Khamoshi

1969 127’ b&w Hindi d Asit Sen pc Geetanjali Pics st Ashutosh Mukherjee dial/lyr Gulzar c Kamal Bose m Hemanta Mukherjee lp Rajesh Khanna, Waheeda Rehman, Dharmendra, Nasir Hussain, Lalita Pawar, Snehalata, Iftikhar

The first of Sen’s tragic melodramas with Hindi star Khanna (followed by Safar, 1970). The nurse Radha (Rehman) has to pretend to fall in love with her male patients, as part of the therapy in a mental asylum. The first time she does this, she actually falls in love, and is devastated when her cured patient (Dharmendra) merely thanks her and leaves to marry his fiancee. When it threatens to happen once again, with a few variations, with her second patient (Khanna), the nurse goes insane. Hindi remake of Sen’s classic Deep Jweley Jai (1959), rescued like its predecessor mainly by soft-focus b&w photography and classic songs like composer Mukherjee’s Tum pukar lo, tumhara intezar hai and Woh shyam kuch ajeeb thi (sung by Kishore Kumar).

Film