Amar

1954 149’ b&w Hindi d/p Mehboob Khan pc Mehboob Prod. st/co-sc S. Ali Raza co-st Mehrish, S.K. Kalla, B.S. Ramaiah co-sc Agha Jani Kashmiri lyr Shakeel Badayuni c Faredoon Irani m Naushad lp Madhubala, Dilip Kumar, Nimmi, Jayant, Ulhas, Mukri, Amar, Husnbano, Murad, Shakeel Nomani

Apparently Mehboob’s favourite film in which the cowardly hero Amar (D. Kumar), a lawyer, seduces a milkmaid, Sonia (Nimmi), while engaged to Anju (Madhubala). The hero watches silently as Sonia suffers the consequences of their passionate moment while the villain, Sankat (Jayant), offers her help and comfort. Sankat causes havoc in the village before getting killed in a fight with Amar. Sonia is arrested and defended in court by Amar who eventually marries her. The film continues Mehboob’s fascination with a kind of cultural primitivism (cf. Roti, 1942) shown here in the harvest number and in the temple sequences with both Anju and Sonia. The melodramatic subject combined with some unusually surreal imagery made the film an oddity in the genre. It was not a commercial success, possibly because the audience refused to accept Dilip Kumar in a negative role.

Film