Raj Kapoor and Suraiya in Dastan (1950)

Musical Pictures Limited’s presentation Dastan directed by Mr. A.R. Kardar from a story by Mr. Bannerji with music by Mr. Naushad, is a veritable dynamo of pulse pounding, heart throbbing drama. In comparison to the weak, feeble and semi-tottering results of cramped intelligence and doddering minds, as evident in some recent pictures Mr. Kardar’s Dastan is a dynamic picture, possessing all the power, the force of the roaring deep and the magnificent might of a colossus. From the bubbling, hilarious gaiety, which is sprinkled generously in the first half of the picture, the story swings on to swift action spurred on to gain momentum with every passing footage.

Dastan is obviously inspired from Samuel Goldwyn’s story of love and suffering, Enchantment. The broken dreams of love’s awakening, the scattered pieces of young hopes, the shattered fragments of faith sublime is the sizzling current charged through every breath-taking moment of this well produced picture. Brilliant direction, superb performance and excellent production values all fused together succeed in creating a dramatic thunderbolt.

Though the characters and earlier sequences are taken freely from Enchantment yet Mr. Kardar has, to a great extent moulded the delicate texture of the original material to fit into the Indian background. The master’s touch is most prominently conspicuous as every unfolding scene reveals an enchanting panorama of charm and delight – a fleeting landscape of human passion bared to the naked eye by the sheer brilliance of the histrionic talents of the artistes and Mr. Kardar’s vigorous and virile direction.

Seeing Dastan after an unending stretch of dry, insipid pictures is like coming across a merry, sparkling fountain after experiencing the torrid heat and maddening glare of a blazing sun. To a parched, weary traveler in the arid desert an oasis is God-send, to the critics and the public, who have day in and day out seen some decayed stuff of our industry, Dastan is a healthy, soothing remedy to the highly strung nerves.

There are of course a few niches in this well constructed story – a few ungainly nooks and corners that mar but superficially, the perfect symmetry and faultless proportions of an artistic piece of creation. But fortunately they are so tiny and insignificant that they are hidden away in the surrounding brilliance. The sudden departure of the older brother played by Mr. Al Nasir from the house when a word of explanation could have straightened out the misunderstanding was too flimsy to be convincing.

Even his own explanation for this act offered to his brother later on in the hospital was utterly lame and ambiguous. The accident of Raj, the younger brother, was yet another sequence which appeared like an artificial bead in a string of faultless purity. But as I have said before, they must not be weighed against the innumerable commendable qualities of the picture.

The unchecked fury of drama really springs from the character of the aristocratic, haughty sister, whose iron will, ruthless mind and cruel determination wreck other happy lives, twist their joys, blight their hopes and shatter their fine and cherished world. Veena puts over the role of this proud, defiant woman with an ability which really astounded me. She brings into life the spirit of grim, sordid, obstinacy verging to hate, which cleaves and slashes its way with relentless persistence, the unbending hauteur, the scorn and the flash of anger and contempt. In Dastan Veena’s was the best work of the picture and the greatest role of her career.

Raj Kapoor, as the younger brother, is presented to us in a new type of role altogether. Hitherto we had known him as a sorrow stricken, sobbing, frustrated lover; here he is presented to us, a sparkling, prank playing carefree lad. As a comedian and mimic, Raj raises himself to the caliber of Danny Kaye.

As for Suresh and Al Nasir, our milk sop heroes, the word is ham.

Suraiya as the unfortunate orphan and a victim of a cruel fate looks extremely coy, sweet and lovable.

Naushad’s orchestral compositions were extremely delightful. A couple of songs were well tuned though the rest were odd mixtures of Samba, Rhumbas, and Fox Trots. To a great extent the credit also goes to Dwarkadas Divecha for wonderful photography.

Dastan is definitely an unmissable picture and must see on the list (Source – The Motion Picture Magazine – December 1950)

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1950, Genre – Drama, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Musical Pictures, Director –A. R. Kardar, Music Director – Naushad, Cast - Pratima Devi, Raj Kapoor, Al Nasir, Murad, Suraiya, Veena, Suresh, Shakila

Meena Kumari in Pakeezah (1971)

While courtesans feature in many films, mostly in minor roles, the two great films in which they are the main heroines are set in the nineteenth- century Avadhi court of Lucknow (Umrao Jaan), and in Delhi and the Punjabi princely state of Patiala in the early years of the twentieth century (Pakeezah), as these were two of the great centres of courtly Muslim culture of their time.

Shahabuddin (Ashok Kumar) is in love with a courtesan, Nargis (Meena Kumari), but his family will not let him marry her. Nargis dies in a graveyard where she has given birth to a daughter, who is brought up by her sister, also a courtesan. Sahibjaan (Meena Kumari) becomes a courtesan too and she also falls in love with a forestry officer, Salim (Raaj Kumar), whom she does not know is her nephew from father’s side. They have some romantic moments together and want to get married but his family insists that he marries someone else. Sahibjaan is invited to dance at their wedding …

Pakeezah has very stylised aesthetics, with its beautiful actress, music and dance, the elaboration of scenery and in particular of clothing, tied to a certain nostalgia arising from the decline and disappearance of courtesan culture. The courtesan is a quintessentially romantic figure: a beautiful but tragic woman, who pours out her grief for the love she is denied in tears, poetry and dance. Yet although denied marriage and respectability, she is also a source of power. She ignores constraints on women’s chastity and economic rights, succeeding through a combination of talent and education. Meena Kumari had a strong star persona, as a tragedian who was exploited by her parents and her lovers, despite her beauty and her talent as an actress and a poet. She had an alcohol problem, which killed her less than two months after Pakeezah’s release, when she was only forty. During the fourteen years it had taken to make this film, she and the film’s director, producer and writer, Amrohi, were divorced.

All this makes Pakeezah something of a camp classic. It has strong elements of foot fetishism: the lover leaves a note tucked into Pakeezah’s toes on the train/(‘Aap ke paon bahut haseen hain. lnhen zameen par mat utariyega, maile ho jaayenge’/Your feet are very beautiful. Do not let them touch the ground, they will get dirty!’) and dancing at her lover’s wedding, she lacerates her feet on broken glass to leave symbolically resonant bloody marks on the white sheet of her performance. Although her sexual allure is constantly on display in the film, she calls her body a zinda lash (‘living corpse’) and writes romantic ghazals about love, maintaining the hope that she might marry, although her career would make this impossible.

The extended filming schedule meant that several of the crew and cast were rather old by the time it was finished. It was shot by Josef Wirsching, who had been a cameraman at Bombay Talkies in the 1930s. The songs from the film were beautiful, tragic compositions by Ghulam Mohammed, who wrote them in the late 1950s and died before the film’s release, and they are often played even today, as well as commonly sampled in modern mixes such as ‘Chalte chalte’, ‘Inhi logon ne’, ‘Thaade rahiyo’, ‘Chalo dildaar chalo’, ‘Mausam hai aashiqaana’, and many more. Naushad stepped in to compose the background music for the film.

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1971, Genre – Drama, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Kamal Amrohi, Director – Kamal Amrohi, Music Director – Ghulam Mohammed, Naushad, Cast - Ashok Kumar, Meena Kumari, Raj Kumar, Veena, Sapru, Kamal Kapoor, Vijayalaxmi, Jagdish Kanwal, Nadira, Meenakshi, Zebunissa, Pratima Devi