Bargain Bin Beauties II : Shehzada (1972)

It was with some trepidation that I started to watch this movie. I had never seen a movie with Rakhee where she hadn't been a long-suffering mother, sometimes with the variation of a long-suffering, mentally imbalanced mother. I had grown somewhat weary with her doing this, especially as to me she appeared to acting just the same in the flashbacks which were meant to show happier days.

However, she really surprised me in Shehzada. Yes, she does turn on the waterworks on more than one occassion, but she also a plays a very charming and in some ways quite feisty young girl, and she does it very well.

The movie certainly has an impressively colourful start:



The film tells the story of the titular Shehzada (Rajesh Khanna), but it actually opens his grandmother (Veena) making a great entrance into her palatial mansion. We learn swiftly that she has a sickly son (Karan Deewan) (suffering from a mysterious disease which makes him cough a lot and leads to liver failure), who lives separated from his wife and child.



This child has grown up to be a truck-driver. He is happy with his lot and ones nothing to do with his grandmother as she isn't willing to accept his mother (Pandri Bhai) as her daughter-in-law.

Meet our dashing hero:



He is also friends with Chanda (Rakhee), who runs a small stall.



She has an evil uncle who tries to get her married to somebody old enough to be her grandfather, and she is saved by Rajesh's intervention. He takes her home to meet his mother, and we then learn why she is estranged from her in-laws: During the struggle for independence, her father, who was a freedom fighter, shot her father-in-law who was working for the British government. Rajesh's grandmother was unwilling to have her husband's killer's daughter stay in the house and his father had insufficient backbone to insist that his wife be allowed to stay.

Here we have the ideological conflict:


I have to say, grand-father looks rather dashing in his picture:



The rest of the movie deals with how this situation is resolved, and involves Rajesh stating repeatedly that his home is where his mother is, while his grandmother insists that her house is his home, and his father's health takes a turn for the worse. While the story is quite interesting, it is not what makes watching this movie so enjoyable. That is the interaction between Rajesh, Chanda and Rajesh's mother, Janki. The young couple is very cute together, and they are very sweet with Janki in a non-cloying way. Especially, since they take some time to own up to the fact that they have feelings for each other, and Mum is just waiting for them to tell her and finds their evasions quite funny. I really had great fun with the first ninety minutes or so. Towards the end there were too many impassioned speeches for my taste, and I enjoyed Rajesh Khanna much more when he was not giving speeches. He just seemed to be a bit wooden when he declared for the umpteenth time that his home is where his mother is. It was nevertheless interesting to see the same choice, namely staying with your mother, once presented as a paragon of filial duty and once as an act of spineless cowardice. Context obviously is important here, but Rajesh attitude to his grandmother does feel a bit harsh on occasion. It is a great strenght of the film that the grandmother is not portrayed as evil. She is stern but clearly fond of her son and grandson and her antipathy towards her daughter-in-law is at least comprehensible. It was certainly an enjoyable movie and to me a revelation as far as Rakhee was concerned.

The young couple being cute:


Mother and son:


Couply cuteness at night:



and in wet:


Bienen und Bluemchen:


The other thing that is rather fascinating is that somebody is doing interesting stuff with the camera work. Lots of shots in unexpected angles and perspectives.

Maybe he got bored during the fight-scenes:







Sitting pretty:


The slightly different flashback:


There are also a lot of stripes:


possibly a sunset too many, but rather nice sunsets nevertheless:


and an awesome carpet:


And last but not least, the comic relief, who is actually quite funny:


I have to say, that I generally find these sorts of characters less irritating in older movies.

Zameen Aasman (1984)

Zameen Aasman starts with Sanjay (Sanjay Dutt) and Anita (Anita Raaj) meeting and him taking an instant dislike to her. He is not entirely unjustified, as she first pours coffee over his suit, then bumps her car into his car, and finally causes him injury while roller skating. However, their fighting soon leads to romance and they are rather cute together.

The not very promising first meeting:


Thinks are looking up (and how did she overlook him in that shirt)


Young love:



She tries to make him jealous by pretending that her father send the picture in that envelope. He isn't buying it:


However, Anita is only staying for the holidays and soon it is time for her to return to Bombay. Before she leaves, Sanjay meets her aunt Kanchan (Rekha) who likes him a lot. She also remembers meeting she a Dr. Kailash Goyal (Shashi Kapoor), and her friendship with him which ended when he got married to somebody else, without ever realizing that she had developed feelings for him (Men, what can you do). This is a bit puzzling, as we know that Dr. Kailash is Sanjay's father, who is no longer in this world, as they say in the movies.

Their first meeting:






He is quite oblivious to her feelings:


We also find out that a very unpleasant if rather good looking man who was black-mailing Kavita is in fact Kanchan's step-brother.



Sanjay's mother Kavita (Rakhee) also has noticed his son's interest in Anita. She allows him to travel to Bombay, after he has moped around the house love-sick for a while.



His mother also comes to Bombay and everything seems to move along smoothly;

We get more young love, this time with added flowers:


until the point when Kavita comes to Anita's father's house to discuss they proposal, and he refuses, as he doesn't believe that Sanjay is her son. We then see another flashback, which explains, why he is so convinced that Sanjay isn't her son and what Kanchan's part is in the whole story.

The second flashback starts of happily enough:



But then there is shock:


and much angst:







and just as things are looking up:



this happens:



and all that remains is a photo:



The two young lovers are very unhappy about Anita's father withholding his permission for their marriage and plan to elope,

Waiting for the partner in "crime"


He wasn't expecting her:


but Kanchan stops them and much drama follows until we arrive at the wedding.



I bought this because it has Sanjay in it, but even though is story is important for the plot, and very sweet, the movie really belongs to Rakhee and Rekha. They both play their parts with great dignity or fire, when required, and while I have my problems with Rakhee as the long suffering mother, she was very good in this. Shashi appears only in the flashbacks, but he and his actions are very important for the blood and he is most enjoyable to watch while he is on screen.

The movie also has one of my favourite narrative devices, nested flashbacks.

And no, she isn't pregnant here:


The movie also seems to believe that wearing glasses ages one instantly:







Random Sanjay pictures:

Bargain Bin Beauties I : Dhongee (1979)

First of all, apologies for the silent treatment. It is not as if I haven't watched any movies recently, but between watching them, and being rather busy in the times I didn't watch movies, I haven't managed to post here. I will try to be better and deal with some of the backlog I have accumulated.

Part of why I have been so busy movie watching is that during the last sale at Eros I went slightly mad and bought everything they had on sale for under a pound. That is a lot of movies, and I was subsequently banned from buying any more movies before I had watched them all and I have mainly stuck to this, but it is also a great incentive to watch these cinematographic gems.

Dhongee looked interesting as it had Farida Jalal in it, in what I presumed was a non-maternal role. I was wrong:


But, at least she isn't an adult's mother.

She plays Geeta, a young woman living with her brother Anand (Randhir Kapoor) and in love with Rajit. Rajit's father demands dowry, but Anand doesn't have the money. He has, however, his own love interes, Neelima (Neetu Singh). On his way back from his failed visit to the last resort for getting money he has an accident and a body is identified as his. Anand isn't dead (I think I would have been more surprised if he actually had died) and he is nursed back to health by a Nepalese gardener (or something along those lines). When he is recovered enough to go back home, he is just in time to watch his sister getting married to Rajit. This was made possible with the money from his life insurance, so he decides that it is his duty as a responsible older brother to stay disappeared. Charming, considering he left behind a grieving girl-friend. Up until this point the movie seemed entirely normal, not terribly exciting, maybe even a bit dull, though there was the occassional odd choice in tie:



Anand decides to retire to Nepal, so the authorities won't find him. And this is when things start to go slightly weird. First, if I wanted to leave the country quietly and not draw attention to myself, clearly, this is my perfect choice of clothing:





Secondly, Anand is greeted at the airport as Mr. John and treated with great respect. Apparently, these people mistake him for a great Don. The viewer learns fairly soon that this is a ploy by the real Mr. John to have Anand arrested, so he can continue to be evil in peace, and make more forged currency. Mr. John has a rather impressive lair with a fairly awsome door:



and also some wallpaper which isn't good for the eyes:



There is much fighting and intrigue (Anand's family winds up in Nepal, too), and a long lost father turns up about three quarters into the movie, much to my puzzlement, but the main fun was watching Anand's impressive collection of Nepalese headgear:





It is colour-coordination:


The songs are okay, but not amazing, though one suggests that there may have been a sale of streetlamps going on close by:



and there is a long song in which Anand confronts the real Mr. John, who somehow fails to be threatening in this get-up:





And this happens in the middle of the final fight (having a lunch break, advertising cabbage, your guess is as good as mine)



Was this fun to watch? Yes.

Would I recommend it? Only if you have nothing better to watch. Especially the first half is not very exciting. There is no need to avoid it, and the second half is at least funny, if mainly unintentionally.