(And a brief review of Naadaan, 1951).

Over the past couple of days, I’ve watched one of Dev Anand’s earlier films with Madhubala, Naadaan. Ever since I watched Kaala Paani as a child, I’ve checked out every film in which they’ve worked together and which I’ve been able to lay my hands on: Jaali Note, Sharaabi, and now this—all in the hope that another film of theirs might be able to bring together that all-around excellence of Kaala Paani.

In the case of Naadaan, there was another incentive to watch: the fact that this was based on Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934). This film, which stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, is a classic romance based on opposites attracting: not only is the heroine a very wealthy woman and the hero a not-too-well-off journalist, but she is, furthermore, in love with a completely different man. Pampered by her widowed father, the woman throws a hissy fit and runs off to her lover when her father refuses to let her marry him. The woman soon realizes that her father has organized not just a search party but has also offered a reward for anyone who can give him information about his fugitive daughter’s whereabouts—all calculated to scotch any attempts at her getting to her lover. But the journalist (who scents a good story) takes the woman under his wing, and gradually their initial friction gives way to friendship, and then to love.

Of course this would appeal to Indian audiences. We have a long history of romances that bring together widely disparate people. Then, road trips are always fun. Throw in the humour (and It Happened One Night had a good deal of it), plus the songs that a good romance can offer, and chances are, you have a hit on your hands.

… which Naadaan was, to some extent. The critics hated it (the acerbic Baburao Patel is supposed to have said that Madhubala looked ill and her beauty had been destroyed by pimples), but the public seems to have liked it well enough. I must also speak up here and say that she doesn’t seem to have any pimples at all; Baburao Patel was being his usual nasty self.

Whatever the case, I didn’t like Naadaan much. There are some changes to the story; for instance, Madhubala’s character Usha is not running to the man she loves; she is running away from an unwanted marriage her father (Mubarak) is pushing her into. Dev Anand’s character Ranjan is not a journalist, but an artist (who, for reasons best known to the scriptwriter, tells Usha his name is Shekhar). And later into the film, while Ranjan and Usha are staying at a hotel, they run into a suave but crooked lot (headed by Madan Puri, with a very young and very thin Jagdish Raj as sidekick) who—though it’s never explained exactly why—are planning something (who knows what) that involves duping Usha.

You get the gist. This film’s script is weak, its plot riddled with holes, and the magic of the Dev Anand-Madhubala chemistry is far short of Kaala Paani. It does have some good songs (composed by C Ramachandra, always dependable), and Dev Anand and Madhubala look good, but that’s it.

But there were other Indian films based on It Happened One Night. The most famous (and, in my opinion, the very best) is the Raj Kapoor-Nargis starrer Chori Chori (1956), which was not just an excellent adaptation of the original, but just a very good film—entertaining, charming, funny—in all ways.

Four years after Raj Kapoor starred in Chori Chori, younger brother Shammi acted opposite Nutan in yet another version of the same story. Basant (1960) started off in pretty much the same way as its inspiration, with spoilt heiress Meenakshi (Nutan) running away from home because her father won’t agree to her marrying the no-good Rajesh (Pran, in a role similar to the one he played in Chori Chori). Meenakshi’s encounter with Ashim (Shammi Kapoor) follows—somewhat—the same trajectory as in the earlier film: the road trip, the need for subterfuge, the falling in love… and then it goes south with a vengeance. You can guess just what moronic mayhem this film descends into when I say that despite having watched it, despite being a Shammi fan, despite liking Nutan a lot: I still couldn’t summon up the energy to review it. Anu, however, has taken one for the team and done a good review, here.

There have been other versions of this tale. In Bengali cinema, there was the Uttam Kumar-Suchitra Sen hit, Chaowa-Paowa (1959) which used the Naadaan element of having the heroine running away from an unwanted groom rather than to a lover. In case you haven’t seen Chaowa-Paowa yet, this is another adaptation I’d recommend: it’s very enjoyable.

There is also a Tamil version, Chandrodayam (1966) starring Jayalalitha and MG Ramachandran, which I’ve not been able to watch because I haven’t been able to find a subtitled version, but which appears to have been a hit (and even won Jayalalitha an award). In recent years, too, there have been other adaptations: Kadhal Rajavae (2000; Tamil) and Hudugaata (2007; Kannada) among them, though the one I remember watching (and liking, back then) was the Aamir Khan-Pooja Bhatt 1991 film, Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahin.

But, to get back to Naadaan. Like Basant (though not to such an extent), beyond a point, it went off on a tangent all its own, diverging from the plot of It Happened One Night. Once Usha and Ranjan/Shekhar had fallen in love and pledged eternal love to each other, they got separated (which of course happens in the original film too)—but then, while they’re apart, Ranjan is involved in a car accident and loses his right hand, the one with which he made all his wonderful paintings (remember, he’s an artist). He now proceeds to drown in self-pity and angst, and tells his friend (Manmohan Krishna) that Usha didn’t love him, she loved his art, so now she won’t have anything to do with him. So he’ll keep out of her life.

This, if you’ve seen Basant, is taken further. Meenakshi (Nutan) becomes paralyzed waist down after a car accident and immediately decides she is no longer worthy of Ashim.

… which brings me to another classic Hollywood film that’s proved extremely popular among Indian film-makers: the 1939 Love Affair, starring Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne. Better-known than Love Affair was its 1957 remake, An Affair to Remember (with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr), but the plot was the same. The idea, of separated lovers who promise to meet again but one has a crippling accident and decides not to be a burden, appealed hugely to Indian film-makers.

That, though, probably calls for a separate post.

Have you seen any other remakes of It Happened One Night?