Daag

1952 149’ b&w Hindi d/co-s Amiya Chakravarty pc Mars & Movies co-s Rajendra Shankar dial Rajinder Singh Bedi lyr Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri c V. Babasaheb m Shankar-Jaikishen lp Dilip Kumar, Nimmi, Usha Kiron, Lalita Pawar, Kanhaiyalal, Jawahar Kaul, Leela Mishra, Chandrasekhar, Krishnakant

In Chakravarty’s melodrama about class division and the evils of alcohol, Shankar (Kumar), a nice village youth who makes clay statues, is parted from his sweetheart Parvati (Nimmi) when her family inherits a fortune. In addition, he is an alcoholic who devotes all his wealth, property and even the money for his ailing mother’s medicines on drink. The maudlin plot comes alive only through Nimmi’s uncanny knack for larger-than-life gestures. The film’s remembered song is Talat Mahmood’s Ai mere dil kahin aur chal.

Film