Anu had started this month with a Dev Anand film—and I, following suit, decided I would review a relatively little-known Dev Anand film too, to begin August. But, while Anu’s kept up the Dev Anand theme all through August, I’ve meandered off in different directions, all the way from The Rickshaw Man to jeep songs. But solidarity among friends counts for something, doesn’t it? So here I am back again, with another Dev Anand film. The sort of film that, on the surface, looks like it’s got everything going for it: a suave Dev Anand opposite a very beautiful Waheeda Rehman (who, along with Nutan, was, I feel, one of Dev Anand’s best co-stars as far as chemistry is concerned). SD Burman’s music. Suspense. Some good cinematography.
Does it work?
Baat ek Raat ki begins on a [predictably] dark and stormy night. Madhumati—or Mahal—style, there’s a great big mansion here, out of which a man clad in a coat and wearing a hat, comes blundering out. He bangs into a poor blind beggar who’s loitering about outside the house, and who makes a snatch at the person who’s collided with him. The stranger rushes off without another word, though, and into a telephone booth. The scene changes.
… introducing us to Dev Anand’s character. This is a lawyer named Rajesh, whose munshi (Johnny Walker) comes with the rather unwieldy name of Chunnilal Ishwarlal Dholakia, which he has sensibly shortened to CID. CID rues the fact that Rajesh doesn’t take on any cases and is happier spending his time cycling about the countryside, singing songs.
This latest song, however, has a dramatic ending. Barely has Rajesh belted out the last note, than he sees a woman go plonk into the lake/river/whatever. He dives in and saves her, only to discover that the bedraggled lady (Waheeda Rehman), when dragged onshore, is quickly apprehended by the police [arriving, as ever, late on the scene]. The cops tell Rajesh they’re grateful for his having saved her, because she’s accused of murder. Nobody mentions how she managed to escape from the lockup. [A sore topic, I suppose, but it helps set a precedent: later in the film, too, people seem none too surprised at other arbitrary escapes from police custody].
Rajesh is also asked to report to the police station to testify. When he turns up, he happens to see the accused (whose name, we realise soon, is Neelam) being led away—and, at the same time, up comes a poor old lady (Padma Devi), protesting vociferously that her daughter Neelam is innocent. She couldn’t hurt a fly. The old lady pleads with him to help Neelam, and when he expresses his inability, faints at his feet. Rajesh, rattled and not as completely hard-hearted as all that, decides to hear her out.
The upshot of this is that Neelam’s mother bulldozes him into taking on Neelam’s case [the incentive being what, who knows? By way of garnering sympathy, she tells him she has no money at all—not a good thing to be telling a lawyer you intend to employ]
And, as a result, they go to see Neelam in the lockup. Rajesh’s method of finding out whether or not Neelam is guilty is by badgering her: Did you kill him? Was it you? It wasn’t, was it?
As is to be expected of someone who recently tried to commit suicide and is therefore probably already pretty precarious as far as nervous condition is concerned… Neelam shrieks “Yes, I did! I did kill him!” and faints. [These fainting spells run in families, it appears]. Next we know, she ends up in a mental hospital run by Dr B Roy (Kanu Roy).
Neelam’s mother gives Rajesh a brief history of how Neelam got to be where she was. They’re a family of nats [or nuts, either which way—both seem to work], and one day, while performing on the beach, Neelam was noticed by a Beni Prasad, the keen-eyed, rather avuncular director of Pearl Theatre.
He assured Neelam and her mother that the girl was so immensely talented that she would be a certain hit, and signed her on immediately. And Neelam became Neela, the star.
Rajesh, as Neelam/Neela’s defence counsel, begins his investigations at the pointy end of things. Not by going to the police and asking for their files [or even finding out who Neela is supposed to have murdered], but by going to Pearl Theatres. Here, the boss he meets turns out to be the owner of the theatre, a man named Dwarkadas. He informs Rajesh that Beni Prasad is no longer alive: he was killed in a road accident some days back. Rajesh is immediately suspicious. Two deaths? Surely this cannot be mere coincidence?
Next, then, he takes a peek at a police file [a-ha! Finally!] and discovers that the dead man was someone named Ranjan. Ranjan was found dead in Neela’s house one night, and when the police arrived, Neela was found with the revolver in her hand. Either the report is unforgivably sketchy or the script writer decides this is all Rajesh needs to see right now, so we never get further details. Nothing about witnesses, ballistics, evidence, police investigation reports, or so forth.
For someone who’s pretty certainly not going to get paid to represent Neela in court, Rajesh is now going to have to do the spadework as detective, too. So, with CID to keep watch, he sneaks into Neela’s house—that great big mansion we’d seen at the start of the film. [As counsel for the defence, wouldn’t he legally be allowed to see the scene of the crime for himself? Why this cloak-and-dagger business?]
While CID keeps an eye on the bhaang-addicted and therefore perpetually half-somnolent servant Ramu (Asit Sen)…
…Rajesh creeps about inside, summarily collecting various odds and ends he thinks might help him in his investigation of the case. An LP, for example, of a song—Na tum humein jaano—and a photo album [the significance of either of which is, in the light of later events, pretty much lost on me—unless his purloining the record was what helped him memorize the lyrics to it].
Meanwhile, Rajesh has also had a chat with the police commissioner and Dr Roy. Dr Roy is of the opinion that Neela’s mind is in such a fragile state, she’s incapable of testifying right now. She’s psychic, we’re told [what fun. This could just turn so deliciously supernatural… but no]. Dr Roy’s suggestion is that Rajesh win Neela over with love—by pretending to fall in love with her, so that she comes to trust him. That will cure her. [Dr Roy has obviously watched Deep Jwele Jaai, and thinks this is a good opportunity to see if that actually works].
Between them, Rajesh, Dr Roy, and the commissioner decide that instead of the confined and gloomy spaces of the mental hospital, it’ll be better that Neela be shifted to a larger, more spacious place. Not her old mansion, but another. They choose a weird old bungalow which has some sort of observatory-like domed pavilion atop a spiral staircase, and there, Rajesh awakens a sleeping Neela by singing Na tum humein jaano to her.
She wanders around as if lost, finally joins in his song, comes to her senses, and then runs straight up that spiral staircase and tries to jump off the parapet there. [This woman has a penchant for jumping off high places. If these men had the slightest sense, they would’ve selected a house that was all one level. But, as it emerges in a later sequence, Rajesh probably has an ulterior motive].
Anyhow, Rajesh saves Neela, and does his hardest to convince her that he’s in love with her.
Neela, is, not surprisingly, taken aback. She’s also pretty distressed [who wouldn’t be, after all? This is the second time this man’s thwarted her attempts at suicide].
But Rajesh chisels away at her defences with frequent billing and cooing interspersed with subtle [and not so subtle] badgering. Finally, Neela confesses all. Who Ranjan was [why hasn’t Rajesh found that out from the police records? The police, as it gradually emerges, seems to be especially inept, even by Hindi film standards], what her connection with him was, and how she happened to kill him.
Neela tells him that after Beni Prasad took her under his wing and introduced her to the world of theatre, she soon began her climb to success. Despite being told off by a jealous rival (Bela Bose in an all-too-short appearance) for being illiterate and raw, Neela quickly became a huge success.
Her partner in this was frequent co-star Ranjan (Chandrashekhar). What with dancing and singing alongside Ranjan in show after show, Neela fell in love with him—and he with her. This love story, however, ran into rough waters with a disturbed Ranjan coming to her one day to tell Neela that he could not possibly be with her. She, after all, was a big star, wealthy and famous: he was a nobody. If she married him, what would people say?
A naïve and unselfish Neela immediately offered a solution: that she should give away all her money to him. And Ranjan [who believed in being prepared] whipped out a document: here, this is it. Sign here, please.
But, just as Neela bent over to sign the paper and bequeath all her wealth to Ranjan, he stopped her. A guilty conscience and a sudden spurt of self-loathing made Ranjan confess the truth: he did not love, he had never loved her. All of this had just been a pretence to lay his hands on Neela’s wealth. And Ranjan wasn’t even the one behind it: the plot has been hatched by someone else.
Neela was so furious, she grabbed up her pistol [how on earth do perfectly ordinary people in films end up always having pistols—and that too loaded ones—close at hand?] and told Ranjan she would kill him.
It was stormy and windy and wet outside, and suddenly, just as Neela was about to pull the trigger, the lights went out. In the dark, Neela shot—and when she hurried forward after that gunshot, it was to find Ranjan shot dead.
Yup, there’s no question about it. Neela is a murderess. She herself knows it.
But is she? After all, with a leading male character a lawyer—who has, willy-nilly, actually fallen in love with his client—that cannot possibly be the truth. Hindi film heroines don’t commit such cold-blooded murders.
What I liked about this film:
The music, by SD Burman, which boasts of two particularly good songs—Akela hoon main is duniya mein, and Na tum humein jaano (in two avatars: one, a female solo sung by Suman Kalyanpur, the other a predominantly male solo in Hemant’s voice, though Suman Kalyanpur joins in towards the end). Jo hain deewaane pyaar ke and Kisne chilman se maara aren’t bad, but not stellar, and the others are relatively forgettable.
Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman. These two worked in a clutch of great films together, and while Baat ek Raat ki is far from the best of the Dev-Waheeda starrers, at least the two of them look good in it. Waheeda Rehman, in particular, is utterly gorgeous.
What I didn’t like:
Oh, plenty, and most of it a result of bad plotting and scripting.
Firstly, there’s no delicate layering of suspense: that initial scene, with the coat- and hat-wearing man blundering into the blind beggar outside the mansion on that stormy night, pretty much gives away the truth right at the start of the film. Then, not too much later, when Neela is cowering in the mental hospital, someone—a man, of whom we only see his trouser-clad legs—stops in front of her and grates out: “Sign the will, or else—!’ Yes, well. You get the gist.
Then, the motive for the crime [the actual crime, not what Neela is supposed to have done—you didn’t really think she’d murdered Ranjan, did you?] is a little befuddling. How exactly did the culprit hope to profit? The legalities of the matter might have been hard to navigate. Especially since there was a mysterious disappearance thrown in.
And the cops. Oh, the cops. Hindi cinema has never been kind to the police, but Baat ek Raat ki takes the cake. The cops in this are a class apart: besides never reaching anywhere on time, they seem to have not at all investigated Ranjan’s murder. Valuable clues have been left behind at the scene of the crime [which, by the way, instead of being cordoned off or otherwise sealed, is left open for all and sundry to tramp about in], and nothing seems to have been done in the way of forensics. Down to the fact that the fatal bullet in Ranjan hasn’t even been matched to Neela’s pistol.
To top it all, the court scenes are ridiculous. Yes, courts are another aspect that Hindi cinema rarely manages to get right (or even make an attempt to get right), but this was hard to sit through. What with Ulhas (as the prosecutor) bulldozing people into answering questions the way he wanted them answered [“Only yes or no! I don’t want you saying anything beyond that!”], repeated speeches—devoid of logic or supporting evidence—on how innocent [or guilty] Neela was, and a judge who sat through it all wearing sun glasses.
And if you think Paying Guest had a far-fetched climax, wait for this one.
Sigh. I think I better watch Kaala Bazaar or another of Dev Anand’s better films. Soon.
Dustedoff 
I had watched the film some time ago. Not one of the better suspense films I had see, but the twist at the end was not as bad as some other films I’ve seen. That said, I really wonder why Hindi filmmakers found plots so difficult to construct.
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I often don’t have a problem with basic plots in Hindi suspense films. The problem comes when scripting: there’s too much of a compulsion to add comic side plots, unnecessary songs, silly elements to increase (or so they seem to think) the suspense, stuff like that. A well-constructed and well-directed suspense film, like the types Vijay Anand made, are perhaps best because they know just what to leave out, how many red herrings to add, and so on.
Which reminds me. I must review Woh Kaun Thi? sometime.
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And EEEEEEEEEEE!!! I get to be the first to comment!!
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:-) Hehe. Congratulations!
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I listened to the synopsis of this film, well it was the whole film shortened to fit in an hour or so. I liked it very much that time, but on the other hand, I used to like any films at that time, except for those running in the theatres. This was 1985 or so, I think.
So, Dev Anand gets to do a Perry Mason here. A pity that the direction is so bad in such movies. Well Guru Dutt, Raj Khosla and Vijay Anand were all busy, I think.
Thanks for the warning!
I’d completely forgotten about your jeep songs list. Will look it up soon.
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I listened to the abridged version of the movie on Vividh bharati. That part of the comment got eaten up or something…
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I hadn’t known Vividh Bharti did abridged versions of films. Was it like one person – Ameen Sayani types – narrating the basic plot, or was it an edited version of the film’s audio? Like a radio drama?
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It was an edited version of the film audio, yes, like a radio drama. I can’t remember now, if it had commentary as well.
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Hmm. Interesting. I hadn’t known they did stuff like that. But in an age when TV wasn’t that ubiquitous, I think it would have been a good way to entice people to come the film for themselves.
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Yes, I can imagine not liking films running in theatres in the mid-80s! Around that time, we lived in Srinagar, and things were getting pretty dangerous, so we never went to the one cinema hall in town anyway. Then we shifted to Delhi, and there just wasn’t much incentive to watch films in halls, because the films being made then were so bad. I think almost all our movie-watching from that decade consisted of old movies seen on Doordarshan or on VHS cassettes!
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Heh heh heh. One of those films where your review is so much better than the film itself. This was such a waste of Dev and Waheeda, no? So many red herrings that go nowhere, or that the script writer blithely ignored. I loved your asides, as usual.
You know, I could have sworn I had reviewed this film at some point. But it appears to be inexplicably missing. For that matter, when you told me that you had only reviewed Hum Dono and C.I.D from amongst Dev’s films, I was taken aback – I could have sworn you’d reviewed Solva Saal! I was actually going to write a post on the ‘Mystery of Missing Reviews’. Perhaps we should get Dev to investigate?
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I could’ve sworn as well, that Madhu has written a review of Solva Saal!
Madhu has her own Jungsaab to investigate, so I think Dev will have to take a backseat!
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:-) Hopefully some good news on the Jang front coming up soon, Harvey! I have to go for a marketing meeting with my publisher tomorrow.
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“Perhaps we should get Dev to investigate?”
And he would need so many coincidences to help him along! :-D
These aren’t the only Dev Anand films I’ve reviewed – I’ve also reviewed Nau Do Gyarah, Jewel Thief, Johnny Mera Naam, Teen Deviyaan, Munimji, House No. 44, Vidya, Asli-Naqli and Jaali Note, but yes, I sometimes find it odd that I’ve never got around to reviewing Solva Saal or even Tere Ghar ke Saamne.
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Dustedoff, I have been a long time reader of your blog, almost from its inception, though I’ve never commented. I’m forced to do so now because of a very distressing incident. One of your fellow bloggers, Bagsbooksandmore, has lifted your entire review of Asli Naqli and posted it as her own. (She has tried to rewrite it, but the resemblance is very obvious.) I was going to comment on the similarities when some other reader commented on it. I thought that would bring her to her senses and she would make amends by apologizing and taking down that review. However, her response was disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst. So I finally commented on her post saying that anyone who is familiar with your writing style and hers will notice the difference at once. With all due respect, she is nowhere close to you in terms of her facility with language.
She had claimed – in her response to StarryNight – that people with similar opinions can write the same views about the same film. I pointed out that while that may or may not be true, it is not possible for them to use the same phrases about the same scenes, and emphasize the same plot points. (I’ve been a teacher; you really can’t teach me about copying. I’ve had to talk sternly to my students about it.) Even her excuse that she had to be stupid to copy from someone who is a regular reader of her blog? I refuted that as well. Your review of the film appeared a few years ago. I assume that she hoped no one would notice.
I saw your defence of her, and I applaud you for it; however, in this case, I think you have been doubly mistaken. I’d not intended to make a huge fuss about this – I wrote to Bagsbooksandmore on her blog, hoping that she will take notice that it is not only one person who found the similarities too obvious to be coincidental. However, she saw fit to delete my comment and close any further comments on that post.
I’m sorry to have broken my no-commenting rule to say something so distasteful and which has nothing to do with your review, delightful as it is. My apologies. However, I feel strongly about people taking responsibility for their actions, even if it is a mistake on their part. Unfortunately, in this case, I’m beginning to realize that it was a deliberate action on the part of the offender, and that she has no remorse for having done so. I would suggest, if you haven’t already done so, that you put both reviews through Copyscape or any similar plagiarism-detecting software, and check the veracity of my claim (and that of StarryNight).
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GeminiGirl, thank you for that comment. I read it yesterday – after I’d approved your comment when it came for moderation – but had to spend a sleepless night trying to figure out how to respond. I’m still not absolutely sure, but let me try to say this from the heart.
As StarryNight has written in his/her comment (below), there are some very obvious similarities – no, not even similarities, but downright same phrases – between the two reviews. Which, as you both point out, does seem to not be a coincidence, but deliberate.
Now, as I’d written to StarryNight on Harini’s blog too, I have met Harini several times, and she’s always struck me as a nice person. I like spending time with her, and I think of her as a friend. That she should deliberately copy my work, reword bits and pieces, and try passing it off as her own is terribly distressing for me. And a huge disappointment.
The evidence is damning, but even if Harini is guilty (and who am I to label her that? There are stranger things in reality than there are in fiction…), I will forgive her. And hope that this just indicates that she thinks highly enough of my writing. Or that she liked my review enough for it to vividly colour her own review! If she isn’t guilty (which I hope is the truth)… well, then that’s it. There’s no more to be said, and we can all go on happily writing our own blogs. :
That said, thank you for taking the time out to write about this. And you needn’t apologise; I find it heartwarming that somebody I don’t even know should have taken the trouble to speak up for me.
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Yours is a very dignified response, Dustedoff, and I respect you for that. My intention was never to sever your friendship with Harini or to cause a public tamasha. Which is why I wrote to her on her blog first. If she had responded there, I would have let it be. However there are more than just ‘phrases’ that are in common between your two posts, so you will forgive me if I do not take as kind a view as you do. But I have no axe to grind here and I’ll go back to lurking and reading your posts as I’ve been doing all this while. :) Thanks for responding
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Thank you for understanding, GeminiGirl! Yes, please do keep reading – even if you don’t comment, the very knowledge that someone out there likes my blog enough to come out in support of me on an issue such as this is very comforting. :-)
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Oh this was film was a total trip. Based on the music, and the fact that it had Waheeda Rehman, I was very excited when it came on Doordarshan. And the completely ludicrous story and dialog was extremely off-putting (at the time) and now that I am older, extremely amusing in retrospect. I COMPLETELY agree with you that Waheeda looks stunning particularly in the male version of “Na tum hame jaano”. On the music, I actually like most of the songs. The Lata/Rafi duet “Sheeshe ka ho ki pathhar ka dil” is one of my particular favorites. This is one of those SDB soundtracks where the popularity of the Hemant/Suman song overshadowed most of the other music.
Your recent posts (yes I have been reading regularly, just not had a chance to post) have made me think a lot about the inept characterization of the police in films. Western cinema is not always kind to them either, but they often have them making the most obvious conclusion as opposed to the “actual” more twisted one. But Hindi cinema has taken their ineffectiveness to a completely new level – and very rarely is the hero actually making sense either – like the badgering by Dev Anand that you mention above. There is a whole compendium on “Inept police work in Hindi Cinema” right here in this blog :-)
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You are so right about the inept characterization of the police in Hindi cinema. As you point out, it’s not as if Western cinema always treated cops well (though there have been several instances of very canny cops, even played by heroes, in Hollywood)… but Hindi cinema rarely gives the police its due. Baat ek Raat ki was just so ridiculous in that respect. I mean, a scene of crime is left unattended, not cordoned off or guarded, and with obvious evidence – a bullet in a wall, for God’s sake – still there?!
My father was a police officer before he retired. Also a fan of old Hindi cinema. And my brother-in-law is a lawyer. He practises corporate and civil law, but he remembers, vividly, a criminal case he one took on, and where the arguments went on for days on such technical details as the trajectory of the bullet, the force, the speed, and so on.
I was thinking how both my father and my jijaji would have squirmed if they saw this film (my father probably has).
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Quite by chance, I literally just finished watching a Hindi film (about 11 years old) called “Ek haseena thhi” *ring Urmila Matondkar and Saif Ali Khan. If you have not seen the film, I recommend it. It is relevant to this conversation since the police are actually not shown as inept at all. They are actually on top of things and it was a pleasant change to see that. Seema Biswas plays the cop and she has a key role, but is not a main character in the film. Yet, they have done a very good job with the character. It is a good counterpoint to my earlier rant about Hindi cinema.
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You are just a wee bit later than I am! I also watched Ek Haseena Thi only about a year back. And yes, liked it a lot, and liked Seema Biswas’s character. In recent years, I think, there are more films which show cops in a somewhat more realistic light. Corruption, of course, still seems to form an important part of a cop’s makeup (how sad!, but also how sadly true, in most cases), but the number of completely inept cops seems to be a little less than it was before.
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Aha. I see I’m not the only one who’s come here sore and smarting from your pal’s blog, Dusted Off. When you wrote about ‘integrity’ and so on on Bags Books and more’s Asli Nakli post, I wrote back to you. I said that you should really go to Copyscape’s page to compare URLs, and see the number of instances of matching phrases between your Asli Nakli review and hers. (I also wrote a separate comment, addressed to the writer of the blog post, in which I listed out some of those phrases). Here they are:
– like the plague.
– Sadhana), who comes by
– every evening to teach the poor
– Anand gets kicked out,
– up for him by doing his work while
– tries walking out of Mohan and Shanti’s home when he finds
These are just some instances of phrases that appear as is. Coincidence? I doubt it.
I also advised you to keep an eye on your pal’s blog in future, especially when she reviews films YOU have already reviewed. Who knows, you may find some very familiar words there!
BTW, she deleted both comments. Goes to show, no? The guilty conscience….
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StarryNight, I’ve already written a long and detailed comment in response to GeminiGirl, who brought up the same issue. Will you please read my response there? I’m so emotionally drained and upset at this that i don’t have the energy to write it all over again.
Thanks.
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You are very forgiving, Dusted Off! If I was in your place, I’d have done something rather more brash. Dunno what, but still. Anyhow, your pal’s taken off the post, so I guess that’s it…
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PS. Got so carried away I forgot to write: hehe. Good review. Eye candy and good on the ears, but so dumb otherwise!
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Thank you! Glad you liked the review. :-)
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I’ve seen “Baat Ek Raat Ki” several times (not sure why, perhaps I believe that if I watched it enough times, it would turn into the kind of movie Dev-Waheeda deserved. :-D) but have never really been able to make sense of the plot, until now. Thank you for unraveling and explaining it to me, Madhu. Now I can stop watching the film!
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LOL! Shalini, I have seen this one several times too – in fact, the first time I watched it (as a kid, on Doordarshan), I remember liking it. I was, as I’ve mentioned on previous occasions, much more tolerant back then! It’s only the past few years that I’ve become impatient with idiocy of this type.
And to think this was Dev Anand (and pretty much in his prime, still) and Waheeda Rehman… yes, certainly not a film the two of them deserved.
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Dear Madhulika, as far as I know the mother of Wahida Rahman was played by the prominent Bengali actress Padmavati Devi. The mole on her temple is the evidence. Would you please check?
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Monami, thank you for that correction. Yes, now that I’ve gone back and had a look at the credits, I do see that there’s a ‘Padma Devi’ listed there. Will correct that in my post. Thanks!
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You know something, your observations about the courtroom scenes reminded me of something. Long, long ago, my father had taken me to the dentist. Even as he was doing my marrammat(did you understand what I have written, in case u have problem understanding the Hindi that I have written in Roman script, well all u have to do is think of the dentist’s chair and you will know what I mean), any way coming back to what I was saying, the dentist asked dad, “Are courtrooms really how they are shown in films”. My father burst out laughing. His response was “Of course not”.
Oh btw, I have something funny to share but that would be more suitable for a post that has to do with food, you know it is about good old sajna (drumsticks).
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Heh! That’s an amusing anecdote about the dentist wondering about court scenes. If courts really were the way they’re shown in films like this one or Paying Guest or even Waqt… why would anyone go to the cinema!
Don’t forget whatever it was you wanted to tell me about sajna :-)
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Of course not.
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Thanks for the entertaining review Madhu! It’s almost always better to read your reviews than actually sit through some of these mediocre movies. Although I agree with you, how can anyone mess up a Dev/Waheeda/SD combo? That song “Akela hoon main” is one of those songs I can never get tired of listening/watching…
“Rajesh’s method of finding out whether or not Neelam is guilty is by badgering her: Did you kill him? Was it you? It wasn’t, was it?”
Very funny! It feels like the director and other key members didn’t bother to see the whole movie from beginning to end in one go to realize how the audience would feel. It puzzles me sometimes to watch movies with such glaring anomalies!
Regarding the inept police (even by hindi movie standards) – it seems pretty lame. Though to be honest, we have gotten accustomed to cops leaving behind vital evidences. It just seems that no one expects them to do anything of substance, hence the “value add” by the hero. :)
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Thank you, Ashish! Glad you liked the review. :-) And, really, messing up suspense/Waheeda/Dev Anand/SD Burman – that’s really difficult. The problem is, warts and all, it still doesn’t make for an entertaining film. I mean, look at something like Woh Kaun Thi?, which has its fair share for plot holes, but manages (in my opinion) to be so gripping and suspenseful despite that, that it still remains one of my favourite movies.
“It just seems that no one expects them to do anything of substance, hence the “value add” by the hero. :)”
That ‘value add’ is probably the main reason! Because when (on the rare occasion that the hero is a cop, he works just fine!
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True. I wonder how your dad handled the picturization of gross ineptitude of police in hindi movies (I remember you mentioning somewhere that he was an IPS officer).
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He’s also very fond of old Hindi cinema, so he gives them some leeway! But he always says (jokingly) of Inhi logon ne le leena dupatta mera: “Saare policewaalon ko badnaam kar diya!” – because of that Humri na maano, sipahiyya se poochho… jisne bajariya mein chheena dupatta mera. :-)
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Ha! Very sporting of him.
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:-)
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I was very amused by your hilarious story telling of Baat Ek Raat Ki-…when I saw this long time ago some items in the story pinch the viewer but any way one is not supposed to think too much while watching a Hindi Film….one thing I would like to say is JO IZAZAT HO TO EK BAAT KAHOON ….IS a wonderful song which I did not notice much THEN i.e. 40 years ago but NOW yes….even the picturization is GOOD….do see again …cheers
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Thank you! I’m glad you liked the review. Yes, Jo ijaazat ho does tend to get overlooked; in fact, even having rewatched the film recently, I couldn’t recall it until I went to Youtube and had a look. Then, of course, I remembered it.
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