Tag Archives: Rajshree

Do Dil (1965)

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Directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Music by Hemant, lyrics by Kaifi Azmi.

That, by itself, would be enough to make me want to watch the film. But then, there was the fact I hadn’t known anything about Do Dil before other than its name. And that, for a Hrishikesh Mukherjee film, is odd. I guessed there must be something about it that was very forgettable.

There was only one way to find out: to watch the film for myself. With a crew like that, I figured that it would almost certainly not be outright awful.

Do Dil begins at a palace, with the death of the Maharaja (we are never shown this man). Some days later, though, a number of courtiers convene along with the Maharaja’s lawyer, who reads out the will. The Maharaja appoints his grand-nephew Kunwar Pratap Singh (Pran), who also happens to be the state’s senapati (commander) as his successor, though with Rani Indumati, the Maharaja’s sister (Durga Khote) as regent (this is all spelled out in very vague terms, so it’s not exactly clear what powers Ranima, as she’s known, will wield). Pratap Singh looks very pleased with himself…

The Maharaja's will is read out
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Mohabbat Zindagi Hai (1966)

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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.

Dharmendra and Rajshree in Mohabba Zindagi Hai Continue reading →

Dr Kotnis ki Amar Kahani (1946)

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After having done a fairly thorough job of lambasting The Charge of the Light Brigade for depicting India idiotically, I decided I had to show that I’m unbiased. If Hollywood could make a mess when it came to foreigners and foreign settings, Hindi cinema could surpass it. And how!
Dr Kotnis ki Amar Kahani is based on the real-life story of Dr Dwarkanath S Kotnis, who went to China in 1938 as part of a medical mission and did exemplary work in China. This, on its own, would be too insipid for the average Hindi film. But the fact that Kotnis married a Chinese girl while he was treating the ailing masses—well, that gives this story plenty of potential, and V Shantaram, director and lead actor of this film, milks it to the melodramatic full.

V Shantaram and Jaishree in Dr Kotnis ki Amar Kahani

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