Ittefaq (The Coincidence, 1969)

by with No Comment Ittefaq

Usually, I write movie reviews immediately after I have watched them. But after watching Ittefaq, I was so dazed that I could not write the review right away. Somehow, crawling up to my desktop again, I managed. Here is what I feel, right from my heart.

Plot: A painter has a tiff with his wife and soon finds her dead. Everyone pins the murder on him and he is convicted. Due to his mental condition, which has devolved by now, he’s put in an asylum. He escapes from there and seeks shelter in the house of a woman, where he soon discovers another murder has taken place.

Director: Yash Chopra

Language: Hindi

Cast: Rajesh Khanna, Nanda, Bindu, Sujit Kumar

#10Things I Liked and Disliked about Ittefaq

What I Liked

  1. Good thriller. Things keep happening and there were no boring moments or jarring songs that break the screenplay.
  2. Good solitary moments. A Rajesh Khanna-Nanda moment midway into the movie where both of them forget their worries and laugh was a very good sequence. It took me back to those times when romance was pure.
  3. Ahead of its time. This was quite a breakthrough movie of its times, even far ahead of its times. A tightly-designed thriller that could be remade today and will still find appeal.

What I Disliked

  1. Rajesh Khanna! Seriously, was this man a superstar? At least not for this movie. Do not get ready to fly at my throat now people! Just watch his hamming in this movie and decide. As far as I am concerned, I am not going to watch another movie with Rajesh Khanna in it any time soon. However, I do concede that this was one of his early movies.
  2. More about Rajesh Khanna. In this movie, he is Rajesh Khanna the superstar. He is not his character Dilip Roy, the escaped convict. Actors of those days and a few contemporary ones too suffered from one big handicap—they could keep their own personalities from seeping into their characters. This is actually one of the biggest failings of an actor. So, when you are watching this movie, you cannot escape the fact that you are watching Rajesh Khanna. The character Dilip Roy does not matter at all.
  3. Final justifications. Why do movies where the superstars are criminals all have to have final justifications? In this movie, even if it is proved that he didn’t kill his wife at the end, the fact remains that he slapped her on many other occasions and that is criminal in itself. Well, he even slaps the woman who gives him shelter, repeatedly. It gives you a very sick feeling in your stomach when you see “superstars” behave in this fashion.
  4. Red pants. Rajesh Khanna gets a whole wardrobe of choice to choose from, and what he chooses? A black T-shirt and red pants. And you have to suffer that throughout the movie.
  5. The hammiest chase scene ever. The convict runs from the police, and the police who chase him are less than six feet away, and they have guns.
  6. Logic leaps to the point of insanity. A mentally deranged person in a mental asylum is allowed to keep a cigarette lighter of all things.
  7. The copouts. Well, the movie is titled Coincidence, so you do expect coincidence to be the core of it all. But, how much coincidence is plausible? As the movie goes towards its end, one coincidence is piled on top of the other till it becomes an almost insufferable pile. Also, (spoiler alert) this has the worst copout of them all — an investigating cop being the murderer.

In conclusion: If you are a Rajesh Khanna fan, watch this movie. He is at his hammy best. If you are on the fence about him, then this is not a good movie to start with. And if you dislike him already, just move on to something else. You don’t need the added aggravation.

36 Ghante (36 Hours, 1974)

by with No Comment 36 Ghante

This movie is a remake of an English movie, that of The Desperate Hours (1955, the one starring Humprey Bogart), and it seems to be a desperate attempt to use a classic Hollywood movie to make some money. The debate of western movies being “adapted” into an Indian milieu has been done to death, and I am not going to speak about that here. What I’ll speak about is the movie as a standalone.

Plot: Three dangerous convicts escape from prison and take refuge in the house of a newspaper editor. They have to hold out there until they are contacted by a female friend who has their loot. The editor’s family is unwillingly sucked into the ordeal.

Director: Raj Tilak

Language: Hindi

Cast: Raj Kumar, Sunil Dutt, Mala Sinha, Ranjeet, Danny Denzongpa, Parveen Babi, Vijay Arora

#10Things I Liked and Disliked about 36 Ghante

What I Liked

  1. The concept. While it was quite riveting, the credit goes to Desperate Hours.
  2. The editing. The movie fit nicely into the groove of a thriller. There was always something happening which kept up the tempo. It was also under 2 hours, which is a good thing.
  3. Made sense. There were no major plot holes or logic leaps (except one, see below). Though copying without acknowledgement is criminal, I must say that the adaptation of the movie (Indianization) was done nicely.
  4. Parveen Babi. For whatever few scenes she was in, she lit up the screen. Not because of her acting, but just because, well, Parveen Babi is Parveen Babi!

What I Disliked

  1. The stereotyping. Why does every happy family in those times had to be introduced with a religious song sung by the man in pristine white clothes and the woman in a traditional saree? Why are clothes used to establish character for women — bikini for the bad woman and the longest saree for the good woman?
  2. The hackneyed laugh given to Danny Denzongpa’s character. Singularly, this was his worst ever role, but I haven’t seen them all. It becomes grating ten minutes into the movie.
  3. The most precocious child ever. The kind who is almost as tall as his father but will bring the house down because his toy is broken.
  4. The songs. Had to fast-forward through all of them after sampling them for the first ten seconds.
  5. The biggest logic leap ever. If a gang of criminals are using your home as a hideout and holding you captive, why would they allow you to roam scot-free all over town, especially when one of you is a newspaper editor who has good relations with the police?
  6. The dialogs. Since we have Raj Kumar and Sunil Dutt, brace yourself for the most chest-thumping lines ever, many of them cringe-worthy.

In conclusion: Yet, it was good as a one-time watch. No classic, that’s for sure.

Gehrayee (The Depth – 1980)

by with No Comment Gehrayee

Gehrayee, a little-known movie of Indian cinema, is probably also the best horror movie ever made within the country. This movie was made when the 70s turned into the 80s, but even today it can scare the living daylights out of people. The movie is basically about possession, and there are no special effects at all, no monsters, zombies, vampires, but it is only by the strength of acting of the possessed actor that the movie transcends all borders of horror cinema.

Plot: A man sells his land in his native village, inciting the ire of the local villagers living on it. When he is back home in the city, his daughter starts behaving in a bizarre manner.

Language: Hindi

Directors: Vikas Desai and Aruna Raje (as Arunavikas)

#10Things I Liked and Disliked about Gehrayee

What I Liked

  1. The acting of all characters. When you have names like Dr. Sreeram Lagoo, Anant Nag, Amrish Puri, Sudhir Dalvi, and Padmini Kolhapure, very little can go wrong. A notable mention must be made here of Padmini Kolhapure. She plays the possessed girl, and she was presumably only 12 when she acted this role. But what a performance it is! You need to watch it to believe it. Mention should also be made of Rita Bhaduri in the final scene.
  2. The story. Everything is connected and moves in a believable manner. You cannot predict the next scene as you can do in most other horror movies.
  3. The avoidance of all clichés. There are no lone women (or men) walking in a big house in the dark. There are no evil monsters with bad makeup. There is no cleavage or dirty-dancing as was quite common in the Ramsay horror movies of that time. There is also no comedy buffoonery as was typified by Mehmood, Jagdeep, Rajendra Nath, etc. in that era. Thank the Lord for small mercies!
  4. The cameo by Amrish Puri. Amrish Puri was just starting out when he made the movie. He is quite young, but you can see the same intensity in his eyes and the tenor in his voice that made him so popular in later years as Mogambo and Balwant Rai and General Dong. Watching him is a treat; you cannot help getting mesmerized by those eyes.
  5. The setting. The whole movie plays out in Karnataka, majorly in Bengaluru. The family is a middleclass family, and their depiction is spot-on. This itself adds a different aura to the film. The rich sarees worn by the mother and the costumes of the people, the traditional marks on their bodies, the accented Hindi, the subtle references to foods like medu-vada, every small detail adds to the aura of this excellent movie. Even the village in the start and end of the movie makes you feel you are actually there.
  6. The use of Indian beliefs and superstitions. There’s a blessed lemon, a voodoo-type doll, a cobra. All these things make the story so Indian, and the best thing is that they are done in a very authentic manner. The actors really seem to believe in whatever they are doing with these things.
  7. The music. The background score (Enoch Daniels) sets the exact mood for each scene.
  8. The climax. Wow, what a climax! What a twist! No one would see that coming. Even after the core plot of the movie is taken care of—that of the possession—the movie goes on ahead. For a moment, you don’t know why, and then you get sucked into one of the spookiest scenes in Hindi cinema. Don’t watch this alone at night.

What I Disliked

  1. The similarities to Exorcist. This movie is definitely not a copy of it, but you can see a few references here and there. But I may be too harsh in saying that; every movie about possession is compared to Exorcist anyway, the grand-daddy of them all. Personally, I felt the movie to be superlative.
  2. The length. The movie could have been sharper by about 10 minutes. Everything is explained in languorous detail. Though this is one of the strengths of the movie, it also becomes an impediment when you are waiting for things to happen. Also, the lone song sung by Kishore Kumar does not serve any purpose.

In conclusion: All fans of true-blue horror must get their hands on this movie right away and watch it. It’s one of Indian cinema’s gems that needs to be preserved.