| | 4 | 1951 144’ b&w Hindi d/s Zia Sarhadi pc Ranjit lyr Vishwamitter Adil, Uddhav Kumar c H.S. Kwatra m Roshan lp Nutan, Shyama, Balraj Sahni, Durga Khote, Anwar Hussain, Sajjan, Kanhaiyalal, Manmohan Krishna, Durrani, Rashid Khan, Master Rattan, Cuckoo |
| | 7 | Sarhadi’s realist film forms a trilogy with Footpath (1953) and Awaaz (1956). It tells of the bank clerk Lala Haricharan Das, who supports a wife and three children on a meagre salary. His son Raj (Sahni) grows up disaffected; daughter Paro gets tuberculosis leading to big medical bills, and youngest son Chhotu drops out of school with no money to pay for his education. Raj steals money belonging to his father’s employer and causes the father’s imprisonment. Raj now has to look after the family, suffers from overwork and heart disease and ignores his girlfriend Shefali. Paro, kept apart from her boyfriend Anand by her disease, writes the play Humlog (We, The People). Later, Raj’s friend Kundan (Hussain) is killed and Raj is arrested for the murder and dies of a heart attack in court. Paro and Anand, at the end, stage Paro’s play as a self-reflexive comment on the film itself. |