of the film when she rejoins Shrikant to the refrain of the ‘new dawn’ song. Writer and producer Chughtai contrasts the popular cinema’s romanticised narratives (cf. the soft-focus film-within-the-film song between Amar and Lakshmi) with the hard-edged reality of industrial exploitation underpinning them: the Saiyan jab se ladi tori akhiyan song is rapidly followed by the documentary-type Junior Artists’ episode. Sahni’s imposing presence enhances the film’s realist aspirations, e.g. when he reads his poem to a bored producer or when he discovers the reality beneath the industry’s glamour.

YAHUDI

1958 161’ b&w Hindi

d Bimal Roy pc Bombay Films st Aga Hashr Kaslimiri’s play Yahudi Ki Ladki (1915) sc Nabendu Ghosh dial Wajahat Mirza lyr Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri c Dilip Gupta m Shankar-Jaikishen

lp Sohrab Modi, Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari, Nigar Sultana, Nasir Hussain, Anwar Hussain, Minoo Mumtaz, Helen, Cuckoo, Kumari Kamala

Based on Kashmiri’s famous and often-filmed play, this version is partially authenticated by former Parsee Theatre actor Modi’s presence. The melodrama in fancy dress is set in ancient Rome. The infant son of Ezra the Jew (Modi) is fed to the lions by Brutus (N. Hussain). Ezra’s devoted slave Elias then kidnaps Brutus’s daughter Lydia, whom Ezra renames Hannah (Kumari) and raises as his own child. The Roman Prince Marcus (D. Kumar) falls in love with Hannah by pretending to be a commoner, but he refuses to convert to Judaism in order to marry her. When, by royal decree, Marcus is to marry Octavia, Hannah and Ezra publicly complain of Marcus’s infidelity. Realising that the penalty for infidelity is death, Hannah withdraws her complaint, which in turn entails a death sentence for herself and her father. They are saved only by Ezra’s last-minute revelation of Hannah’s true ancestry and Marcus blinds himself in atonement for his misbehaviour. The film has many popular songs, including the well-picturised Yeh mera diwanapan hai (sung by Mukesh).

ABBA! A HUDGI

1959 190’ b&w Kannada

d/s/lyr H.L.N. Simha pc Shri Jamuna Pics

c B. Dorairaj m P. Kalingrao

lp Raja Shankar, Mynavathi, Rajkumar, Leelavathi, Narasimhraju, B.R. Panthulu, M.V. Rajamma, Pandharibai, H.L.N. Simha, Dikki Madhava Rao

Taming of the Sbrew-type drama. The feminist Sarasa, president of the Anti-Marriage League, is tamed by her lover Sarvottam with the assistance of an urban theatre group performing Samsara Nauka, one of 20th C. Kannada theatre’s most successful plays. The play, which deals with the reforming of a crusty lawyer, is adapted to stage a ‘real life’ fiction in which Sarvottam is accused of having murdered the theatre group’s proprietor. Fear of her lover going to the gallows transforms the woman, as predicted. For the film Simha revived the original stage performance of Samsara Nauka by the Chandrakala group, including Panthulu, Rajamma and Simha himself.

ANARI

1959 166’ b&w Hindi

d Hrishikesh Mukherjee pc L.B. Films s Inder Raj Anand lyr Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri c Jaywant Pathare m Shankar-Jaikishen

lp Raj Kapoor, Nutan, Lalita Pawar, Motilal, Shubha Khote, Nana Palsikar, Ashim Kumar, Paul Mahendra, Brahm Bhardwaj, Sulochana, Helen

The naive painter Raj (Kapoor) lodges with the devout, rather maternal Mrs D’Sa (Pawar). Raj falls in love with Aarti (Nutan), the niece of the wealthy pharmaceutics manufacturer Ramnath (Motilal) who is Raj’s employer. To sidestep class differences, Aarti pretends to be her own maid. This stratagem leads to problems aggravated when Mrs D’Sa dies after taking medicines made by Ramnath’s company. Raj is accused of having poisoned her. Eventually Ramnath acknowledges responsibility for the crime. Although directed and edited by Mukherjee, the film’s cynical view of capital accumulation betrays Kapoor’s authorial signature (cf. Shri 420, 1955). The presence of Shailendra, Hasrat and Shankar-Jaikishen, close collaborators of the RK banner, as well as the expected Mukesh solo showing a philosophising tramp (Kissi ki muskurahaton pe ho nisar) underline Kapoor’s direct influence on the film.

APUR SANSAR

aka The World of Apu

1959 117’(106’) b&w Bengali

d/p/sc Satyajit Ray pc Satyajit Ray Prod. st Bibhutibhushan Bannerjee’s novel Aparajito c Subrata Mitra m Ravi Shankar

lp Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore, Alok Chakraborty, Swapan Mukherjee, Dhiresh Majumdar, Shefalika Devi, Dhiren Ghoshal

Rather belatedly, Ray decided to add a third film to his Pather Panchali (1955) and the initially unsuccessful Aparajito (1956). A grown-up Apu (Chatterjee’s debut), now living poorly in Calcutta and dreaming of becoming a great novelist, is persuaded to marry a young village woman, Aparna (the 14-year-old Tagore), to protect her honour when her scheduled marriage is abruptly cancelled. The two live together in Calcutta and fall in love, but when Aparna goes to her maternal home for her first pregnancy, she dies although her son lives. Apu rejects the child and tries to overcome his desperation by working in a remote colliery. He eventually accepts his son. The scenes of the young married couple living in poverty are Ray’s first major location shots in contemporary Calcutta, soon to become a leitmotif in his work. Here he also elaborated his way of weaving a complex and suggestive usage of (urban) geography into the cinematic narrative, as in the classic sequences where Apu brings his bride to their new home, a squalid room above a railway line, or the couple’s visit to a movie followed by the cab-ride home. Of the remarkable scene in which Apu reclaims his young son Kajal (Alok Chakraborty), standing in front of the river, Geeta Kapur (1993) notes: ‘He stands at the crossroads extra tall with his child on his shoulder. [B]ut there is in the very courage of this verticality a disjuncture between the future and the past, and a regret at the alienated space of the present’. It also recalls the young Apu at the beginning of the trilogy.

CHAR DIL CHAR RAAHEIN

1959 160’ b&w Hindi

d/st/co-sc/dial K.A. Abbas pc Naya Sansar co-sc Inder Raj Anand, V.P. Sathe lyr Sahir Ludhianvi c Ramchandra m Anil Biswas

lp Raj Kapoor, Meena Kumari, Ajit, Nimmi, Shammi Kapoor, Kumkum, Jairaj, David, Anwar Hussain, Badri Prasad, Shakuntala, Rashid Khan, Nana Palsikar, Baby Naaz, Achala Sachdev

Abbas’s only venture into the star-studded Hindi film mainstream. It tells a parable about love and community using three stories, each featuring a hero, his lover and a villain. The Ahir youth Govinda (Kapoor) is prevented from marrying his childhood sweetheart Chavli (Kumari) because she is an Untouchable. Chavli is driven out of the village but Govinda goes and waits for her at a crossroads. Dilawar (Ajit), a Pathan chauffeur, rescues the dancing-girl Pyari (Nimmi) from the clutches of his employer, a villainous nawab, but Pyari refuses to escape without her mother. Pyari then settles down at the same crossroads and starts a small shop, waiting for Dilawar to relent and to accept both of them. The hotel employee Johnny Braganza (S. Kapoor) falls in love with Stella D’Souza (Kumkum) who is coveted by his boss Ferreira (David). Ferreira frames Johnny and has him jailed. Johnny later joins the group at the crossroads and starts a garage. The trade union leader Nirmal Kumar (Jairaj) eventually enlists the trio at the crossroads to help build a road. Blasting through a hill, Govinda finds Chavli again and the whole community walks down ‘their’ road singing the socialist song Sathi re kadam kadam se dil se dil mila rahe. Later, in an interview with Vasudev and Lenglet (1983), Abbas blamed the film’s failure on the stars’ lack of screen glamour: ‘Meena Kumari was blackened, Raj Kapoor was put in a dhoti, Shammi Kapoor was made into a waiter, Nimmi was made into a prostitute’. He never worked with major stars again.

CHHOTI BAHEN

1959 155’ b&w Hindi

d L.V. Prasad pc Prasad Prod, s Inder Raj Anand lyr Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri c Dwarka Divecha m Shankar-Jaikishen

lp Balraj Sahni, Shyama, Nanda, Rehman, Mehmood, Shubha Khote, Sudesh Kumar, Veena, Badri Prasad, Dhumal, Radhakrishen, H. Shivdasani, Tridip Kumar

Prasad’s early Hindi hit is a family melodrama featuring Rajendra (Sahni) who must support his younger brother Shekhar (Rehman) and sister Meena (Nanda). Shekhar prefers flirting with Shobha (Shyama) to his studies and Meena goes blind. Shekhar then marries Shobha who starts oppressing her blind sister-in-law, eventually causing her to end up on the streets. Rajendra loses his job and ends up destitute, allowing the film to reiterate its humanist message. It was probably adapted from Ch. Narayanamurthy’s earlier Naa Chellelu (1953).

DEEP JWELEY JAI

1959 132’ b&w Bengali

d/sc Asit Sen pc Badal Pics st/dial Ashutosh. Mukherjee c Anil Gupta, Jyoti Laha m Hemanta Mukherjee

lp Suchitra Sen, Basanta Choudhury, Pahadi Sanyal, Tulsi Chakraborty, Anil Chatterjee, Namita Sinha, Kajari Guha, Chandrabati Devi, Dilip Choudhury, Shyam Laha

Original version of Sen’s Rajesh Khanna psychodrama Khamoshi (1969) and one of Suchitra Sen’s best-known performances. She plays Radha, the hospital nurse employed by a progressive psychiatrist (Sanyal). She is expected to develop a personal relationship with the male patients as part of their therapy. The doctor diagnoses Tapash’s (B. Choudhury) problem as an unresolved Oedipal dilemma - the inevitable consequence, he says, for men who are denied a nurturing woman. He orders the nurse to play that role, even though on an earlier, similar occasion she fell in love with the patient. Radha bears up to Tapash’s violence, wears red-bordered silk saris to impersonate his mother, sings his poetic compositions and, in the process, falls in love yet again. In the end, having brought about Tapash’s mental cure, Radha has a nervous breakdown. Suchitra Sen’s hauntingly beautiful, often partly lit close-ups set the tone for the film’s visual style. Hemanta Mukherjee’s music, e.g. Ei raat tomar amar, used a whistling chorus as a sort of leitmotif and contributed greatly to the movie’s success.

DHOOL KA PHOOL

aka Blossom of Dust

1959 153’ b&w Hindi

d Yash Chopra pc B.R. Films s Mukhram Sharma lyr Sahir Ludhianvi c Dharam Chopra m N. Dutta

lp Mala Sinha, Rajendra Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Nanda, Sushil Kumar, Manmohan Krishna, Leela Chitnis, Daisy Irani, Amirbano, Mohan Choti

Yash Chopra’s debut was an epic melodrama about illegitimacy. University colleagues Mahesh Kapoor (R. Kumar) and Meena (Sinha) have an affair which leaves her pregnant. Mahesh Bhatt (1993) described the love-making scene as typical of the representation of sex in Indian cinema of the period: ‘The real thing is made possible by a studio downpour and the library shots of lightning and thunder.’ Under pressure from his autocratic father, Mahesh agrees to marry a rich heiress (Nanda). Meena, helped by her former maid (Chitnis), gives birth to a son and, fearing the stigma of being a single mother, abandons the baby in a forest. The child is found and raised by an old Muslim, Abdul Rasheed (M. Krishna). The grown-up boy (S. Kumar) is ostracised because of his illegitimate birth and falls in with bad company. At the end of the film, the boy’s tangled history is reveaied when, accused of theft, he has to appear in a court presided over by his father while the defending lawyer (A. Kumar) is his mother’s husband. Meena herself acts as a witness. There is a plea for communal harmony when the old Muslim tells the boy not to adhere to any particular religion (Tu Hindu banega na musalman banega, sung by Mohammed Rafi, i.e. ‘You will not grow up to be/a Muslim or a Hindu/You are the son of a man/and a human being you shall be.’) The elaborate crane movements (esp. in the scene of Mahesh’s wedding procession) and the combination of high-angle ‘nature’ shots with tightly edited scenes were characteristic of 50s B.R. Films (cf Kanoon, 1960). Well-known songs, including the duet Tere pyar ka aasra chahata boon (by Mahendra Kapoor and Lata Mangeshkar) and Jhukti ghata gaati hawa (sung by Asha Bhosle).

DIL DEKE DEKHO

1959 187’ b&w Hindi

d/s Nasir Hussain pc Filmalaya lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c Dilip Gupta m Usha Khanna

lp Shammi Kapoor, Asha Parekh, Sulochana, Raj Mehra, Randhir, Wasti, Rajendranath, Mumtaz Ali, Indira, Tahir Khan, B.K. Mukherjee, Kewal Kapoor, Surendra, Siddhu, Malika

Hussain’s reworking of Tumsa Nahin Dekha (1957) repeats the former film’s plot, except that the long-lost father is replaced by a mother. Heiress Jamuna (Sulochana) is deserted by her husband Rana, who takes their son Roop with him. She adopts Kailash (Rajendranath) and Neeta (Parekh) and wants the two to get married. However, Neeta falls in love with a rock singer who turns out to be the grown-up Roop (Kapoor). The villain Harichand persuades Jamuna that her son is in fact his accomplice Sohan, and that Sohan should marry Neeta. The confusion is resolved by way of a shootout during the marriage ceremony. Shammi Kapoor repeats his trademark scene, impersonating a Muslim gentleman (cf. the Dekho kasam se number in Tumsa Nahin Dekha), Professor Saamri, who sings Do ekam do while dispensing advice to other characters. The stoiy merely provides a framework for a series of rock numbers including the title song Dil deke dekho, dil dene walon and Pyar ho to keh do Yes (sung by Mohammed Rafi).

GOONJ UTHI SHEHNAI

1959 174’ b&w Hindi

d Vijay Bhatt pc Prakash Pics

s G.D. Madgulkar dial Shiv Kumar, Qamar Jalalabadi lyr Bharat Vyas c Bipin Gajjar m Vasant Desai

lp Rajendra Kumar, Amita, Ulhas, I.S. Johar, Manmohan Krishna, Leela Mishra, Prem Dhawan, Pratap Bhansali, Rammurthy, Anita Guha

A successful romance featuring a classical shehnai musician. Kishen (R. Kumar) is a musical prodigy in love with Gopi (Ameeta). Their union is opposed by Gopi’s widowed mother Jamuna (Mishra) and by Kishen’s adopted music teacher Raghunath (Ulhas) whose daughter Ramkali (Guha) secretly loves the musician. Later, when Kishen is a famous radio musician, his benefactor Shekhar (Bhansali) marries Gopi. In several scenes, the love-stricken Kishen vows never again to play the instrument with which he had wooed Gopi and he drowns his sorrows in alcohol. The film’s main asset is the extensive use of the shehnai instrument, performed in playback by 20th C. India’s best-known shehnai maestro, Bismillah Khan. In order to try to match the music’s classical authenticity, an attempt was made to present the story as a medieval Sanskrit love legend.

Ameeta and Rajendra Kumar in Goonj Uthi Shehnai

GUEST HOUSE

1959 ?’ b&w Hindi

d Ravindra Dave pc Golden Movies s K.A. Narayan dial Adil Rashid, Rafat Badayuni lyr Prem Dhawan c Raj Kumar Bhakri m Chitragupta

lp Ajit, Shakila, Maruti, Lalita Pawar, Vimla Kumari, Tiwari, Pran

A moral fable presented as a crime melodrama. Amar (Ajit) and his cousin Manohar (Pran) are a pair of shifty childhood friends. However, Manohar’s father believes his son to be a fine person led astray by Amar. When Amar’s dying mother makes her son promise never to tell lies, Manohar, caught by the police, is jailed because Amar refuses to lie to save his friend. Amar is disinherited by his equally shifty guardian and goes to Bombay where he is taken in by Neela (Shakila) and dreams of becoming a saintly figure with his new-found idealism. When Manohar is released, he seeks revenge on his cousin and erstwhile friend. In the process he has to disown his doting father, now a beggar on the streets.

KAAGAZ KE PHOOL

aka Paper Flowers

1959 153’ b&w/scope Hindi

d/p Guru Dutt pc Guru Dutt Films s Abrar Alvi lyr Kaifi Azmi c V.K. Murthy m S.D. Burman

lp Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman, Baby Naaz, Johnny Walker, Mahesh Kaul, Veena, Minoo Mumtaz, Pratima Devi, Niloufer, Sulochana, Sheila Vaz, Bikram Kapoor

The commercial failure of this film on its initial release prompted Guru Dutt, by some accounts, to stop taking directorial credit for his films. The baroque, quasi-autobiographical fantasy has over time become his best-known film next to Pyaasa (1957) and could be regarded as India’s equivalent of Citizen Kane (1941). It tells, in flashback, the story of Suresh Sinha (Dutt), a famous film director. His marriage to Bina (Veena), the daughter of a wealthy parvenue (Mahesh Kaul), is wrecked because film directing is a job lacking in social status. Sinha is denied access to his beloved daughter Pammi (Baby Naaz) who is sent to a private boarding school. On a rainy night Sinha meets Shanti (Rehman) who turns out to be ideally suited to act the part of Paro in Sinha’s film Devdas. Shanti becomes a star and gossip columns link her with Sinha. The distraught Pammi pleads with Shanti to quit films, which she does, and her withdrawal leads to a rapid decline in Sinha’s fortunes. Soon he is a forgotten and destitute man. Eventually, after some painful adventures (reminiscent of Emil Jannings’s fate in Sternberg’s The Last Command, 1928) Sinha is found dead in the director’s chair in an empty studio. With a more complex narrative structure than Pyaasa, this film can be seen as a meditation on the control of space, itself an eminently cinematic concern and brilliantly rendered by Murthy’s astonishing CinemaScope camerawork. The film dramatises the conflict between open and constricted spaces, between spaces controlled by the director and spaces constraining him, spaces he can enter and those from which he is excluded. Eventually these tensions are resolved in the enclosed and womblike but huge and free-seeming space of a deserted film studio. The tragic refrain Waqt hai meherbaan of the song Dekhi zamaane kiyaari, written by Azmi, repeated throughout the film, endows the narrative with an epic dimension enhanced by Burman’s music. The original Cinema Scope negative has been damaged and few scope prints survive (two are at European TV stations).

KALYANA PARISU

aka The Wedding Gift

1959 194’ b&w Tamil

d/s C.V. Sridhar pc Venus Pics lyr Pattukotai Kalyanasundaram c A. Vincent m A.M. Raja

lp Gemini Ganesh, A. Nageshwara Rao, K.A. Thangavelu, B. Saroja Devi, Vijayakumari, M. Saroja, S.D. Subbulakshmi

The playwright Sridhar’s directorial debut is a melodrama featuring the student Bhaskar (Ganesh) who has a secret liaison with Vasanthi (Saroja Devi), a fellow student in whose house he rents a room. However, he marries her sister Geetha (Vijayakumari), the breadwinner of the family. Vasanthi stays with the couple until Geetha asks her sister to leave. When Geetha dies and leaves Bhaskar a single father, he tries to secure Vasanthi again but finds her already married to Raghu (Nageshwara Rao), so he hands her his child as a ‘wedding gift’ and disappears into the mist. The film presents the egotistical Bhaskar as a victimised, tragic hero in a story advocating the observance of social convention, with popular songs performed by playback singer and music director A.M. Raja in his debut as composer. Its autonomous comic sub-plot also proved very popular and is still sold on audio cassettes. Sridhar went on to make a series of ‘eternal triangle’ pictures in a similar vein.

MAHISHASURA MARDINI/DURGA MATA

1959 167’ b&w Kannada/Hindi

d/c B.S. Ranga pc Vikram Prod.

s/lyr Chi. Sadashivaiah m G.K. Venkatesh

lp Rajkumar, Udaya Kumar, Sowcar Janaki, Sandhya, Narasimhraju, Chittor V. Nagaiah, Ashwath, Rajanala, Suryakala, Indrani, M. Lakshmidevi, Kushalakumari, Ramadevi

Devi Parana variation of the circumstances that led to the goddess Durga slaying the demon Mahishasura. In the film, told in flashback, he is not a demon but one who was ancestrally wronged when the god Indra slew Karambha, king of Mahishamandala. Karambha’s brother Rambha (Udaya Kumar), in retaliation, reaches the Nagaloka and steals the Sanathanakalpa fruit, bringing down a curse on his son: the boy shall never see either of his parents alive. The prophecy comes true as Rambha is killed and his wife Mahishi (Suryakala) commits sati (ritual self-immolation) just after her son Mahishasura is born. Mahishi was in fact a buffalo turned into a beautiful woman by Indra. The orphaned Mahishasura (Rajkumar) is raised by Shukracharya, who tells him the family stoiy in the film’s opening. Vowing to take revenge against the invincible Indra, Mahishasura through prayer achieves indestructibility. The celestial impasse is resolved when the goddess Parvati-Durga, gifted with the accumulated power of all the gods, defeats Mahishasura in a nine-day battle.

MARAGATHAM

aka Karunkuyil Kunrathu Kolai

1959 203’ b&w Tamil

d S.M. Sreeramulu Naidu p Pakshiraja Studios sc Murasoli Maran m S.M. Subbaiah Naidu

lp Sivaji Ganesan, S. Balachander, Padmini, Sandhya, Chandrababu

To escape a false charge of fratricide, Maranamarthanda Zamindar (Balachander) leaves his wife Karpagavalli (Sandhya) and moves to Sri Lanka with his daughter Maragatham (Padmini), assuming the names Anandar and Alamu. When his brother-in-law Varendran (Sivaji) arrives in Sri Lanka on holiday and meets them, he falls for Alamu not knowing that she is his niece. Eventually, the fugitives return to Tamil Nadu and their names are cleared with the help of Varendaran and Butler Gundan (Chandrababu).

PAIGHAM

1959 188’ b&w Hindi

d S.S. Vasan pc Gemini s Kothamangalam Subbu dial Ramanand Sagar, T. Mukherjee lyr Pradeep c P. Ellappa m C. Ramchandra

lp Dilip Kumar, Vyjayanthimala, Raaj Kumar, Pandharibai, Motilal, B. Saroja Devi, Johnny Walker, Minoo Mumtaz

After Mr Sampat (1952) and Insaniyat (1955), this multi-star melodrama consolidated S.S. Vasan’s efforts to break into the Hindi cinema. Poor heroine Manju (Vyjayanthimala) befriends Malati (Saroja Devi), the daughter of rich millowner Seth Sewakram (Motilal). The engineer Ratanlal (D. Kumar), together with his brother Ramlal (Raaj Kumar), works at Sewakram’s mill where he meets Manju again and falls in love with her. The complicated story that ensues involves Ratanlal setting up a union while his brother Ramlal tries to break it under pressure from the boss. The major twist in the plot is that Manju is revealed to be the rich millowner’s daughter, whereupon she tries to burn down the mill. Ratanlal, who tries to stop her, is arrested and jailed for arson before the story is eventually resolved.

PRESIDENT PANCHATCHARAM

1959 162’ b&w Tamil

d A. Bhimsingh pc Savithri Pics st N. Gogol’s The Government Inspector sc B.S. Ramaiah c M. Karnan m G. Ramanathan

lp S.S. Rajendran, S.V. Sahasranamam, T.R. Ramchandran, V.R. Rajagopal, B. Saroja Devi, S.N. Lakshmi, T.V. Karunanidhi, N. Chandini, D.V. Narayanaswamy

The District Board president (Sahasranamam) meets the unemployed youth Sigamani (Rajendran), who wants a job and says he is in love with the president’s daughter (Saroja Devi). However, the president mistakes him for a government representative investigating corruption charges.

RAJA MAKUTAM

1959 179’[Te]/184’[Ta] b&w Telugu/Tamil

d/co-sc B.N. Reddi pc Vauhini

st/dial D.V. Narasaraju co-sc Padmaraju, B.S. Ramaiah lyr Devulapalli Krishna Sastry, Kosaraju, Nagaraju c B.N. Konda Reddy m Master Venu

lp N.T. Rama Rao, Gummadi Venkateshwara Rao, Rajanala, Rajasulochana, P. Kannamha

An unacknowledged adaptation of Ramanna’s ‘folkloric’ adventure Pudumaipithan (1957) by a director known for reformist films. The king is assassinated in the absence of his son Prince Pratap (NTR). When Pratap returns in disguise, he falls in love with the village belle Prameela (Rajasulochana). He becomes a public enemy when he sentences the men who appear to be guilty of the killing, one of whom is Prameela’s brother, but the real villain is Prachanda, the prince’s uncle. Disguised as an avenging revolutionary known as the Black Snake, Pratap dethrones the villain. The Telugu version of the bilingual (Reddi’s only two-language film) was a success, but the director later disowned it for pandering to commercialism.

SANGTYE AIKA

1959 157’ b&w Marathi

d Anant Mane pc Chetana Chitra st G.G. Parkhi s Vyankatesh Madgulkar lyr G.D. Madgulkar cl. Mohammed m Vasant Pawar

lp Sulochana, Hansa Wadkar, Jayashree Gadkar, Ratnamala, Neelam, Pushpa Rane, Chandrakant, Suryakant, Dada Salvi, Vasantrao Pahelwan, Vasant Shinde, Kisanrao Agihotri

Mane’s major hit is a Wadkar classic, later providing the title for her controversial autobiography (1970). Marathi cinema’s best-known Tamasha musical (with Shantaram’s Lokshahir Ramjosbi, 1947) is an epic saga narrating a conflict over two generations between the evil Mahadev Patil of Rajuri (Dada Salvi) and folk Tamasha dancer Chima (Wadkar). The good Sakharam (Chandrakant) and his wife (Sulochana) move into the village where he defeats Patil in a bullock-cart race (one of the film’s most spectacular sequences). Patil has Sakharam killed and his home burnt down. He then rapes Sakharam’s wife, who dies while giving birth to her child. The infant girl is raised by Chima. In the second half, the young dancer (Gadkar), now apprenticed to Chima, faces the amorous attentions of Patil’s son (Suryakant). The remarkable finale has Chima reveal the truth on stage through song: the young dancer is in fact Patil’s own daughter. Sakharam’s naivety (cf. the song Jhali bhali pahaat) is contrasted with the cynical realpolitik of the villain, while Wadkar’s extraordinary performance holds the story together as well as commenting on the village’s history. In a performance recalling Brecht’s dramaturgy, she integrates the Tamasha and the Lavni idioms into the melodramatic plot, combining Madgulkar’s stereotypes of authenticity with the mythic aspects of the ruralist ‘gramin chitrapat’ genre. Wadkar’s successor in the Tamasha and saint film idioms, Gadkar, here has one of her first major roles.

SATTA BAZAAR

1959 ?’ b&w Hindi

d Ravindra Dave pc Nagina Films st Mohanlal G. Dave sc K.A. Abbas lyr Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri, Gulshan Bawra, Indivar c W. V. Mukadam m Kalyanji-Anandji

lp Meena Kumari, Balraj Sahni, Johnny Walker, Suresh, Tiwari, Krishnakant, Asit Sen, Savita Choudhury, Vijaya Choudhury

A devout housewife (Kumari) supports her stepdaughter’s decision to marry a man not of her own caste, but her husband Ramesh (Sahni) gets mixed up with a bunch of crooks and causes the family much distress.

SIVAGANGAI SEEMAI

aka The Land of Sivagangai

1959 173’ b&w Tamil

d K. Shankar pc Kannadasan Prod.

p K.S. Ranganathan s/lyr Kannadasan c Thambu m Vishwanathan-Ramamurthy

lp S.S. Rajendran, T.K. Bhagavathi, M.K. Mustafa, P.S. Veerappa, Kamala Laxman, M.N. Rajam, S. Varalakshmi, Wahab Kashmiri, Thambaram Lalitha, N. Lalitha

The lyricist and Dravidian ideologue Kannadasan uses a fictionalised account of the British East India Company’s subjugation of the Sivagangai kingdom as a vehicle for DMK propaganda. Set in 1798, Omaithurai, the brother of Kattabomman who rose against the British, seeks the protection of the Marudu brothers who rule Sivagangai (the Marudu are folk legends renowned for their anti-British insurrections). Col. Welsh (Kashmiri) uses this incident to storm their fort and execute the rulers. In parallel, the film chronicles the tragic love story between Muthazhagu (Rajendran) and Chittu (Kamala). Chittu and another female character die of unspecified causes after their husbands get killed. A young bride whose husband is murdered by robbers commits sati, something the film appears to approve of as the Marudu brothers declare she should be worshipped as a deity. Theatricality, verbosity, angled shots for emotional emphasis and insistent background music weigh the film down, although folk-songs provide a lighter touch. The film was sometimes presented as the DMK’s counter to Veerapandiya Kattaboman, made the same year with a more strongly emphasised nationalism. The script was published in 1994.

SUJATA

1959 161’(147’) b&w Hindi

d/p Bimal Roy pc Bimal Roy Prod, st Subodh Ghosh sc Nabendu Ghosh dial Paul Mahendra lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c Kamal Bose m S.D. Burman

lp Nutan, Sunil Dutt, Shashikala, Tarun Bose, Sulochana, Lalita Pawar

Roy’s classic reformist melodrama about a Harijan (Untouchable) girl whose kinfolk die in a plague epidemic and is raised by an upper-class and caste family. Upendranath Choudhury (Bose) and his wife Charu (Sulochana) have a daughter, Rama (Shashikala), and they adopt Sujata (Nutan), the Harijan orphan. Later, Sujata discovers the truth of her ancestry and must bear the demeaning treatment meted out by Charu and the family friend Giribala (Pawar), whose son Adhir (Dutt) is supposed to marry Rama but falls in love with Sujata. When Sujata donates blood to save Charu’s life, even Charu has to abandon her caste prejudice. Nutan gives one of her best performances, surpassed only by her solo tour deforce in Roy’s Bandini (1963). Unfortunately, the weak Adhir has to bear the burden of being the only representative of the progressive forces ranged against oppressive tradition. Presumably for its humanist message, the film includes a rather arbitrarily inserted but elaborate stage performance of Tagore’s dance drama Chandalika. Several classic numbers include Asha Bhosle’s Kalighata chhaye, composer S.D. Burman’s own Suno mere bandhu re and Talat Mahmood’s Jalte hain jiske liye.

VEERAPANDIYA KATTABOMMAN/AMAR SHAHEED

1959 201’ col Tamil/Hindi

d/p B.R. Panthulu pc Padmini Pics s Sakthi Krishnaswamy c W.R. Subba Rao lyr K.M. Balasubramanyam m G. Ramanathan

lp Sivaji Ganesan, Gemini Ganesh, Padmini, S. Varalakshmi, Ragini, V.K. Ramaswamy, Jawar Seetharaman, Anandan

The epic historical and best-known of Ganesan’s collaborations with Panthulu. Kattaboman is presented as the ruler of a small kingdom in Tamil Nadu in the 18th C. who heroically fought against the British invaders and is still revered for his rebellion. The plot has the British lure a rival, Ettayappan (Ramaswamy), into betraying the valiant Kattaboman (Ganesan) who is wounded, captured, humiliatingly brought to trial and hanged. The idealised portrait of Kattaboman is interwoven, in Ganesan’s first Technicolor picture, with lavish court scenes, temple worship and the taming of bulls (much of the film was shot in Rajasthan). A love interest has been added as well. The film consciously invoked Cecil B. DeMille’s spectacles with Panthulu adopting DeMille’s tactic of personally introducing the film, on camera.

ANGULIMAL

1960 153’ col Hindi

d Vijay Bhatt pc P.V. Films, Thai Information Service dial Sudarshan lyr Bharat Vyas c V. Avadhoot m Anil Biswas

lp Nimmi, Bharat Bhushan, Anita Guha, Ulhas, Chandrasekhar, Achala Sachdev, Manmohan Krishna, Prem Adib, Kaisari, Helen

Financed by the Thai Government this film was to celebrate the 2500th anniversary of the Buddha (6th century BC). The tyrannical Angulimal (Bhushan), a bandit wearing a garland of severed human fingers and who engages in bloody mystical rituals to achieve divine power, eventually succumbs to the Buddha’s teachings. Nimmi played Angulimal’s lover and Hemen Gupta was originally announced as the director.

ANURADHA

aka Love of Anuradha

1960 141’(120’) b&w Hindi

p/d Hrishikesh Mukherjee pc L.B. Films st/co-sc Sachin Bhowmik co-sc D.N Mukherjee, Samir Choudhury dial Rajinder Singh Bedi lyr Shailendra c Jaywant Pathare m Ravi Shankar

lp Balraj Sahni, Abhi Bhattacharya, Leela Naidu, Baby Ranu, Nasir Hussain, Hari Shivdasani, Mukri, Rashid Khan, Asit Sen, Ashim Kumar, Madhav Chitnis, Bhudo Advani

A sentimental variation on Madame Bovary. Anuradha Roy (Naidu), a lively and successful singer, marries a dull but idealistic country doctor (Sahni) and soon gets bored. Her former lover, who has an accident while passing through her village, ignites memories of her past and persuades her to return to her former profession. However, a timely visit by a famous and worldly-wise doctor, who recognises her sacrifice as more praiseworthy than the genius of her husband, reconciles her to her new life. Some poetic shots in the film play on life’s ironies: while Anuradha looks at palm trees in the moonlight, the doctor gazes at wriggling worms through his microscope. Imaginative cutting (the director is also an expert editor) creates effective narrative ellipses, as when the newly married bride eagerly awaits her husband and he bursts in, years later, tired and irritable. Mukherjee’s traditionally conservative fable about marriage is well served by Sahni’s underacting, the subtle play of shadows suggesting the flavour of Anuradha’a nostalgia for her former success, and Ravi Shankar’s music, including popular songs like Raise din beete and Hai re woh din kyon na aaye (sung by Lata Mangeshkar).

APNA HAATH JAGANNATH

1960 173’ b&w Hindi

d Mohan Segal pc Deluxe Films

s G.D. Madgulkar dial Rajinder Singh Bedi lyr Kaifi Azmi c C.S. Puttu m S.D. Burman

lp Kishore Kumar, Sayeeda Khan, Leela Chitnis, Nasir Hussain, Jagdev, Nandkishore, Shivraj, Sabita Chatterjee

Following on from his successful New Delhi (1956), Segal here uses the comedy star Kishore Kumar to address middle-class attitudes to manual labour. Madan (Kumar), the son of an impoverished aristocrat, Dhaniram, is forced to take a labouring job to the disappointment of his father and the disapproval of his future in-laws. However, he makes a success of his printing press and eventually employs his own father in the expanding business. The film has several Kishore Kumar numbers including the bouncy Permit permit… ke liye mar mit.

BAISHEY SHRAVAN

aka The Wedding Day

1960 110’ (98’) b&w Bengali

d/s Mrinal Sen pc Kallol Films st Kanai Basu c Sailaja Chatterjee m Hemanta Mukherjee

lp Gyanesh Mukherjee, Madhabi Mukherjee, Hemangini Devi, Umanath Bhattacharya, Sumita Dasgupta, Anup Kumar

Set in a Bengal village just before and during the catastrophic famine of 1943 when some 5 million people died of starvation. A middle-aged hawker (G. Mukherjee) marries a beautiful 16-year-old girl (M. Mukherjee) who initially brightens his life. Then the man’s mother (H. Devi) dies, WW2 presses upon them and the famine hits Bengal as the couple’s marriage and the entire fabric of life disintegrates. In the end, the wife hangs herself. It is a deliberately cruel film about cruel living conditions, with the stark realism heightened through several melodramatic techniques. The mother dies when the roof falls on her head in a violent storm; the marriage breaks up when Priyanath greedily eats up the little rice he can find in the midst of the famine, without leaving any for his wife. The real innovation is that the third party destroying the marriage is not a person but the impact upon the couple of, in Sen’s words, ‘the men who, as they served colonial bosses in their war efforts, cared only for profiteering and black marketing’.

BAMBAI KA BABU

1960 154’ b&w Hindi

d/co-p Raj Khosla co-p/c Jal Mistry pc Naya Films s G.R. Kamath dial Rajinder Singh Bedi lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri m S.D. Burman

lp Dev Anand, Suchitra Sen, Manohar Deepak, Rashid Khan, Jagdish Raj, Lalita Kumari, Prem Khanna, Sailen Bose, Anwaribai, Nasir Hussain

The nice Inspector Malik (Deepak) reforms the criminal Babu (Anand) who is then pursued by the gang boss Bali (Raj) who suspects Babu has become an informer. In a fight, Bali is killed and Babu has to go on the run. A blackmailer, Bhagatji (Khan), forces Babu to impersonate the long-lost son of a rich household in order to steal their jewellery. In the process, Babu falls in love with Maya (Sen), the daughter of the family. After the film’s noirish beginning, as in many Dev Anand starrers, it turns into a romance, initially with incestual overtones since Maya believes Babu to be her brother. Eventually, when Babu discovers that the lost son was Bali, whom he has killed, he accepts his responsibilities to the family and that Maya will marry someone else.

CHAUDHVIN KA CHAND

1960 169’ b&w/col Hindi-Urdu

d M. Sadiq p Guru Dutt pc Guru Dutt Films s Saghir Usmani dial Tabish Sultanpuri lyr Shakeel Badayuni c Nariman Irani m Ravi Gum Dutt and Minoo Mumtaz in Chaudhvin Ka Chand

lp Waheeda Rehman, Guru Dutt, Rehman, Minoo Mumtaz, Johnny Walker, Mumtaz Begum, Perveen Paul, Naazi, Nurjehan, Razia, Zebunissa

Dutt apparently commissioned Sadiq to make this Muslim social to help the maker of Rattan (1944) out of his impecunious condition. The love triangle pivots around the Islamic practice of purdah, which forbids women to show their face to men outside their immediate family. A nawab (Rehman) catches a brief glimpse of Jamila’s (W. Rehman) face and falls in love with her. At his sister’s party, he manages to get hold of a torn fragment from Jamila’s veil and gives it to a maidservant to trace the identity of its owner. Jamila happens to exchange her veil with that of her friend Bano and so the nawab identifies the wrong woman. This mistake becomes a tragic irony when the nawab, having refused to marry a woman chosen by his ailing mother, persuades his close friend Aslam (Dutt) to marry the maternal choice instead: that woman turns out to be Jamila. When some time later Aslam realises that his friend the nawab is in love with his wife Jamila, he pretends to tire of her, hoping that she will demand a divorce and so will be free to marry the nawab. The nawab soon learns of Aslam’s attempted sacrifice and in the tradition of male friendships on the screen, the nawab chooses to die for his friend and commits suicide. In later release prints, two song sequences, one being the famous Rafi solo Chaudhvin ka chand ho, ya aftaah ho, were rendered in colour although designed for b&w.

Gum Dutt and Minoo Mumtaz in Chaudhvin Ka Chand

CHHALIA

1960 112’ b&w Hindi

d Manmohan Desai pc Subhash Pics s Inder Raj Anand lyr Qamar Jalalabadi c N. Satyen m Kalyanji-Anandji

lp Raj Kapoor, Nutan, Rehman, Shobhana Samarth, Pran, Moppet Raja, Ramlal, Gul, Shyamlal

Desai’s directorial debut is an unlikely drama about India’s Partition. Shanti (Nutan) is married to Kewal (Rehman) in Lahore on the eve of Independence. When the nation is divided, Shanti’s family and her husband migrate to Delhi, leaving her behind. She finds shelter for five years with the Afghan bandit Abdul Rehman (Pran) who has a sister of Shanti’s age across the border. Shanti bears a son, Anwar (Moppet Raja), and when she travels to Delhi with her child her husband disowns her, as does her father. She finds shelter with another generous criminal, Chhalia (Kapoor), who falls in love with her. Abdul Rehman comes to Delhi to pursue an old feud with Chhalia and threatens to kidnap Shanti. After an extended fight sequence, the two bandits call a truce. On the train back to Pakistan, Rehman is reunited with his sister. Chhalia arranges a reconciliation between Shanti and Kewal, renouncing his own chance at happiness. The film alludes to aspects of realism derived from radical literature as well as from Kapoor’s presence (cf. Phir Subah Hogi, 1958), but Desai seems impatient with the finer points of plot structure, a tendency that would later lead to his virtual abandonment of temporally coherent plots in the Bachchan films of the 70s and 80s. The film had several hit songs including the communal-harmony number Chhalia mera naam, sung by Mukesh.

DEVI

aka The Goddess

1960 93’ b&w Bengali

d/p/sc Satyajit Ray pc Satyajit Ray Prod.

st Prabhat Kumar Mukherjee c Subrata Mitra m Ali Akbar Khan

lp Chhabi Biswas, Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore, Purnendu Mukherjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Arpan Choudhury, Anil Chatterjee, Kali Sarkar, Mohammed Israel, Khagesh Chakraborty

Following Jalsaghar (1958), Ray made a series of period movies featuring strong, well-rounded characters no longer limited to the requirements of melodramatic plot functions. These characters, Bishwambar Roy, Dayamoyee and later Charulata (1964) were adapted equally from Bengali literary stereotypes and from English literature’s notion of psychological realism. Made in the same year as Devi, Ghatak’s classic Meghe Dhaka Tara uses the popular Bengali legend associating young married women with Durga, the mythical provider, to reveal how history and culture create the oppressive social spaces determining women’s lives. Instead, Ray presented a psychological portrait of a young woman and her zamindar father-in-law set in the mid-19th C. The beautiful Dayamoyee (Tagore) is deemed by her recently widowed father-in-law Kalikinker Roy (Biswas) to be the goddess Kali incarnate, disregarding the rationalist arguments put forth by her husband Umaprasad (S. Chatterjee), a university student. The old man transforms her into an icon for prayer in the village, and she soon develops a reputation for miracle cures. Seduced by her role as divinity, she is reluctant to return with her husband to the city. When the death of her son destroys her illusions, Dayamoyee goes mad and disappears bejewelled into the mist. Much of the film dealt with the barely-concealed sexual relationship between Dayamoyee and the father-in-law as she massages his feet while he reclines with a hookah, or even more explicitly in a prayer sequence that juxtaposes her sitting before the Kali icon with shots of the father-in-law descending for prayer. Ray preferred a cultural and psychological reading, enjoining his Western critics to acquaint themselves thoroughly with e.g. the cult of the Mother Goddess, the 19th C. Renaissance in Bengal and the position of the Hindu bride. The film is also remembered for Mitra’s remarkable camerawork, contrasting the purely psychological exposition with two breathtaking crane shots that show the immersion of the goddess during the Puja festival and capture the manic hold exerted by the Durga/Kali legend in Bengal.

GANGA

aka The River

1960 151’ b&w Bengali

d/sc Rajen Tarafdar pc Cine Art Prod.

st Samaresh Bose c Dinen Gupta m Salil Choudhury

lp Niranjan Ray, Gyanesh Mukherjee, Sandhya Roy, Ruma Guha-Thakurta, Seeta Devi, Mani Srimani, Namita Sinha

Following in the wake of Satyajit Ray’s idyllic rural realism, Tarafdar’s best-known film is an epic drama about a young fisherman of the Sundarbans, Bilash (Ray), who has to overcome fear and superstition to make his way down the river to the sea. Old Panchu (Mukherjee) witnessed, shown in flashback, the horrifying disappearance into the sea of his elder brother and former leader of the fishermen. His impulsive nephew Bilash has an affair with a married woman, rejects the love of Gamli Panchi (Roy) and finally wants to marry Himi (Guha-Thakurta), daughter of the unscrupulous moneylender Damini. When Bilash decides to ‘go south’ to the sea too, evoking an ominous pattern all too familiar to his uncle Panchu, Himi refuses to follow him. The story meanders through several detours chronicling in detail the fisherfolk’s dangerous lives and their struggles with storms, floods, hunger and indebtedness. Its primitivist iconography extends to the depiction of women as both home-makers and destroyers, and to aligning the men’s thirst for life with nature rites. Chidananda Das Gupta critiqued the film for its lyricism, which for him detracted from the story’s epic potential and pushed it towards melodrama. The film established Tarafdar as a major film-maker, but he still had problems finding work in the industry.

HOSPITAL

1960 164’ b&w Bengali

d Sushil Majumdar pc Shri N.C.A. Pics m Amal Mukherjee

lp Ashok Kumar, Suchitra Sen, Pahadi Sanyal, Chhabi Biswas, Sushil Majumdar, Bhanu Bannerjee

A medical story complicated by caste differences. Saibal (A. Kumar) and Sarbari (Sen) are surgeons in a hospital. Their marriage is prevented by her lower-caste status. When she discovers that she is pregnant, Sarbari goes to work in a small town where she gives birth to a son. She then discovers that she suffers from cancer. Saibal comes to perform the operation that saves her. Not to be confused with the bilingual Jogajog/Hospital (B/H) (1943) by the same film-maker.

JAALI NOTE

1960 155’ b&w Hindi

d Shakti Samanta pc S.P. Pics lyr Raja Mahendra, Anjaan m O.P. Nayyar

lp Dev Anand, Madhubala, Om Prakash, Helen, Madan Puri, Bipin Gupta, Kundan

A crime thriller featuring Inspector Dinesh (Anand) who tracks down a gang of counterfeiters with the assistance of a fearless journalist, Renu (Madhubala). He puts on a variety of disguises and masquerades as a prince who runs a counterfeiting business. In the end the main villain (Gupta) turns out to be the hero’s long-lost father. One of Samanta’s lesser-known detective movies.

JAGACHYA PATHIVAR

1960 147’ b&w Marathi

d/st Raja Paranjpe pc Shripad Chitra

sc/lyr G.D. Madgulkar c Bal Bapat m Sudhir Phadke

lp Raja Paranjpe, Seema, G.D. Madgulkar, Dhumal, Mai Bhide, Vinay Kale, Raja Gosavi, Ramesh Deo, Sharad Talwalkar, Rajdutt

Melodrama evoking Chaplin’s City Lights (1931). Poor hero, in search of employment, meets blind heroine who sings and dances in the street for a living. He looks after her until her millionaire father rediscovers her. There are some classic hit songs by Phadke, e.g. Jag he bandishala and Nahi kh arch ali kavadi damadi.

JIS DESH MEIN GANGA BEHTI HAI

1960 167’ b&w Hindi

d Radhu Karmakar p Raj Kapoor pc R.K. Films s Arjun Dev Rashk lyr Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri c Tara Dutt m Shankar-Jaikishen

lp Raj Kapoor, Padmini, Pran, Tiwari, Nayampalli, Chanchal, Raj Mehra, Lalita Pawar, Sulochana Chatterjee, Nana Palsikar, Vishwa Mehra, Amar

A pacifist film directed by Kapoor’s cameraman since Awara (1951). Set among the bandits of central India and by the banks of the Ganges, the story tells of Raju (Kapoor), a wandering innocent who believes in the purity of the Ganga and abhors violence (a trait influenced by the philosophies of Acharya Vinoba Bhave and Gandhi). He rescues a man who turns out to be a bandit chieftain and then reforms the gang after complicated negotiations with the police. In the process, he has to overcome the gang’s lieutenant, Raka (Pran), and falls in love with the chief’s daughter (Padmini). The film emphasised scenic shots, beginning with several slow pans over the Ganges and ending with a spectacular sequence in a valley when the outlaws finally lay down their arms and surrender to the law. Its most typical movement is a slow crane movement upwards, leaving the audience to ‘judge’ the characters and their contradictory ideologies. Kapoor, distinctly older than in his 50s classics, moves with the stilted gestures of a marionette in his characteristic role of the innocent country lad who ends up reforming the world.

KADU MAKRANI

1960 148’ b&w Gujarati

d/sc Manhar Raskapur pc Sadhana Chitra st Gunwantrai Acharya co-lyr/m Avinash Vyas co-lyr Apa Hamir c Bipin Gajjar

lp Arvind, Shalini, Champsibhai Nagda, Mahesh Desai, Babu Raje, Bhudo Advani, Champak Lala, Radha, Sulochana, Ulhas, Jaya Bhatt, Honey Chhaya, Vishnu Vyas, Padmakumar Joshi, Ajit Soni, Mukand Desai, Devika Roy, Bhimjibhai, Upendra Trivedi, Gunvant Kayastha, Bagla, Manjula Moti

Raskapur’s best-known film is an anti-imperialist fantasy historical, his favourite genre (cf. his Mulu Manek, 1955). Unlike most Indian royals, the Makranis of Junagadh defy the British who retaliate by invading Inaj, a Makrani settlement. Four members of the royal clan become bandits. The main one, Kadar Baksh aka Kadu Makrani, causes major problems for the British who order the local police chief, one of Kadar’s boyhood friends, to capture him. After a furious battle Kadu is captured in Karachi and hanged. The film was remade by Manu Desai in 1973.

KALA BAZAAR

1960 163’ b&w Hindi

d/s Vijay Anand pc Navketan Films

lyr Shailendra c V. Ratra m S.D. Burman

lp Dev Anand, Waheeda Rehman, Nanda, Leela Chitnis, Vijay Anand, Kishore Sahu

Hero Raghuvir (D. Anand) becomes Bombay’s top black marketeer in film tickets and falls in love with Alka (Rehman) who shuns ‘black’ money. The hero reforms and starts a ‘white market’ [Safed Bazar] with his now legitimate gang of touts. Vijay Anand’s characteristic use of realism as a counterweight to the release of fantasy is exemplified in the visual and sound montage that opens the film and in the remarkably picturised Suraj ke jaisigolayi, chanda se thandak bhipayi set in top-angle camera among sleeping pavement-dwellers. Dev Anand may have had this strategy in mind when he declared that films should be ‘brought as close as possible to the reading of a newspaper’. The film includes several classic songs, e.g. Na main dhan chahun (sung by Geeta Dutt and Sudha Malhotra) and Khoya khoya chand (sung by Mohammed Rafi).

KANOON

1960 150’ b&w Hindi

d/p B.R. Chopra pc B.R. Films s C.J. Pavri dial Akhtar-ul-Iman c M.N. Malhotra m Salil Choudhury

lp Ashok Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Nanda, Nana Palsikar, Mehmood, Om Prakash

Chopra’s courtroom drama and suspense movie tells of the progressive Judge Badriprasad (A. Kumar) whose daughter Meena (Nanda) is married to the equally progressive Public Prosecutor Kailash Khanna (R. Kumar). Kailash witnesses his father-in-law commit a murder. His dilemma grows when a petty thief is arrested and tried in Badriprasad’s court. Eventually, when Badriprasad is forced to step down and submit to a new investigation, the killer is found to be an identical look-alike of the judge. The unlikely ending is shored up by a strong plea against capital punishment. The long court sequences are alleviated by extensive film noir passages (cf. the crane movements along walls and corridors), and the film’s association with Hollywood models is enhanced by the absence of songs.

KSHUDISTA PASHAN

aka Hungry Stones 1960 117’ b&w Bengali

d/sc Tapan Sinha pc Eastern Circuit p Hemen Ganguly st/lyr Rabindranath Tagore m Ali Akbar Khan c Bimal Mukherjee

lp Soumitra Chatterjee, Arundhati Devi, Radhamohan Bhattacharya, Chhabi Biswas, Padmadevi, Dilip Roy, Bina Chand, Rasaraj Chakraborty

Sinha continues his adaptations of Tagore (Kabuliwala, 1956) with this ghost story shot in Bhopal, Bikaner and in the hills of MP although the story is set in the village of Barich in Hyderabad. A young tax collector (S. Chatterjee) decides to live in a deserted 250-year-old palace on the banks of the Susta river. An obsessive old man in the village (Bhattacharya) warns the prosaic taxman not to spend a single night in the palace because it is haunted. The old man’s narration then gives way to that of the taxman as he gradually falls under the spell of the place. Its hallucinatory world takes him over, in the form of a beautiful female apparition (A. Devi). His obsession gets to the point where his everyday life appears unreal as he vividly relives episodes from the fantasised history. In the fantasy, he is the trader Imtiaz Ali who gave the slave girl to the emperor but then fell in love with her. The palace used to be Emperor Mahmud Shah II’s pleasure den and its stones seem to have absorbed the untold anguish suffered by the aristocratic potentate’s female victims, a suffering so intense that it overwhelms those who dwell there. The film and its lyrical imagery can be read as metaphors for the renants of feudal oppression still active in contemporary society. Alternatively, the feudal palace can be seen as triggering the eroticised fantasies of power of modern middle-class men.

MEGHE DHAKA TARA

aka The Cloud-capped Star aka Hidden Star

1960 134’ b&w Bengali

d/sc Ritwik Ghatak pc Chitrakalpa st Shaktipada Rajguru c Dinen Gupta m Jyotirindra Moitra

lp Supriya Choudhury, Anil Chatterjee, Bijon Bhattacharya, Geeta De, Niranjan Ray, Geeta Ghatak, Dwiju Bhawal, Gyanesh Mukherjee, Ronen Ray Choudhury

One of Ghatak’s most powerful and innovative melodramas revolving around the self-sacrificing Neeta (S. Choudhury), a figure analogous to the women in Mizoguchi’s work. A family of refugees from the Partition of Bengal live in a shanty town near Calcutta, surviving on the earnings of the eldest daughter Neeta. Her elder brother Shankar (A. Chatterjee) hopes to become a classical singer, and Neeta postpones her marriage to the scientist Sanat (N. Ray) to support the family and to pay for her younger brother’s and sister’s studies. Eventually, with the tacit encouragement of Neeta’s mother (De), Sanat marries her younger sister Geeta (G. Ghatak). The family is beset by misfortunes as the father (B. Bhattacharya) and the younger brother Montu (Bhawal) both suffer accidents, forcing Neeta to remain the sole breadwinner in spite of her worsening tuberculosis. Finally Shankar, having achieved his ambition, takes her to a mountain resort for treatment. There, terminally ill and having sacrificed her best years, she finally cries out into the silence of the mountains her will to live. The story is familiar in Bengali melodrama (cf. Arundhati Devi’s Chhuti, 1967), a link stressed by the casting of Bengali star Supriya Choudhury. However, into this plot Ghatak weaves a parallel narrative evoking the celebrated Bengali legends of Durga who is believed to descend from her mountain retreat every autumn to visit her parents and that of Menaka. This double focus, condensed in the figure of Neeta, is rendered yet more complex on the level of the film language itself through elaborate, at times non-diegetic sound effects working alongside or as commentaries on the image (e.g. the refrain Ai go Uma kole loi, i.e. Come to my arms, Uma, my child, used through the latter part of the film, esp. on the face of the rain-drenched Neeta shortly before her departure to the sanatorium). This approach allows the film to transcend its story by opening it out towards the realm of myth and to the conventions of cinematic realism (evoked e.g. in the Calcutta sequences). The characters, their actions and the way both are represented acquire an epic dimension: characters, without losing their singularity, are presented as figures caught in the web of historical (and therefore changeable) forces while the limits of mythic and of ‘traditional’ melodramatic narrative idioms are exceeded by a new, specifically cinematic mode of discourse. For instance, Neeta cuts across both the mythic and the melodramatic stereotypes of ‘the nurturing mother’, an association elaborated further musically by the Baul folk number, the Khayal compositions and a spectacularly filmed Tagore song (Je raate mor dwarguli); the oppression/seduction/nurture triangle which structures the Durga legend as derived from Tantric abstractions, is projected on to the mother, Geeta and Neeta, inscribing these abstractions back into history and thus making them available for critical reconsideration. Kumar Shahani addressed the film’s achievements in his major essay ‘Violence and Responsibility’ (cf. Shahani, 1986).

Supriya Choudhury in Meghe Dhaka Tara

MEHNDI RANG LAGYO

1960 151’ b&w Gujarati

d Manhar Raskapur pc Varsha Chitra

s/co-lyr Chaturbhuj Doshi p/c Bipin Gajjar co-lyr/m Avinash Vyas

lp Rajendra Kumar, Usha Kiron, Chandravadan Bhatt, Satish Vyas, Keshav, Toral Divetia, Kiran Lai, Chandrakant Sangani, Honey Chhaya, Jayesh Desai, B.M. Vyas, Bhimjibhai, Narayan Ragjor, Jaya Bhatt, Niharika Divetia, Upendra Trivedi, Madan Saigal, Mamta Bhatt, Nitin Shah

The beautiful and innocent example of Gujarati womanhood, Alka (Kiran), loves and marries Anil (Kumar). However Anil becomes an alcoholic and ends up in jail. Alka finds a job in a college in Calcutta and raises her two children. Anil, released from prison, happens to become a gardener at the college and is thus able to rescue their daughter from a rapist. A classic domestic melodrama, showing the initially Westernised hero corrupted by his first drink at a place called the Bombay Bar, imprisoned in the Sabarmati jail (where Gandhi and other nationalist leaders had been arrested during the Independence movement), and emerging as a bearded, nationalist icon who saves his daughter’s boyfriend from taking his first drink with an extended speech on the evils of liquor. The film also mobilises a range of references to exemplify a tradition of ‘Gujaratiness’, the title coming from a well-known Raasgarba song to which couples dance during the festival of Navaratri. The film also continues Raskapur’s attempts to fantasise an identity for his native state (cf. Mulu Manek, 1955, Kadu Makrani, 1960).

Prithviraj Kapoor in Mughal-e-Azam

MUGHAL-E-AZAM

1960 173’ b&w/col Urdu

d/p/co-sc K. Asif pc Sterling Investment Corp. co-sc/co-dial Aman co-dial Kamal Amrohi, Ehsan Rizvi, Wajahat Mirza lyr Shakeel Badayuni c R.D. Mathur m Naushad

lp Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Madhubala, Durga Khote, Nigar Sultana, Ajit, Kumar, Murad, Jilloo, Vijayalakshmi, S. Nazir, Surendra, Gopi Krishna, Jalal Agha, Baby Tabassum, Johnny Walker

K. Asif’s classic megabudget spectacular and best-known historical romance was nine years in the making. Opening with the voice-over words ‘I am Hindustan’ spoken over a map of India, the film retells in flashback the popular story (cf. Loves of a Mughal Prince, 1928; Anarkali, 1953) of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (P. Kapoor) and his Rajput wife Joda Bai (Khote) who finally manage to have a son, Prince Salim (D. Kumar). Salim grows up into a weak and pleasure-loving youth. Having proved himself in battle, Salim receives a sculpture of a beautiful female slave. He falls in love with the ‘live’ statue, Anarkali (Madhubala), and wants to marry her. Akbar pressurises Anarkali to give up Salim, humiliating and imprisoning her, but to no avail: in the film’s best-known Sheesh Mahal (Palace of Mirrors) sequence, shot in colour, she defies Akbar through song: Pyarkiya to darna kya (‘What is there to fear? All I have done is to love’, sung by Lata Mangeshkar). Salim remains devoted to her and disobeys his father to the point of rebelling against the emperor and challenging him to battle. Akbar defeats Salim and condemns him to death. Anarkali is allowed to sacrifice her life to save Salim. However, contrary to the legend which has Anarkali walled in alive, Akbar spares her unbeknown to Salim. The film is remembered mainly for Amrohi’s dialogues, esp. the confrontations between Kapoor and Kumar. Naushad’s music includes the songs by noted classical singer Bade Ghulam Ali Khan (Shubh din aaye and Prem jogan ke sundari pio chali) and Mathur’s expansive camerawork interrupts the statically and frontally shot dialogues (cf. R.D. Mathur, ‘Mughal-e-Azam and its Creator Mr K. Asif, Lensight, 1993). Mahesh Bhatt (1993) drew attention to the memorable love scene ‘shot in extreme closeups of just faces in which Dilip Kumar tickles the impassioned face of Madhubala with a white feather. This was perhaps the most sensitively portrayed erotic scene on the Indian screen.’

PADHAI THERIYUDU PAAR

1960 168’ b&w Tamil

d/c Nemai Ghosh, V. Ramamurthy pc Kumari Films lyr K.C.S. Arunachalam, Jayakantan, Pattukotai Kalyanasundaram m M.B. Srinivasan

lp K. Vijayan, S.V. Sahasranamam, V. Gopalakrishnan, S.V. Subbaiah, T.K. Balachandran, R. Muthuraman, S.V. Subbaiah, A. Veerappan

Set up by Nemai Ghosh, Srinivasan and others as a co-operative venture, with contributions from over 50 shareholders and collectively scripted in line with CPI ideology, most of the film addressed the trade union movement as seen through the eyes of Murugesan, a worker on the Southern Railway (Vijayan). The novelist Jayakantan contributed the hit song Thennan keethu oonjalile set to unusual music by Srinivasan using a xylophone. Randor Guy writes that internal dissensions spoiled the film’s release and caused it to flop.

PARTHIBAN KANAVU

aka Parthiban’s Dream

1960 219’ b&w Tamil

d D. Yoganand pc Jubilee Films st novel by R. Krishnamurthy [aka Kalki] s Kannadasan c P.S. Selvaraj m Veda

lp S.V. Ranga Rao, Gemini Ganesh, P.S. Veerappa, S.V. Subbaiah, T.S. Balaiah, Vyjayanthimala, Malathi, Kamala Kumari, Ragini, B. Saroja Devi

Verbose Tamil historical with a relentless music track, adapting one of Kalki’s Walter Scott-like historicals. King Parthiban (Ashokan), 8th C. Chola king, dies in battle against the Pallavas and his son Vikraman (Ganesh) tries to realise his father’s dream of an autonomous and unified Tamil kingdom. He achieves this with the help of a wise Pallava king, Narasimhavarman I (Ranga Rao), whose daughter Kundhavi (Vyjayanthimala) he marries. Together they defeat the Chalukyan King Pulakesin II and overcome the latter’s nasty priests. An abridged version of another Kalki novel, Sivakamiyin Sabatham [The Vow of Sivakami], has been incorporated, clumsily, as a dance drama. The film, like many other South Indian historicals, overlaps with the stage, here including painted backdrops and simulated shrines (except one shot of the Pallava monument of Mahabalipuram).

RANADHEERA KANTEERAVA

1960 191’ b&w Kannada

d N.C. Rajan pc Kannada Kalavidaru

s/lyr G.V. Iyer c B. Dorairaj m G.K. Venkatesh

lp Rajkumar, Sandhya, Leelavathi, Narasimhraju, Ashwath, G.V. Iyer, Veerabhadrappa, Eswarappa, Rama Devi, Udaya Kumar, H.M.S. Sastry, R. Nagendra Rao, Venkatasubbaiah, Shanthamma, Radha, Saroja, P. Saroja, Papamma, Balkrishna

This epochal Rajkumar historical is the prototype for many of the star’s costume epics, often written by G.V. Iyer (cf. Rajan’s Immadi Pulakesi, 1967). The film evokes the Mysore royalty’s intrigues to address Kannada national chauvinism. Rajkumar plays Kanteerava, supported as an alternative ruler by the villain Dalavayi Vikrama Raya (Nagendra Rao), but Kanteerava defeats the villains using his legendary physical prowess in the service of the official monarch. Made as a co-operative venture by actors Balkrishna and Narasimhraju, the directors Iyer and T.V. Singh Thakore, et al. Although this co-operative made only one film, it featured in several 60s Rajkumar films, effectively constituting the Kannada film industry. Some of G.V. Iyer’s filmographies credit him with directing this film, which he wrote and helped both produce and direct.

SHRI VENKATESWARA MAHATYAM

aka Balaji

1960 204’ b&w Telugu

d P. Pullaiah pc Padmasri Pics.

sc/co-lyr Acharya Athreya co-lyr Malladi Ramakrishna Sastry, Arudra, Narasa Reddy c P.L. Rai m Pendyala Nageshwara Rao

lp N.T. Rama Rao, Savitri, S. Varalakshmi, Gummadi Venkateshwara Rao, Chittor V. Nagaiah, Shantakumari, Suribabu, S. Janaki, Sandhya, Ghantasala Venkateshwara Rao, Rajanala Nageshwara Rao, Relangi Venkatramaiah

Pullaiah’s remake of his 1939 biographical of the Tirupati temple deity is a milestone in NTR’s acting career. Balaji (NTR) descends to earth following a celestial problem caused by Narada. On earth, as a common man who is nevertheless recognised by all the ‘good folk’ as a god, he falls for Padmavati (Savitri). In the end, as two earthly women, the ‘heavenly’ Lakshmi and Padmavati, battle over him, he turns into a statue. The film then turns into a documentary on the Tirupati temple, before the populist ending restores the god to his true devotees as against the Brahmin clergy. In spite of the shift from celestial grandeur to semi-documentary earthliness, the film seeks to induce a childish religiosity, e.g. in the sequence where Balaji is fed milk by a cow, the udder and his mouth being framed, in closeup, by a rock. The film’s marketing suggested that viewing the film was a substitute for visiting India’s richest shrine, and papier maché replicas of the icon were placed outside movie theatres soliciting donations in the name of the god. Apparently the temple authorities later sued the film’s producers. According to Rama Rao’s biographer S. Venkatnarayan (1983), the star’s politicisation stems from this period when thousands of pilgrims from Tirupati also visited his Madras house. NTR later produced and directed another Venkateshwara version, Shri Tirupati Venkateshwara Kalyanam (1979).

ARAPPAVAN

aka Haifa Sovereign

1961 158’ b&w Malayalam

d K. Shankar pc Seva Films p K. Kumar

s/lyr Kothamangalam Sadanandan c Thambu m G.K. Venkatesh

lp Sathyan, Prem Nawaz, Kalakkal Kumaran, S.P. Pillai, T.S. Muthaiah, G.K. Pillai, Sreenarayana Pillai, Kothamangalam Sadanandan, Pattom Sadan, Sulochana, Ambika

Set in the working-class milieu of toddy tappers and coir workers in Kerala. Paramu, the son of a toddy tapper, marries Kallu, a woodcutter’s daughter. As Kallu did not bring the promised dowry of half a sovereign, Paramu’s domineering mother harasses the new bride until she returns to her own parents and the lovers are reduced to meeting on the sly until the dowry issue has been settled. Kallu becomes pregnant and a local toddy-shop owner tries to rape her, resulting in rumours in the village that her child is illegitimate. When Kallu’s brother returns having earned the money for her dowry, he rejects his sister and Kallu commits suicide. The grim melodrama, realistically filmed, was not successful on its initial release.

ARASILANKUMARI

1961 ? b&w Tamil

d A.S.A. Sami p Jupiter Films

s M. Karunanidhi c P. Ramaswamy m G. Ramanathan

lp M.G. Ramachandran, M.N. Nambiar, Ashokan, K.A. Thangavelu, Padmini, Rajasulochana

As a result of a trick, Arivazhgan (MGR) sees his sister Anbukarasi (Padmini) married to and abducted by Vetrivelan (Nambiar), the general to the King of Mulai Nadu. The King entrusts one part of his will to his daughter Azhagurani (Rajasulochana) and the other to his friend Manimaraboopathi (Ashokan), the King of Naga Nadu, specifying that the will cannot be opened until his daughter’s 19th birthday. She, however, loves Arivazhgan. After the King dies, the villainous Vetrivelan becomes ruler, repudiates his wife and plans to possess the Princess. She manages to escape by hiding with the villain’s father, using a false identity. There she bears a child. On her 19th birthday, Arivazhgan comes to challenge the villain for his sister and his beloved, but Vetrivelan has made a false will public, proclaiming him King. However, Arivazhgan reveals the full truth of the man’s misdeeds and is about to kill him when his sister pleads for mercy for her miscreant husband. The villain then repents his misdeeds, opening the way for true democracy in Mullai Nadu.

BABASA RI LAADI

1961 ?’ b&w/col Rajasthani

d B.K. Adarsh pc Adarshlok st/co-dial/lyr Pandit Indra co-dial Naval Mathur c D.R. Dadhicha m Shivram

lp P. Kailash, Hiralal, Rajkumar, Mohan Modi, Rajdeep, Kiran Lai, Saraswati Devi, Sarita Devi, Champak Lala, Dhannalal, Helen, Nana Palsikar

The second Rajasthani film (after G.P. Kapoor’s Nazrana, 1942) and its first hit. Feudal melodrama about the virtuous landlord Dharamdas, representing an idealised Marwari business community, who adopts a deceased employee’s daughter, Saraswati. She and Dharamdas’s son Ramesh fall in love, but her villainous uncle, who wants Ramesh to marry his flippant daughter Vaijayanti, uses his familial authority to arrange Saraswati’s marriage with the handicapped son of a greedy shah. The tragic consequences of feudal patriarchal powers are eventually overcome and the lead couple unite in the end.

BHABHI KI CHUDIYAN

1961 168’ b&w Hindi

d Sadashiv J. Row Kavi pc Sadashiv Chitra

st Y.G. Joshi sc Srinivas Joshi lyr Narendra Sharma c Arvind Laad m Sudhir Phadke

lp Meena Kumari, Balraj Sahni, Seema, Ratnamala, Master Aziz, Sailesh Kumar, Sulochana, Durga Khote, Om Prakash

A sentimental melodrama which helped establish Kumari’s image as ‘the queen of tragedy’. Shyam’s (Sahni) wife Geeta (Kumari) is like a foster-mother to her young brother-in-law, Mohan (S. Kumar). Mohan’s filial devotion becomes an erotic obsession, to the distress of his new bride. The virtuous Geeta tirelessly serves and mothers the men in the family until she dies of exhaustion. The relations between a wife and her younger brother-in-law, echoing Seeta and Lakshman from the Ramayana, were often used in films to titillate the audience’s expectation of images of sexual impropriety.

BHAKTA KUCHELA

1961 165’ b&w Malayalam

d/p P. Subramanyam pc Neela Prod.

s Nagavalli R.S. Kurup lyr Thirunayanar Kurichi c N.S. Mani m Brother Lakshmanan

lp Thikkurisi Sukumaran Nair, Kottarakkara Sridharan Nair, S.P. Pillai, T.K. Balachandran, Kumari, Ambika, Shanti, Shashi, Kushalakumari, Jose Prakash, Hari, C.S. Kantha Rao, Adoor Pankajam, Vinodhini, Vilasini, Satheesh

The first big mythological by a director who, having put the radicalism of Randidangazhi (1958) behind him, would be increasingly associated with the devotional genre through the 60s (including Biblical themes e.g. Snapaka Yohannan, 1963). Krishna’s childhood friend and devotee, the Brahmin Kuchela, grows up to father 27 children even as he pines to meet his idol. His worship of Krishna causes enmity with King Shishupala. With his several offspring on the verge of starvation, he goes on a pilgrimage to Dwarka, where he meets his friend and master. To his astonishment Krishna sends him away empty-handed, but Kuchela returns home to find that his modest hut has miraculously been turned into a palace. The film did much to establish a bigger-budgeted version of the B-movie mythologicals routinely churned out by studios in Alleppey and Trivandrum.

GANGA JUMNA

1961 178’ col Hindi-Bhojpuri

d Nitin Bose pc Citizens Films s/p Dilip Kumar dial Wajahat Mirza lyr Shakeel Badayuni c V. Babasaheb m Naushad

lp Dilip Kumar, Vyjayanthimala, Nasir Khan, Azra, Kanhaiyalal, Anwar Hussain, Nasir Hussain, S. Nazir, Leela Chitnis, Perveen Paul, Helen, Husn Bano, Ranjeet Sud, Khwaja Sabir, Amar, Bihari, Harun, Narbada Shankar, Fazlu, Ram Kumar, Akashdeep, Baby Aruna, Baby Naaz

Dilip Kumar produced, wrote and starred in this story, shot in garish Technicolor, of two brothers on opposite sides of the law, Ganga (D. Kumar) and Jumna (played by D. Kumar’s real-life brother, N. Khan). Having been framed by a zamindar (A. Hussain) for a crime he did not commit, Ganga becomes a criminal living in the mountains with his girlfriend Dhanno (Vyjayanthimala). His brother, educated on Ganga’s money in the city, becomes a policeman. When years later Ganga is to become a father, he decides to return to the village to ask people’s forgiveness, but he has to face his righteous brother Jumna who shoots him dead. Dhanno also dies in the gun battle. This dacoit drama, resembling a cross between 30s Hollywood gangster films and westerns, pioneered a widely copied action film formula (cf. Deewar, 1975). The most significant difference from the Hollywood stories is that the two main protagonists are brothers instead of ‘kids from the same block’ or ‘erstwhile bosom buddies’. Dilip Kumar uses Bhojpuri instead of Hindi to liberate himself from his usual, more restrained persona while at the same time equating naturalism with a distinct class attitude against which, in this film, he rebels. This strategy was later followed by e.g. Bachchan (Ganga Ki Saugandh, Don, both 1978). The songs Nain ladgayi re (sung by Mohammed Rafi), Do hanson ka joda, Dhoondo dhoondo re saajana and Na maanon re (sung by Lata Mangeshkar), were major hits though little can be said for their picturisation.

HIRO SALAAT

1961 129’ b&w Gujarati

d Ramchandra Thakur pc Vishva Rang Chitra c Bipin Gajjar lyr/m Avinash Vyas

lp Vijay Datt, Nalini Chonkar, Champsibhai Nagda, Madhumati, Babu Raje, Tuntun, Ishwarlal

Famed sculptor Hiro Salaat is commissioned by King Siddharaj to build the fort at Darbhavati (now called Dabhoi). When he does so, the king, anxious that he should never surpass this spectacular achievement, buries the sculptor alive in one of its walls. The film, claiming to address the troubled relations between artist and patron, is remembered for artist and designer Kanu Desai’s realistic sets e.g. the replication of the fort in the Mohan Studio.

HUM DONO

aka We Two

1961 164’(95’) b&w Hindi

d Amarjeet pc Navketan Films p Dev Anand st Nirmal Sircar sc Vijay Anand lyr Sahir Ludhianvi c V. Ratra rajaidev

lp Dev Anand, Nanda, Sadhana, Lalita Pawar, Gajanan Jagirdar, Prabhu Dayal, Jagdish Raj, Rashid Khan, Leela Chitnis

Dev Anand plays two identical-looking soldiers, the comrades in arms Capt. Anand and Major Verma, in this (for Navketan) unusually excessive melodrama and major hit. Anand is in love with Mita (Sadhana) while Verma is married to Ruma (Nanda). When Verma is presumed dead, Anand has to take care of Ruma, endangering his relationship with Mita, esp. since Ruma mistakes Anand for her real husband. When Verma turns up again, severely crippled, he believes Anand has taken his place in his home. The resolution comes when all four characters meet in a temple. Some of the film’s most successful songs including Asha Bhosle and Mohammed Rafi’s duet Abhi na jao chhod kar and Lata Mangeshkar s bhajan Allah tero naam.

JAB PYAR KISISE HOTA HAI

1961 ?’ b&w Hindi

d/p/s Nasir Hussain pc Nasir Hussain Films lyr Hasrat Jaipuri, Shailendra c Dilip Gupta m Shankar-Jaikishen

lp Dev Anand, Asha Parekh, Sulochana, Mubarak, Raj Mehra, Pran, Wasti, Rajendranath, Tahir Hussain, Dulari, Bhishan Khanna, Ram Avtar

Musical cross-class romance featuring Sunder (Anand) and Nisha (Parekh) whose childhood betrothal is broken off by the girl’s father when he becomes a millionaire. Sunder then woos Nisha, pretending to be the rich Popatlal, and she falls in love with him. Complicating the situation is a parallel story in which Nisha’s best friend Shanti is killed by Sohan (Pran) who is blackmailed by a hotel manager and frames Sundar with the crime. Known mainly for its hit songs Yeh aankhen oofyumma, Sau saalpehle and Jiya ho jiya, both sung by Mohammed Rafi, the former being a duet with Lata Mangeshkar

JAGADEKA VEERUNI KATHA/JAGATHALA PRATHAPAN

1961 187’ b&w Telugu/Tamil

d/p/sc K.V. Reddy pc Vijaya Prod. st/dial/lyr Pingali Nagendra Rao c Marcus Bartley m Pendyala Nageshwara Rao

lp N.T. Rama Rao, Relangi Venkatramaiah, Rajanala, C.S.R. Anjaneyulu, K. Mukkamala, Lanka Sathyam, B. Saroja Devi, Vijayalakshmi, P. Kannamba, Rushyendramani, Girija

This characteristic Reddy fantasy is based on an earlier Tamil film, Jagathala Prathapan (1944) starring P.U. Chinappa. A king tests his two sons by asking what they desire most. Jagajittu says that he would wish to use the moonlit night to slay his enemies in their sleep. Jagadeka replies that he wishes to be with four heavenly angels. The latter, banished from home, has to make his wish come true by freeing a distressed angel cursed by Indrakumari before he can be readmitted.

JHUMROO

1961 171’ b&w Hindi

d Shanker Mukherjee pc K.S. Films st/m Kishore Kumar sc Vrajendra Gaud dial Madhusudan Kalelkar lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c K.H. Kapadia

lp Kishore Kumar, Madhubala, Jayant, Lalita Pawar, Anoop Kumar, Chanchal, M. Kumar, Sajjan

One of Kishore Kumar’s best-known comedies, containing the song exemplifying his yodelling style, Main bun jhum-jhum-jhum-jhum jhumroo. The zany stylistic melange tells the love story of the tribal Jhumroo (K. Kumar) who falls in love with the evil landowner’s daughter (Madhubala). In the end, Madhubala is shown to be the daughter of Kamli (Pawar) and Jhumroo, the son of the upper-class landowner’s friend. In the process, the film proposes the craziest notions of tribal identity in Indian cinema: one song is a variant of Tequila, another introduces rock into a Cossack dance, and the Kathmandu/Timbuctoo number sees the hero adopting a Fu Manchu look to rescue the heroine. The film has some of Kishore Kumar’s most famous songs e.g. the Jhumroo number, Thandi hawa yeh chandni suhani and Koi humdum na raha.

JUNGLEE

1961 150’ col Hindi

d/p/s Subodh Mukherjee pc Subodh Mukherjee Prod, dial Agha Jani Kashmiri lyr Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri c N.V. Srinivas m Shankar-Jaikishen

lp Shammi Kapoor, Saira Banu, Shashikala, Anup Kumar, Azra, Lalita Pawar, Helen

Shammi Kapoor’s best-known film featuring him in his Yahoo persona in songs like Chahe koi mujhe junglee kahe and Aai aai ya suku suku. The rich bachelor Shekhar (S. Kapoor) returns from abroad and refuses to laugh until he meets Kashmiri belle Rajkumari (Banu) who eventually changes his view of the world. The film can be seen as heralding the colour films that came to be the mainstay of the popular cinema (cf. Manmohan Desai’s work) after the 50s Filmistan genre products. Previously, colour had been reserved for big spectacles only. After Junglee, intimate family romances also had to be in colour. The movie is still regarded as a cult item because of Shammi Kapoor’s youthful and rebellious performance.

KABULIWALA

1961 95’ b&w Hindi

d Hemen Gupta pc Bimal Roy Prod.

sc Vishram Bedekar st Rabindranath Tagore dials. Khalil lyr Gulzar, Prem Dhawan c Kamal Bose m Salil Choudhury

lp Balraj Sahni, Usha Kiron, Sajjan, Asit Sen, Paul Mahendra, Sonnu

Tagore’s story (pub. 1918) of the Pathan tribesman Rehman (Sahni) who journeys from Kabul to Calcutta seemed tailor-made for a naturalist acting challenge. It tells the tale of a seller of spices called Kabuliwala (the man from Kabul) in Calcutta who befriends a little girl because she reminds him of his own daughter. After years in jail for murder, Rehman finds the girl has grown up and realises that his own daughter may have forgotten him as well. Gupta’s film, like Tapan Sinha’s Bengali version (1956), depends mainly on star performances. Here, Sahni’s colourful mannerisms contrast with the static camera, tableau-like shots and extensive dissolves intended to evoke geographic expanse and memory time. The music by Salil Choudhury includes numbers like Hemanta Mukherjee’s Ganga aaye kahan se and one of Manna Dey’s best-known songs Ai merepyare ivatan. The fake Persian music with its copious mandolin effects is rather intrusive.

Balraj Sahni (right) in Kabuliwala