(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.