Saturday, September 11, 2021

And Geneva. Afternoons in Lebanon and Canada.

If you choose to watch An Evening in Paris (1967), you will absolutely get to see at least one evening in Paris, along with other times of day spent in a variety of other locations.  It's a shining example of truth in cinematic advertising.



Wealthy heiress Deepa (Sharmila Tagore) has grown tired of Indian men who are only after her money, so she decides to try Paris.  Her assistant Honey (Sarita) suggests that she let love find her, since that is the magic of Paris, so Deepa wanders the streets of the city, disguised (badly) as her own servant.  She immediately attracts the attention of Sam (Shammi Kapoor).  Sam is very, very persistent, and because this is 1967, we're supposed to find that charming rather than dangerous.


Deepa has also attracted the attention of Shekhar (Pran), the son of her father's business manager (David Abraham.)  Shekhar has extensive gambling debts, and he's sure that a quick marriage to Deepa will solve all his problems.  And Honey attracts the attention of Makhan Singh (Rajendra Nath), Deepa's chauffeur.


During an interlude in Switzerland, Deepa tries to scare Sam off by flirting with Shekhar, who starts plying her with liquor.  Sam intervenes before anything can happen, and Deepa starts liking him a little better, but it still takes a water-skiing musical number in Lebanon before they become a proper couple and return to Paris to enjoy an evening.


  

Shekhar, meanwhile, has an uncomfortable reunion with Jack (K. N. Singh), the gangster he owes all that money to.  Shekhar explains the "marry Deepa" plan to pay off his debt, but Jack comes up with the much simpler "kidnap Deepa and make her rich father give me money directly" plan.

And because the plot isn't complicated enough yet, Shekhar convinces Suzy (also Sharmila Tagore), a dancer at jack's nightclub who happens to look exactly like Deepa, to take her place and marry him after Deepa is kidnapped, so that they can split the money.  (There are some flaws in this plan.)  Naturally Suzy falls in love with Sam.  And just as naturally the scam is quickly uncovered, leading to a climactic confrontation at Jack's secret base, which is underneath Niagara falls because shut up, that's why.


Like a lot of older Bollywood, An Evening in Paris shifts genre over the course of the movie.  It starts as a comedic romp, careening from comic sketch to comic sketch, with Sam shifting through a variety of silly disguises.  Once the leads become established as a proper couple, the movie shifts to straight up romance, followed by a smidgen of family drama and a larger dollop of action movie.  I don't think the film entirely succeeds at any of the genres.  The early comic plotline is just disjointed, while Kapoor is just not very convincing as an action hero.  And then there's whatever this is:


 I'm not sure that matters, though, because the real genre of the movie is "Shammi Kapoor and Sharmila Tagore wear interesting clothes and wander around various foreign locations, and Sharmila is very pretty."  I don't think I've seen an onscreen couple be so aggressively In Paris since Tom Baker and Lalla Ward.  You don't just get the Eiffel Tower in the background; there are so many lingering shots of our leads visiting all sorts of famous landmarks that the film can double as an ad for a travel agency.  And, as always, Sharmila is very pretty indeed.


No comments:

Post a Comment