Tag Archives: Ravi

China Town (1962)

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Chinatown

Shakti Samanta is responsible for many of my favourite Hindi films, and China Town is another one to add to the list. Not only does it have Shammi Kapoor in a double role, but as an added bonus Helen appears as one of the two heroines, and she dances in two songs – awesome! Shakti Samanta heads to Calcutta and the seedy opium dens of Chinatown to deliver a crime drama with plenty of masala seasoning. It’s the story of a gangster whose buffoonish lookalike becomes involved in a police plot to uncover the shadowy figure behind the Chinatown drug trade. If that sounds familiar, Salim-Javed were supposedly inspired by China Town when they came up with the plot for Don and the set-up is certainly very similar. However there are fewer twists and a lower body count in China Town, and the end is quite different. This has fewer noir elements than Samanta’s earlier Howrah Bridge but it does edge into the genre, and even though the outcome is fairly predictable, the journey to get there is well worth taking.

The film opens with the title track and features Helen in a wonderful dress covered with dragons. Chinatown gangster Mike (Shammi Kapoor) is introduced in the bath (!) and has a wonderful laconic style as he explains that the world will order itself to accommodate Mike, not the other way around. With such ishtyle, it’s not really surprising then that dancer Suzi (Helen) is in love with Mike, despite the callous treatment she receives at his hands.

Mike works for Mr Wong (Madan Puri), the owner of a hotel in Chinatown that acts as the front for a number of criminal activities, but chiefly the gang run an opium den and deal in drugs. Mike is spotted making his dodgy deals by the indomitable Inspector Dutta (Kanu Roy) and in the course of the ensuing car chase Mike is hurt and brought back to the police station by Inspector Dutta. However Mike proves to be a tough nut to crack and none of Inspector Dutta’s interrogation techniques manage to force him to reveal the other members of the gang, or who is controlling their activities. Fortuitously for Inspector Dutta, Rai Bahadur Digamberprasad Rai (S.N. Bannerjee) comes to the police station to make a complaint about bar singer Shekhar (Shammi Kapoor) who has followed his daughter Rita (Shakila) to Calcutta. Shekhar just happens to be the spitting image of Mike, and Inspector Dutta sees a way to infiltrate the gang, if he can get Shekhar to impersonate Mike.

Shekhar is the antitheses of Mike. He lives with his mother (Jeevan Kala) in Calcutta and spends his time singing, chasing after Rita and avoiding her father who is less than impressed with Shekhar. Shekhar is carefree and careless, and Shammi is excellent as the crazy and impulsive singer who will do anything for love.  Here he is serenading Rita, who doesn’t seem too impressed by his moves here at all!

Rai Bahadur on the other hand will do almost anything to keep Shekar away from his daughter, and when you consider Shekar’s antics as he dresses up as a Sadhu to follow Rita on the journey to Calcutta it’s hard to disagree when Rai Bahadur calls him a cartoon.

Despite his somewhat frivolous nature, Shekhar allows himself to be persuaded to work for the police, and undergoes extensive training to impersonate Mike. He successfully infiltrates the gang and starts to pass information back to Inspector Dutta, but before he can find out who’s the boss behind the scenes, Shekhar’s mother arrives in town. She soon reveals that it’s not a coincidence that Shekhar looks like Mike, and soon my favourite Bollywood plot device of separated twins gets thrown into the mix. So now all Shekhar has to do is stop Rita from marrying Mr Chaudhary, convince Rai Bahadur that he is a suitable person to marry his daughter, find the head of the drug smuggling gang and save his long lost brother – no worries!

Although Shekhar fools the gang, he can’t hide his musical soul and when out delivering drugs he dances and sings along to this wonderful mujra. I love the way Shammi can’t sit still and gyrates away in the background before finally joining in with Roshan Ara.

Along with the action, as Shekhar fools Mr Wong and one by one delivers the gang members up to the police, naturally there is time for some romance. Rai Bahadur seems a very liberal father, except where Shekhar is concerned and Rita manages to meet up with Shekhar and hit the tourist spots of Calcutta. They make a lovely couple, and Shakila looks beautiful here in a couple of sweet duets. The romance is rather cute too – as in one scene where Shekhar and Rita take refuge in a hotel and pretend to be married. The owner’s wife Mahakali (a brief appearance by Tun Tun) adds a vermillion tikka which Rita then doesn’t want Shekhar to rub off later despite all her protests about the deception. Very sweet! Rita is also feisty and quite prepared to fight back when she is kidnapped by the gang, which makes her a likeable heroine and more of a partner to Shekhar.

Suzi is quite prepared to fight for her man too, and Helen is fantastic in a role that gives her the opportunity to do more than dance. However she also looks stunningly gorgeous in this song where she dances with an intoxicated Shekhar.

The location allows Samanta to use the Calcutta backdrop and Howrah Bridge to good effect, particularly in the last fight scene. Dwarka Divecha does an excellent job with the cinematography and as in previous Samanta films there is good use of light and shade to heighten the drama. The Blue Dragon hotel has plenty of hidden doorways behind fake walls and bookcases, and there is even an escape route through the sewers to add to the ambiance.

The support cast all fit their roles well; Madan Puri reprises the role of a Chinese hotel owner while M.B. Shetty is expressive as Ching Lee, one of the gang who suspects Shekhar is not really Mike. But despite good performances from all the cast, China Town is all about Shammi Kapoor, and his performance here is the reason to watch the film.

I just adore Shammi in this film. He looks fabulous and seems to relish the contrast between his two roles, keeping the two personalities quite separate throughout. Shammi even looks very different as Mike and he plays the part of a brutish and rough gangster easily without hamming it up for the camera. As Shekhar he is buffoonish but good-natured, and although he does become more sensible when working for the police, he manages to make this seem like an act and every so often reverts back to true form with some classic Shammi craziness. When there are two Shammi’s onscreen it’s just wonderful, even if the technology isn’t quite able to make the effect completely seamless. Shammi is wonderful to watch, so even if the story does become a little predictable and the ending is annoyingly contrived, it really doesn’t matter when Shammi is this good – twice over! Recommended for Helen, Shakila, good songs and shady ambiance, but overall watch this for Shammi – he’s amazing! 4 stars from me – and I’ll give the last word to Helen, because I think this is exactly what she does.

Helen!

Neel Kamal (1968)

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Rajkumari Neel Kamal (Waheeda Rehman) is in love with poet/architect/sculptor Chitrasen (Raaj Kumar). He designs a Rang Mahal for her father, and as a reward asks the king to give him Neel Kamal.  Instead he is walled up alive, and the king forbids anyone to mention Chitrasen ever again.

Sita Raichand (Waheeda Rehman) is a nice girl and good student. On a school visit to the ruins of the Rang Mahal she is overcome by a phantasm of music and dance. Thereafter she is afflicted with sleepwalking and has no recollection of why or where she goes.  She just has time for a very fun musical number before the drama kicks into melodrama.

She is lured out into the night by a voice, a voice beseeching his love to return.  Sita is the reincarnation of Neel Kamal, and Chitrasen is still waiting for her.

His voice is impassioned and yearning. This song is used in many scenes, and I particularly like this a cappella version.

The somnambulism is dismissed as something that may ruin her reputation and so needs to be hushed up rather than treated.  Her wedding is arranged with the help of a friendly local guru (David Abraham). As the doctor breezily assured Sita’s father, once she was busy running a household and looking after children she simply wouldn’t have time for any psychological affliction. Poor Sita. The name alone gives a clue that she will be tested over and over.

She marries Ram (Manoj Kumar) and moves in with his mother (Lalita Pawar) and sister Chanchal (Shashikala). Her sleepwalking continues, and no one seems to care about why or what is happening apart from the potential damage to their prestige. Ram is the kind of hero who instantly believes the worst of his wife just because his Ma says so. I have to admit Sita’s ability to walk, accessorise and elegantly drape a saree in her sleep may have made me suspicious, but surely they could have discussed it. Manoj Kumar is adequate but not overly interesting as Ram. I spent most of his scenes waiting for him to do the hand over face thing, but the closest he got was a half hearted effort (at 1 hour 28 minutes if you need to know).

Their relationship, apart from all the judgemental and non helpful rubbish, is affectionate and quite passionate. With Sita’s romantic choices limited to a dead man or a mummy’s boy, I was pleasantly surprised to see her in a more or less happy marriage.  Of course, this also makes her suspect in the eyes of the mother-in-law. If she likes sleeping with her husband there’s no telling what else she might be up to. The floozy!

The Thakurin and Chanchal are the real baddies in this tale, not poor ghostly Chitrasen. Like Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters they take every opportunity to harass and punish Sita, casting her actions in the worst possible light. The word ‘slut’ featured often in the subtitles. Adding to Sita’s woes, Ram goes away on work (after promising a doctor not to leave her alone ever) and the Thakurin sacks all the domestic staff putting Sita to work running the house.

Shashikala is great as Chanchal. She seems to relish her mean character, and her mockery of husband Girdhar (Mehmood) is cruel but funny. All the love (or the pheromones) in the air seems to have quite an effect on Chanchal. She seems destined for dissatisfaction as Girdhar is not quite the soul of passionate romance. Mehmood is both useless and pivotal to the drama. His ‘comedy’ is not even slightly amusing, but the hen-pecked loser of a husband is the one who finally takes action. I like Mehmood in the right doses, but this is not him at his best. Lalita Pawar’s character is more obsessed with izzat than about just tormenting her daughter in law but she teams up beautifully with Shashikala to be really horrid. And they are so mean – they even take all of Sita’s lovely clothes!

Although both Ram and her father profess to love Sita very much, neither of them seems to trust her at all. They easily believe the worst, or refuse to see the evidence in front of them. Neither man seems to place as much importance on her health and well-being as they do on her honour and how it reflects on them. Mr Raichand (Balraj Sahni) eventually makes an attempt to help his daughter but Sita by name Sita by nature; she refuses to fail her ‘test’ by leaving.

Sita is not a doormat though. She is strong although, in my opinion, misguided. She could go back to her father, but lots of dialogue about izzat and a weepy pre-wedding song seems to preclude that. She tries to mend her relationship with Ram, and asserts her rights as his wife, but he doesn’t support her when it counts. The ‘haunting’ by her past life love is really well executed. It is a gradual process, wearing down her energy and resilience so that it is easier for her current day bullies to best her.  Her nocturnal wanderings place her life in danger more than once, and she is often tired and confused by day.  Waheeda possesses an elegant beauty that cannot be disguised by a dowdy old saree. She shows the exhaustion and suppressed emotions as Sita struggles to make sense of it all, as well as the happy, radiant young woman in love. I really like her performance even though Sita is one of the characters I might occasionally like to slap some sense in to.

Raaj Kumar is not an attractive man, but his performance as Chitrasen is quite compelling.  From his brief appearance in the opening of the film he somehow makes a strong enough impression that Chitrasen is very present in the rest of the story. The loss and confusion he feels as he lingers in the space between life and death is palpable. He tells Sita that he was killed for love, but couldn’t die because of that love. He reminds her over and over of who he was to her, and tries to make her recall their life and the happiness they had. On the downside, he is not a dancer. And there are not enough artfully placed pom-poms in the world to distract from that. Warning – the following clip contains flashes of nipple (his).

Ultimately Neel Kamal/Sita can’t continue being torn between two lives. Will the past be too strong for Sita? And if Chitrasen wins his Neel Kamal, what happens to Sita? And what will happen with Ram and Sita and their marriage?

Despite finding much of the story quite trying, I really do enjoy this film. I’m not sure how to articulate this other than to say it is an engrossing and atmospheric film with the supernatural and reincarnation aspects flavouring the everyday drama. The sets are stunning, with ornate design and statuary, very nice chandeliers and excellent moody lighting. My DVD looks terrible in screencaps or I would inflict many many more interior design details on you. Waheeda’s performance is lovely, her costumes are beautiful and suit her character. The music by Ravi builds a mood of love and regret and Mohd Rafi is just perfect as the voice of loss and sorrow. It’s a pleasure to watch, even though I occasionally want to slap a few people rather hard.

I do have to make some small deductions for Ram being so annoying, the poor mental health practices, too much teary self sacrifice, and some witless comedy.  3 ½ stars!

Heather says: I was a little disappointed by this film. The opening credits led me to expect something a little more eerie and the lack of any spooky ghosts or macabre happenings was a bit of a letdown. Then the movie skipped forwards in time and any hopes of suspense were totally lost when no-one seemed to really care why Sita was sleepwalking or where she was trying to go. Since I also knew why she hearing a haunting melody and wandering around there was no suspense in these nightly outings either. I really got very little sense of atmosphere from the film apart from in the first rendition of the beautiful tujko pukare mera pyar song. To compensate for the rather pedestrian story though there were some wonderful performances. Manoj Kumar was very appealing as Prem even if his character did seem to be a bit of an idiot at times. Waheeda was beautiful and periodically did manage to get across the confusion and mental disruption than Sita was experiencing. However, like Temple I was frustrated by her continual acceptance of the abuse from her mother-in-law and sister-in-law without even attempting to either explain her problem or object to their treatment of her. It made her character a bit of a wet blanket which I don’t think was the intent. I also found that the story veered off into overly dramatic scenes and declarations just when it would have been more effective to cut the melodrama and concentrate on the more simple interactions between Prem and Sita. The worst issue though was the constant interruption of the main story by the characters of Mehmood and his wife. Although I love Mehmood, and some of his scenes with the excellent Shashikala were genuinely funny, these breaks in the main story totally disrupted the flow of the film for me.

I loved the opening scenes though and Raaj Kumar was fantastic as Chitrasen. He had so much charisma and it was a shame that there was little interaction between him and Waheeda until near the end, as they did some have convincing chemistry together. I was a little surprised at how attractive he was here actually as I can’t think of another film I’ve seen where he had the same appeal. But I am now looking for more!

The best part about this film was undoubtedly the music. The melodies are beautiful and both Mohammad Rafi and Asha Bhosle are at their wonderful best in the duets. Although it’s not a film I would particularly watch again, except for those opening scenes with Raaj Kumar, I love the music and keep playing the songs. 3 ½ stars (which is mostly for the music and a half star extra for Raaj).

Naag Panchami (1972)

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Snakes Galore!

Perhaps as an omen of the awesomeness which is to come, the film opens with some excellent snake animations which include a very snakey title. Love it!This film is a feast for costumes lovers – every outfit seems to have extra glitz, glamour and shine with some really amazing fabrics and accoutrements. Just look at these bodice designs – very apt for the snake goddess and her poisonous serpent sidekick:


And just for some variation, later on Goddess Mansa decides to try out a fish theme with a wonderful headdress.But there are also plenty of real snakes throughout – not just on the costumes – although the film seems to use a combination of some really quite bad model snakes interspersed with the real thing. These are some of the real ones.

Naag Panchami starts with the rather petulant Snake Goddess Mansa having a bad day. It’s her birthday but she is restless and irritated by her followers in Naglok. Fortuitously Nagraj turns up and she manages to cajole him into revealing the name of her father, who is none other than Lord Shiva. Mansa is thrilled by this news and immediately goes to see her father who takes her to meet her mother and siblings in Khailash. Once there she discovers the existence of ‘the rest of the world’, and decides she wants to be worshiped just like Shiva and the other Gods. To achieve her aim she decides to make Lord Shiva’s chief devotee Chandrakhar her worshiper too, and to that end she appears to him on board his ship and demands his instant worship. But the successful merchant is unimpressed by Mansa and reviles her for her arrogance and presumption.

Various ploys by Mansa to force his worship fail to work and finally she kills all six of Chandrakhar’s sons. Mansa seems to work on the theory that the more insane her actions, the more likely it is that Chandrakhar will devote himself to her, which of course is guaranteed to have the opposite effect entirely. Lord Shiva very wisely declines to get involved so the scene is set to allow Mansa to do her worst.

As part of her long term plan she then approaches Chandrakers wife Alta and gifts her with another son – not really a lot of consolation for the lost of the last six, but then that’s not her ultimate plan. Rivers flow, birds fly and suns set as he grows up incredibly fast to be the handsome and dashing Lakshmindra. Lakshminda crosses paths with the equally daring and beautiful Behula when she is out hunting. Naturally the two fall in love and in next to no time determine to marry.

Meanwhile, Mansa’s chief handmaiden Maithreyi has also married and as husband and wife are cavorting in the forest, Lakshmindra inadvertently runs over her husband in his chariot, killing him instantly.

Unaware of this fresh disaster Lakshmindra is now under threat of death from both Mansa and the vengeful Maithreyi – a situation with plenty of snakey potential. It all becomes very Sleeping Beauty-ish as Mansa turns up to the engagement and threatens Lakshmindra with death on his wedding night. Queue evil laugh Mwah ha ha ha! Even Maithreyi is starting to look a bit worried! To protect his son, Chandraker orders a house to be built of iron to ensure that nothing will be able to enter and kill his son. Now I would have thought that an iron house would be quite impractical , hot in summer and hard to keep warm in winter, and not necessarily the only way to keep snakes at bay. Nevertheless, the newlyweds end up in a supposedly impregnable house on their wedding night. Except of course it isn’t. Maithreyi turns up to seek her revenge, but Behula is resolved to save her husband and manages to convince Maithreyi not to kill Lakshminda.

Sadly though, after Maithreyi leaves, neither Behula nor Lakshmindra think to bung up the hole in the wall and Mansa sends another snake which does manage to complete the job. Not one to be easily defeated, Behula resolves to carry her husband’s corpse on a pilgrimage around various temples in order to revive him. While on her quest, Mansa assails Behula with many really bad special effects including a huge crocodile and lightning induced blindness just to name a few.

We also get to see that not all snakes are bad, or at least not all the time, as Maithreyi turns up to help Behula in her snake form, towing the body to safety and waking Behula up with a nicely placed spray of water. I really do think all of this would have been much easier to accomplish as a human, but probably nowhere near as much fun to watch.

I really enjoyed this film. The costumes are wonderfully sumptious and there is just oh so much evil that Mansa manages to accomplish. The songs are fantastic and with playback singers Asha Bhosle, Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar and music by Ravi it all sounds beautiful. There is even a great snake dance by Maithreyi as Mansa looks on in her fab fish ensemble – already mentioned by jenni, but I think it deserves to be seen again.

The snakes here do conform pretty much to the standard in the Filmi Snake Spotters Field Guide. There is the less is more approach to clothing, plenty of embellishments and headdresses, great eyes and plenty of snake inspired architecture to pose with. Mansa also has the ability to conjure snakes whenever she is feeling annoyed with someone and flings them around with gay abandon. She becomes more and more maniacal and Shashikala is wonderfully crazy, changing from self-indulgent and immature one minute to totally malevolent and insane in the next.  Her eyes get wider and wider and she is definitely a master of ’the look’. She even talks to herself.

Maithreyi (Jayshree T.) is much less vengeful despite losing her husband, and a much nicer person snake all round. Hers becomes the voice of reason which Mansa of course totally ignores.

Jayshree Gadkar is lovely as Behula. She invests her with grace and determination and plays the devoted wife perfectly. Out of her lavish costumes as the princess she looks beautiful in her plain sari when she is making the pilgrimages around the various temples. The other actors are all fine but are mainly just there as targets for Mansa. Prithviraj Kapoor is suitably imposing as the rich merchant, and Ashish Kumar does a good job as Lakshmendra. Satyendra Kapoor has a small role as Lakshmendra’s friend Vishwavardhan and makes the most of it.

The end involves various Gods and Shiva dancing to shake the world – yet more excellent costumes and ‘bad enough to be really good’ special effects. This is so much more than just another snake movie and I’m rather surprised that it doesn’t seem to have the recognition I think it deserves – if only from aficionados of shiny fabric and bejewelled headdresses. A great film for Nag Panchami Film Fessstival  I love it! 4 stars.