Rajkumar

1964 178’ col Hindi d K. Shankar pc Saravana Films st Manmohan Desai sc Ramanand Sagar lyr Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri c G. Singh m Shankar- Jaikishen lp Shammi Kapoor, Sadhana, Prithviraj Kapoor, Om Prakash, Pran, Master Babloo, Ravi Shivdasani, Achala Sachdev, Rajendranath, Manorama

Made in Madras and written by the star combination of Manmohan Desai and Ramanand Sagar, this is one of India’s few successful parodies. It satirises the historical/ costumed adventure fantasy, practised in Madras by e.g. the influential fictions generated at Modern Theatres. The king (P. Kapoor) awaits the return of the prince (S. Kapoor) in a direct quote from his role at the beginning of the classic Mughal-e-Azam (1960), but on his arrival from Paris in a two-seater plane the son greets the welcoming committee sent by his father with ‘bonsoir’. A major palace intrigue involves the king’s second wife (Manorama) and her brother (Pran) who plot to overthrow him. The prince tries to foil the villains by pretending to be eccentric. He also falls in love with a tribal princess (Sadhana) with a predilection for singing complicated love songs while standing e.g. at the edge of a giant waterfall. Hit numbers include Aaja aai bahar dil hai bekaraar (sung by Lata Mangeshkar) and the title refrain Aage peeche zara hoshiyar yahan ke hum hain Rajkumar (sung by Mohammed Rafi).

Film