When I was about twelve years old, there were two important developments in my literary life.
Tag Archives: marriage of convenience
Dynamite (1929)
This post is a consequence of the last film review I did: that of the 1966 Dharmendra-Rajshree starrer, Mohabbat Zindagi Hai. A ‘marriage of convenience’ theme about an heiress who must marry in a hurry in order to inherit the wealth due to her—and chooses a man on death row as her husband, so that she can legally get her money, but is conveniently widowed. Only to find that things don’t quite work out the way she’d expected.
The connection with Dynamite, made nearly 40 years earlier, by the legendary Cecil B DeMille? This film, DeMille’s first full-length sound feature, has several similarities to Mohabbat Zindagi Hai: the rich female lead; the clause in a dead relative’s will requiring her to marry in order to inherit; the down-to-earth coal miner who is accused (and convicted) of murder and is chosen by the heiress as a temporary husband so that she can get her money…
Mohabbat Zindagi Hai (1966)
Considering ‘arranged marriages’ were—and still are—so common in India, the fact that old Hindi cinema tended to focus mostly on ‘love marriages’ seems rather odd to me. It’s more romantic, I suppose, to imagine that one will fall in love and end up, after various trials and tribulations and having encountered sundry obstacles, married to one’s sweetheart.
There were exceptions, though, the occasional film about people getting married first, and falling in love later. There was Ghoonghat, Saanjh aur Savera, Blackmail, or those examples of child marriages, Chhoti si Mulaqat and Ji Chaahta Hai. Most of them about people who are forced—because of their own submissiveness, and because they can’t pluck up the courage to say no to bossy elders—into getting married to near or complete strangers.
Unlike this one. Mohabbat Zindagi Hai is one of the few examples (Mr & Mrs 55 was another) of someone getting married for a very mercenary reason. And, as in Mr & Mrs 55, the heroine here is an heiress who needs to get married in a hurry in order to inherit. No husband, no money. But, unlike Mr & Mrs 55, the heroine here doesn’t marry because she thinks she can easily divorce her unwanted husband soon after; she marries him because he’s on death row. He won’t be alive three days after their wedding.
Hold Back the Dawn (1941)
A few preliminaries before I launch into a synopsis of this little-known but lovely little film.
This is the third film of Charles Boyer’s that I’ve reviewed on this blog (the other two are Gaslight and Love Affair). As in Gaslight, in Hold Back the Dawn too Boyer plays a less-than-scrupulous man who marries not for love but for less savoury reasons—after having convinced the woman in question that he’s deeply in love with her.
Now for the coincidence. This is also the third film of Olivia de Havilland’s that I’ve reviewed on this blog (the other two are The Charge of the Light Brigade and Not as a Stranger). As in Not as a Stranger, in Hold Back the Dawn too de Havilland plays a gullible woman duped into marrying a man she’s convinced loves her—though his motives for the marriage are very mercenary.
Dustedoff 