Given my penchant for history, it’s hardly surprising that I would, sooner or later, end up watching this film. It’s been on my radar for a while, though it was only last month that I was reminded of Jhansi ki Rani, because it showed up in my list of YouTube’s suggested videos. Oddly enough, what YouTube suggested wasn’t exactly this film but its English-language counterpart, The Tiger and the Flame, which was released in 1956. Sohrab Modi, who produced and directed (besides acting in) both versions of the film, went all out on creating a spectacular production, bringing in technicians and other crew from Hollywood, including Oscar-winning cinematographer Ernest Haller, who was responsible for the cinematography of Gone with the Wind.

This film was not just made in two languages, but with other differences between them too. The Tiger and the Flame is in Technicolor (the first India-made film in Technicolor) while Jhansi ki Rani is in black and white. Jhansi ki Rani has songs (composed by Vasant Desai with lyrics by Pandit Radheshyam), The Tiger and the Flame is minus the songs. Other than that, though, the films were much the same: the same cast, the same script.