Tag Archives: film review

Zulu (1964)

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While this blog is all about old films—and the bulk of my film-watching is old films—that doesn’t mean I don’t watch new films. I do; lots of them. But the odd thing is that invariably, new films that I watch end up having some connection (even if in a roundabout way) to an old film.
Last weekend, I watched two new films. One, of course, was the latest big release: The Dark Knight Rises. The other was the 2011 Michael Fassbender-starrer, Centurion. Both films reminded me of one old film, Zulu. Like The Dark Knight Rises, Zulu has Michael Caine in its cast (it was one of his first major film roles). And, like Centurion, Zulu too is about conquered versus conquerors.

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Bringing up Baby (1938)

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The other day, I was thinking aloud, wondering what to do for my next blog post, and my husband said, “Review a comedy.”

So here it is. A review of a film that’s intentionally funny, and which, furthermore, stars one of my favourite Hollywood actors: the incomparable Cary Grant, a leading man who had a fantastic flair for comedy. In this one, he teams up with the equally superb Katharine Hepburn in a crazy story involving a millionaire aunt, a big game hunter, a tame leopard, and a Brontosaurus bone, among other odds and ends.

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Rustom-e-Rome (1964)

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Another tribute, to yet another great who’s passed on. Dara Singh, the wrestler-turned-actor who made such a big niche for himself in a slew of films, especially in the 1960s, passed away on July 12, 2012.

As a child, nearly all my movie-watching was restricted to what was aired on Indian TV—Doordarshan—(and later, the few TV channels that showed Hindi movies). Somehow, I never ended up watching any Dara Singh movies. Despite that, Dara Singh was a very familiar figure and name. A synonym for formidable strength, for something like the Rock of Gibraltar: utterly immovable, impossible to defeat.

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Yeh Raat Phir Na Aayegi (1966)

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Poor Biswajeet must have gotten thoroughly sick of romancing spooky women in the ‘60s. True, in this one, the spookiness is rather more pronounced (Waheeda Rehman was pretty sunny and un-mysterious in Bees Saal Baad; everything else seemed steeped in mystery). But there is the inexplicability of everything around, dozens of very loud and pointed hints of someone haunting an area, and a song that’s sung again and again like a broken record.

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Lizzie (1957)

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This photo of Eleanor Parker is the current wallpaper on my laptop screen:


…and I’ve decided it’s time to change it, simply because it gets in the way of my work. Every now and then, while I’m working, I need to move to the desktop to open a folder or file that’s there. Invariably, I end up gaping at the gorgeous Ms Parker and forgetting all about why I’d arrived at the desktop in the first place.

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Neecha Nagar (1946)

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I am a bit of an iconoclast. Maxim Gorky’s play The Lower Depths, while considered one of the great classics of Russian literature, left me cold when I read it. To me, it seemed too cluttered with characters, too devoid of plot, and just—well, without anything that would make me want to go back to it all over again.
So I approached Neecha Nagar—Chetan Anand’s debut film as a director—with a good deal of trepidation. Because Neecha Nagar was inspired by The Lower Depths, and I expected something horrendously morbid and impossible to understand without the benefit of footnotes.

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Pyaar ka Mausam (1969)

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Or, The Nasir Hussain Rule Book of Fool-proof Rehashing.

I’m beginning to think I’m an idiot for trying to think up new stories every time I write. Look at people like Betty Neels or Nasir Hussain; they managed to get by with basically the same story, over and over again, and very successfully too. [which makes me wonder: were Hussain and Neels long-lost brother and sister?]

Take the latter’s Pyaar ka Mausam, for example. I’d seen this film as a kid and remembered little of it except the very good music and the pretty lead pair. A rewatch last night revealed that it amounted to a cocktail of Nasir Hussain’s earlier films: Tumsa Nahin Dekha, Dil Deke Dekho, and Phir Wohi Dil Laaya Hoon. Same story, same plot elements, same rules from The Rule Book.
[Note: These rules will make more sense if you’ve seen one or more of the films I’ve mentioned above. If you haven’t, think of it this way: you’ll get to know about four films just from one review].

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Waqt (1965)

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By some strange oversight, despite the fact that Waqt is one of my favourite masala films, I’ve never reviewed it on this blog. And I’m wishing I didn’t have to end up writing about it on such a sad occasion—because Achla Sachdev, the actress who played the self-sacrificing, long-suffering mother and wife in this film, passed away on April 30, 2012.

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Charulata (1964)

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… and some random comparisons with Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam.

This Satyajit Ray film had been lying in my to-watch pile for a long time. Then, I learnt a few days back that the Indian government had finally decided to award a Dadasaheb Phalke to Soumitra Chatterjee for his contribution to Indian cinema. Better late than never, I guess (even though a number of people have said that it’s too late). The announcement, however, did give me a solid reason to watch Charulata (aka The Lonely Wife). And I ended up wanting to hit myself for not having seen this masterpiece earlier.

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