Anmol (1993)

I have a soft spot for this movie. It is after all the movie which sold me on Rishi Kapoor. If, however, the thought if Rishi and Manisha Koirala as a couple gives you serious misgivings, or the screaming heebie jeebies, this is probably not the movie for you.

It stars of with Anmol's birthday party. The family consists of her, her father, her stepmother, two stepsisters (hmmm, I wonder why this sounds so familiar) and step uncle.



What do you think? Are they evil?


Oh yes, they are. Step-mother and step-uncle want to take over the hotel, which is currently in Anmol's name. Her father has already had two heart attacks, and when he suffers his third, they deprive him of his heart-attack-curing pills and want him to sign papers transferring the hotel in their name. However, he rather dies than deprive his daughter of her rights to the hotel. I am not entirely sure that he couldn't have changed his mind after he recovered from his heart attack, but I suppose, his death was necessary to the story. Anyway, henceforth, Anmol becomes the household maid, and her stepmother and stepsisters are generally evil to her. She grows up to be very pretty as she is now played by Manisha Koirala:



but the only person who is ever kind to her is an elderly family retainer:


Then, one day, a new singer, Prem (Rishi Kapoor), arrives at the hotel. Both stepsisters are immediately smitten by him, while his is less than impressed with their behaviour:


He is, however, very impressed when he spots Anmol hanging out the laundry from his window, and even more so, when she starts to sing. As she is extremely shy and scared of her family they communicate via Moti, Prem's dog:


Prem decides to sing Anmol's song at the show his is doing that evening. Anmol is very excited but her stepmother doesn't allow her to come. Unfortunately, Prem is missing the last sheet of music for the song, and Anmol manages to get it to him just in time, but at great cost to herself as her uncle burns her feet as punishment.



Prem learns of this development from the loyal family retainer, who also explains Anmol's situation in general to him. Prem brings her some treatment for her burns, and also takes revenge on her family by pretending to be very inept with a long ladder.



After some more entertaining and wholesome fun at a market, where Anmol and Prem end up zipped into the same jacket, the two have fully fallen for each other. However, we also learn that her uncle is running a gambling establishment, and owes some gangsters rather a lot of money, including Zafar (Puneet Issar), who has a rather unique fashion sense.

He is not good news:


Anmol meanwhile asks Moti to bring her a picture of Prem, mostly so she can sing to it. Moti does as he is told but its obviously of the opinion that more is more in this case. Unfortunately, her love for Prem is noticed by her step-sisters who are rather angry and jealous. They forbid Anmol ever to see Prem again, otherwise they would have Prem killed.



Anmol therefore starts to ignore Prem who is understandably puzzled by this sudden change in behaviour on her part. He ends up making his way down a chimney in oder to finally talk to her. Stuck in this rather uncomfortable position he overhears her talking to her uncle, or rather, her uncle threatening her. Prem ends up with burned feet, but at least he manages to ascertain that Anmol still loves him.

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time:




Meanwhile, the uncle has a meeting with one of his gangster associates discussing his difficult financial situation. When Anmol serves the drinks, the associate comes up with the brilliant idea of selling her in a brothel as a means of solving all their money problems. Anmol's step-mother is all in favour of the plan.



The family realises that Prem is somewhat of an obstacle, so they throw him out, and lock Anmol in her room. Prem, however, beseeches his beloved to come to him in a rousing song performed at a somewhat peculiar venue, and in the end she manages to escape (through the chimney).



However, the two meet with an uncle-engineered accident and Anmol is taken back to the house, while Prem is believed to have fallen down a cliff. Anmol has been emboldened to fight back against her family



and Prem was rescued by Moti and returns:



The uncle pretends to agree to let Prem and Anmol get married if Prem brings a large amount of money within the next 14 days. Prem agrees and leaves, leaving Moti behind to look after Anmol.

Don't be sad:


He will look after you:


And look, you even get to sing a song with him:


The uncle mainly agreed to the plan, because he assumes that Prem is poor and will never be able to bring the money on time. However, it turns out that Prem is actually the only son of a rich business man (Saeed Jaffrey) with whom he had a fight as he refused to join the family firm and left home to be a musician. Dad is not impressed when his son comes back to ask for money to marry a girl he has never met.



Instead, he arranges Prem's engagement with the daughter of an old business partner, but Prem refuses to get engaged against his wishes. Dad then refuses to give Prem any money. This is all rather unfortunate, but help comes from an unexpected sources. Prem's extremely short-term fiance offers him her jewelery to help. As she apparently hadn't been asked about the whole engagement business either one is left to hope that she has found someone else, too.





Back at Anmol's the plotting relatives still want to sell her but she refuses to leave the house until she has heard from Prem. Luckily for her relatives (and unluckily for me, as I had managed to completely erase any memory of this from my brain) an artist (Johnny Lever) adept at imitating voices arrives at the hotel, and is persuaded to imitate Prem on the phone, asking Anmol to come and meet him. The ploy works, and Anmol is taken away in a car just as Prem is on his way to meet her with the money.







Anmol is taken to the brothel, but back at her house, the loyal servant overhears her step-mother boasting about her evil plans, and she and her daughters are arrested. However, they don't actually know where Anmol was taken, so Prem, who has arrived in the meantime, has to go back and find her without the help of an address.

Well, that's them taken care of:


It takes Anmol some time to realise that she has not in fact been taken to Prem's house, but when she does she pleads with the men present to rescue her, but to no avail. Her buyer no other than Zafar.



She does manage to escape by jumping from a window and hides in the boot of a car. Unfortunately, she managed to pick not the best car for escape purposes:



Meanwhile, Prem has found the evil uncle, and confronts him. The have a big fight and it all ends like this:


Due to a series of unfortunate misunderstandings the police believe that Prem died in the fire. This is even more unfortunate, as Anmol has been rescued and taken in buy some very unexpectedly kindly people who try to find Prem for her.

Who are these kindly people? And will Anmol and Prem be ever re-united? What about Moti?


As I said at the beginning, I have a soft spot for this movie. It has all the hallmarks of nineties cheesiness: strange fashion, convoluted plot, much fighting and fake blood, but it is never boring, and while the first half is firmly rooted in the Cinderella-story the second half develops its own dynamic. I wouldn't encourage anybody to rush out and get hold of it, but it it happens to lie around amongst the unwatched Dvds there are worse ways of spending your evening.

Black and White Shashi I: Mehndi Lagi Meri Haath (1962)

The first half of this movie is very, very sweet, but unfortunately it falls prey to the curse of the second half (as Beth's puts it). I am not adverse to melodrama or misunderstandings, but only if I can see why somebody is doing what they are doing. Here, I just got angry and wanted to shake people.

The story starts with preparations for a wedding. Deepak (Shashi Kapoor), whose sister is getting married,is applying Henna to the hands of a bunch of small boys when her friends decide that he should do it for them, too. Among them is Rajni (Nanda) a somewhat subdued girl. Deepak is instantly smitten by Rajni and has an elaborate fantasy song about her.

Deepak:


Rajni:


Rajni as Deepak imagines her:


The next day they are both going back to Bombay and meet at the railway station, where Deepak becomes more than a little confused.



Back in their respective hostels we are treated to non-matching his and hers stories of what happened. We also meet Rajni's and Deepak's friends. The latter include our comic relief for this moive, and a guy I decided to call Mr. Spoilsport.

Rajni and her friends:


Deepak and his friends:


Mr. Spoilsport:


It also turns out that the two somehow managed to mix up their suitcases. The suitcases are exchanged, but then Deepak, who is also of a poet, realises that he left one of his poems in Rajni's suitcase. He writes her a letter asking her to return the poem to him. As she is on her way to give it to him she meets with an accident and is taken to the hospital where Deepak works as a surgeon.

Deepak looking for the missing poem:


He looks awfully young to be a qualified doctor:


Deepak spends rather a lot of time looking after Rajni, so much in fact that his boss, Dr. Mehta (Ashok Kumar) notices. Dr. Mehta obviously favours the direct approach:



When he realises that Deepak and Rajni are in love he encourages to sort things out with their parents, or rather mothers, as neither of them has a father. He also remembers that he once made a mistake in love, and when he realized his mistake, it was too late. Of course, this is completely unlikely to be of any significance later on in the movie, isn't it?

Deepak then takes Rajni to meet his mother, who takes an instant liking to her, while wondering out loud why on earth such a nice girl would want to marry her idiot son.



The two go on to meet Rajni's mother, singing along the way.

And, no, he doesn't keep his eyes on the road:


However, after their arrival they find the house locked and are told that Rajni's mother has gone to the nearby village. Rajni goes there on her own and finds her mother trying to sell the house. She is hindered by some villagers who treat her badly and accuse her of being a loose woman. Rajni is shocked to hear this accusation and even more shocked to learn that her father never died, but left her mother pregnant. Her mother claims that they were married in secret but Rajni doesn't believe her. She leaves her mother's house and also resolves to break things off with Deepak. I am not sure how she can't have known this given that they seem to live withing walking distance of the village, but I am willing to suspend disbelief here.

Mom is distressed:


and things get worse:


Being upset does strange things to Rajni's hair:


Of course, she doesn't tell Deepak what the matter is. Instead, she tells him that she never loved him and that he misunderstood her kindness, and would he please go away and leave her in peace. Deepak is rather puzzled by this behaviour, and expresses his sadness in a melancholy song.

Deepak sad and puzzled:


Lost in happy memories:


The problem is, that Rajni can't stay away from Deepak. She constantly finds excuses to turn up at the hospital, which is particularily unfortunate as he is prone to swooning every time he sees her and starts to make more and more mistakes at work which in the end cost him a foreign scholarship.





There follows a rather nice qawalli in which Deepak enumerates all the ways in which love is bad sitting around looking sad while his opponent sings the praises of love with great enthusiasm.

One of the two is having a lot more fun:




Even Deepak's mother notices that something is seriously wrong and she confronts Rajni. Rajni tells her the truth and makes her promise not to tell anybody, not even Deepak. Deepak's mother is very torn, as she would still like Rajni as a daughter in law and is unwilling to believe that Rajni's mother really had a child out of wedlock but doesn't want her son to get married to a fatherless girl. And Deepak is still left in the dark as to what is really going on.

People being dramatically unhappy:




Oh for crying out loud:



News then reaches the hospital that a plague has broken out and volunteers are needed. Deepak joins the volunteer-team against Dr. Mehta's wishes. Well, it is at least a more socially responsible way of committing suicide than drinking yourself to death.

Will the two lovers ever be re-united? Why would it be a good idea for Dr. Mehta to meet Rajni's mother? And what is Deepak doing on the railway lines? And why would this worry me a lot more if this was a 1952 movie starring Dilip Kumar?



I really enjoyed the first half of this, even if I felt that Deepak seemed rather young to be a qualified doctor. The only slight quibble is that Rajna looks slightly melancholy long before she has any reason to be sad, but maybe she was just meant to be a bit more subdued, in contrast to Deepak's silliness. However, around the three quarters mark I lost patience with Rajni. I am not a great fan of making other people's decisions for them, but I can sort of see that she might not want to tell him, being afraid of making him choose between his love and what people's opinion perhaps, or maybe thinking that it is after all not just her secret but also her mother's. But why does she haunt him after she has decided to break things off with him, especially ones it becomes obvious that this is quite distressing to him. It also seems rather unnecessary, surely he could have gotten depressed and suicidal without her following him around in this manner.

Apart from that, it is nice, the actors do a good job, and the music is pleasant.

Anyway, some more Shashi pictures:

The shocked look:


The stubble of concern:


Dramatic bed-post clinging:


The stubble of despair:




Aaaaaaaaaaaw: