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Guddi
aka Darling Child 1971 121’ col Hindi d/co-sc Hrishikesh Mukherjee pc Rupam Chitra p N.C. Sippy st/lyr/co-sc/dial Gulzar co-sc D.N. Mukherjee c Jaywant Pathare m Vasant Desai lp Jaya Bhaduri, Dharmendra, Sumita Sanyal, Vijay Sharma, Utpal Dutt, Samit, A.K. Hangal, Keshto Mukherjee
Teenaged and miniskirted Kusum aka Guddi (Bhaduri) has such a crush on Hindi film star Dharmendra that her family arranges for her to meet the star. A rare Hindi film about film- making, Guddi appears to want to deconstruct the myth of the star and to show not only how films are made but the poverty, the exploitation and the transitory nature of stardom. What it does do, however, is produce a small parade of stars playing ‘themselves’. The film’s tentative critique of stardom involves drawing a comparison between contemporary screen idols and gods: Kusum adores Dharmendra like the legendary saint poet Meerabai was unconditionally devoted to Krishna. The film made Bhaduri into a major 70s star as the bouncy teenager with an ear-splitting laugh, repeated e.g. in Jawani Diwani (1972).