My foot!

The Bollywood movies of the Nineties could get pretty wild, but Basant (1960) is a product of a different time, an age in which Shammi Kapoor and company could make sweet, uncomplicated romances that stick to a single genre throughout.  Nah, I'm just kidding - it gets pretty wild before the end.

Meenakshi (Nutan) is in love, but her stuffy, rich father Rai Bahadur (Murad) just doesn't understand, and he takes her to Calcutta by train in order to get her away from her paramour.  They argue, which mostly consists of them saying "My foot!" to each other at every conceivable opportunity.  During the night, Meenakshi sneaks away, hoping to catch a train to Bombay so that she can finally be with the man she loves, Rajesh (Pran).

If you know your Bollywood supporting actors, you know what a bad idea this is.  Pran had a long and varied career in which he played many different roles, but back in 1960 he was pretty firmly typecast as "Apparently rich jerk who needs money and has a thin mustache that makes him look like Evil Walt Disney."  Rai Bahadur is absolutely right to be concerned, though dragging your daughter to Calcutta is perhaps not the best way to handle the situation.

Before Meenakshi can get another train, her suitcase is stolen by Billoo (Johnny Walker), a surprisingly persistent petty thief.  She chases him to the circus, where she recovers her bag, discovers that her father has all the local police out searching for her, and performs a quick dance number onstage with out of work writer turned circus performer Ashim (Shammi Kapoor) in order to escape.

When she gets back to the train station, it's crawling with police.  She takes a bus, and winds up getting robbed again by Billoo.  Then the bus is boarded by police, and she's saved by Ashim, who pretends to be her overly possessive husband until the policeman leaves out of embarrassment.

And then it's road trip time!  They're both on the way to Bombay, and Ashim keeps helping Meenakshi, in part because he's just a decent guy who can't stand to leave someone in trouble, and in part because he thinks he can get a good story out of the adventure.  There are mishaps, they are pursued by Billoo, who wants the substantial reward Rai Bahadur is offering, and there's a great deal of bickering and "My foot!"s, but they also get to know one another a bit more, and we learn that Meenakshi is not so much spoiled as incredibly sheltered; Rajesh is pretty much the first man she's met outside of her father's supervision, and she's really more interested in freedom than suave, sinister mustaches.

And speaking of suave, sinister mustaches, Rai Bahadur is so desperate to find his daughter that he contacts Rajesh and tells him that he'll agree to the marriage, as long as Meenakshi comes home safely.  This suits Rajesh nicely, and he makes plans for the wedding, though he doesn't put any effort into finding his fiance.

By this point, Meenakshi and Ashim have inevitably fallen in love, though Ashim hasn't quite figured that fact out, even after Meenakshi asks him to take her home, rather than keep going to Rajesh's place.  It's only when they reach her front gate that she manages to explain the situation to him, using small words and a power point presentation.  They are in love!  It all sounds like a very sincere take on an old-school screwball comedy.  Actually, it sounds like a very sincere take on a specific screwball comedy, It Happened One Night, mostly because that's where they lifted most of the plot from.  But this is Bollywood, and there are always other genres to explore.  Time for a twist.

Ashim suggests that the spend a month apart, without contacting one another, in order to make sure that it's really love and not just infatuation brought on by an adventure in close proximity.  He has a point, given how she started her relationship with Rajesh, so they go their separate ways, promising to meet up again in a month.  What could go wrong?

Plenty.  At Meenaskhi's birthday party, Rai Bahadur announces her engagement to Rajesh.  Ashim is there in disguise (naughty Ashim), and immediately jumps to all the wrong conclusions.  They fight, they make up, they resume their separation, and the genres start flying fast and furious.

It's an adventure movie, as Ashim accepts a job to take a valuable necklace to a village in rural Assam, only to be robbed and apparently killed by Rajesh's men.  It's a melodrama, as Meenakshi crashes her car while speeding to the planned meeting with Ashim, only to end up in a wheelchair, her father dead of shock, and forced to depend on Rajesh and his passive aggressive protestations of disinterested love.  Then it becomes a Western?  Sure, why not?   Strict genre boundaries are a prison, and movies want to be free.

When Basant is a screwball comedy, it's pretty adorable.  Of course, it's lifted pretty directly from It Happened One Night, but when you steal you should steal from the best.  Shammi and Nutan have a relaxed and easy chemistry, and their escapades are fun rather than stressful.  It gives them plenty of time for character development, and that character development carries over into the chaotic second act, while Billoo transforms from annoying comic nemesis to annoying but genuinely useful sidekick.  It's still a chaotic mess, but it's a chaotic mess with heart.

A Study in Black and White

 Byomkesh Bakshi is the best known detective hero from Bengali literature, and Satyajit Ray is a legendary director, considered by some to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.  So Chiriyakhana (1967), featuring Bakshi and directed by Ray, has to be good, right?

It starts with a song.  Wealthy businessman and retired judge Nishanath Sen (Sushil Majumber) overhears a melody that he remembers form a movie that he watched years ago.  He wants to know the name of the song, the movie it came from, and the actress and singer, and since Google hasn't been invented yet he turns to the famous detective Byomkesh Bakshi (Uttam Kumar).  Because the detective business has been slow, Bakshi and Ajit (Shailen Mukherjee) happily accept the job, and also accept Sen's invitation to visit his estate and meet the eccentrics and reformed criminals living there.

Bakshi visits a film expert and learns the details that Sen wanted.  Most importantly, he learns that the song was sung by the actress, Sunaina, who was accused of murdering the producer's son and vanished soon afterwards.  He visits Sen's estate disguised as a Japanese horticulturalist (for reasons) to report his findings, and learns Sen's true motive for contacting him: Sen suspects that Sunaina is living on his estate in disguise.  Byomkesh agrees to help.

That night, Sen calls Byomkesh to tell him that he;'s discovered something very important that he can't reveal over the phone, and Byomkesh should return to the estate as himself so he can tell him.  However, Sen is murdered by an unknown assailant before the end of the phone call.

The next day, the police call upon the famous detective Byomkesh Bakshi to help solve the murder of retired judge Nishanath Sen.  They don't know that Byomkesh knew Sen, let alone that he'd been to the estate before, so he has a little fun showing off his deductive skills by dramatically revealing things that he already knows, but soon he's hard at work trying to figure out which of the estate's residents is a killer, just in time for the second murder.

Some of the more recent Byomkesh Bakshi movies have embraced a mix of pulp and noir tropes, with Byomkesh engaging in daring chases and meeting sultry femmes fatale.  Not this time.  Byomkesh and Ajit drink coffee and discuss love and literature while sifting through clues.  It's as much Agatha Christie as it is Arthur Conan Doyle, though the movie does have some fun with the Holmes influences, as multiple characters point out that Byomkesh and his faithful biographer bear more than a passing resemblance to a certain famous detective duo.

The movie is smart, but maybe too slow and stylish; the opening scene, in which Byomkesh answers a wrong number while the camera pans around the room to showcase the objects he's picked up on his many adventures sets the pace, and it's not a terribly quick pace.  And I'm not sure the reveal of the killer's motives quite holds together.  While the movie might meander, though, it looks fantastic, and Uttam Kumar's performance was good enough to earn the first ever National Film Award for Best Actor.

"Sesame" was the name of the sled.

Ali Baba Aur 40 Chor (1980) is the Bollywood equivalent of those Russo-Finnish fantasy epics that occasionally pop up on Mystery Science Theater 3000.  And I mean that literally - Ali Baba is a Russian and Indian co-production based on a well-known story, but because this is Bollywood, everybody needs an extensive backstory before things can really get going.

We'll start with Fatima (Zeenat Aman).  Fatima and her merchant father (Madan Puri) are crossing the desert in a caravan when they are attacked by bandits commanded by Abu Hassan (Rolan Bykov).  The caravan guards defend themselves with gunpowder, and that gives Abu Hassan an idea.  He's a very successful bandit already, with an indeterminate number of thieves under his command, as well as a cool magic cave full of treasure, but he wants more, and gunpowder can help.  He captures Fatima and her father, forcing him to make more gunpowder and her to spy in town and perform the occasional dance number.  Fatima's father realizes that she is staying to protect him, so he takes his own life, leaving her to escape alone and plot her revenge.

Ali Baba (Dharmendra) is the son of another wealthy merchant, Yusuf (Zakir Mukhamedzhanov).  Yusuf has been away on a trading expedition for years, so long that Ali Baba can't even remember what he looks like.  Ali's brother Kasym (Yakub Akhmedov) manages the family business, while their mother (Sofiko Chiaureli) tries to keep them in line.  Yusuf is finally heading for home when his caravan is attacked by Abu Hassan (thanks to information provided by Fatima) and Yusuf is left for dead.  Fortunately, Yusuf is found by . . . well, the subtitles call him the emperor, so let's go with that.  

The emperor nurses Yusuf back to health, and sends a message to his family so that he can finally return home.  Ali sets out to collect him, but before he can get there the emperor is overthrown by the evil Shamsher (Prem Chopra), and Yusuf is forced to flee along with the princess Marjina (Hema Malini).  Ali Baba runs into the pair, and fails to recognize Yusuf, and . . . . well, it gets complicated.  They meet and separate and get captured and rescue each other in various combinations, but eventually Ali and Marjina are in love, father and son have realized their true relationship, and then Abu Hassan attacks.  Yusuf is seriously wounded, living just long enough for Ali to take him home, and Marjina is lost in the confusion.

Marjina isn't missing for long, but by the time Ali finds her, she's being sold into slavery, and he has to take a sizable loan from Kasym in order to buy her freedom.  Kasym's condition for the loan is that Ali agrees to give up his share of their father's estate, and Ali agrees without hesitation.  He leaves the family house, taking Marjina and his mother with him.  He needs money, so he finds work as a woodcutter.  Kasym, meanwhile, has teamed up with Fatima; she wants someone to help her get revenge on Abu Hassan, while he wants to find where Abu Hassan keeps his fabulous treasure.

And so, finally, Ali Baba is a poor but hard working woodcutter who stumbles across the fabulous cave of the Forty Plus Thieves (a lot of them die in various fights scenes, but they eventually get down to just forty).  Ali Baba steals some of the treasure and uses it to help the people around him, while his greedy brother Kasym learns the secret, tries to steal the treasure for himself, and meets with a grisly fate.  And when the leader of the Forty Thieves comes looking for him, Ali Baba is able to survive thanks to the help of the quick-witted Marjina, who was technically a slave for a brief period of time.  Not the most faithful retelling of the original story, but it hits all of the major points.

Despite the extensive backstory, Ali Baba Aur 40 Chor moves really quickly.  There's always something happening, and it's usually something interesting.  And the leads are engaging; Dharmendra has never been very good at "charming young scamp," but he quickly settles into "solid and implacable hero," which he is very good at.  And this is post-Seeta Aur Geeta Hema Malini, which means that while she doesn't get to beat up an entire police station this time, she does get to be an active protagonist rather than a damsel in distress for most of the movie, which is unusual for a Bollywood heroine of that era.  And Zeenat Aman's character has less agency overall, but somehow manages to be a woman in eighties Bollywood who has no romantic attachments at all.  It's an impressive achievement.

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.

That just raises further questions!

From the moment I first saw the amazing movie poster, I have dreamed of watching Rocket Tarzan (1963). For the longest time, that was easier said than done, but the current copyright holders have finally put a nearly complete version on Youtube, and my dream has been fulfilled. Well, kind of - the print is grainy and occasionally skips, the sound drops out completely from time to time, and most seriously, there are no subtitles. Ive managed to watch the occasional movie without benefit of subtitles in the past, but Rocket Tarzan is particularly tricky since there is so much apparently going on and I still have yet to find a single plot summary online.

Here's what I've been able to figure out. Tarzan lives deep in the jungles of India or possibly Africa; either way, sometimes he fights lions and sometimes he fights tigers. he's not alone in the jungle, though. There's a nearby kingdom, which may be a surviving Roman colony, or may be an ordinary isolated kingdom with a fondness for cosplay. There is also a brilliant professor, his beautiful daughter, and his laurel-and-hardyish lab assistants/comic relief sidekicks. The professor is trying to build a rocket to travel to the moon. The people of the mystery kingdom are helping him, but a guy with a mustache wants the rocket for himself! Fortunately, Tarzan is there to help, and also fortunately the comic sidekicks are surprisingly competent; one of them gains superhuman strength and combat skills when he drinks from the bottle he always carries with him, but I'm not completely sure if it's some sort of potion or he's just a mean drunk.

After many shenanigans and kidnappings and narrow escapes the main characters all climb aboard the rocket (with Mustache Guy stowing away) and fly to the moon, where they discover ancient ruins, cheap sets, giant cardboard stars, and a big-nosed evil alien who sends a robot (or "Robert," as he keeps saying) to attack our heroes. (They are actually menaced by two apparently unrelated robots. The one from the poster is by far the more convincing of the pair.) The Robert is defeated, the big nosed alien is blown up, and then Tarzan faces Mustache Guy in, and I am not making this up, a lightsaber duel.

Rocket Tarzan is obviously very different from the Bollywood movies of today; with all the narrow escapes and sudden twists and turns it's structured more like an old fashioned movie serial, like Commando Cody with occasional musical numbers. I'm not sure if my experience really counts as watching the movie, since I'm still not clear on what just happened, but on the other hand, I don't know if it would make much more sense even with subtitles. Either way, though, I'm still counting this as a dream fulfilled.

The streets could be meaner.

Legendary Bollywood actor Dev Anand died this month, so this week I’m reviewing Taxi Driver (1954), which is at once a charming romance, a gritty crime drama, and a reminder that “gritty’ doesn’t always mean “dark.”

Taxi driver Mangal (Anand), known as “Hero” to his friends, is decidedly scruffy, his best friend Mastana (Johnny Walker) is a pickpocket, and he spends his evenings in a bar; not the ideal romantic lead, in other words. Still, Hero is a genuinely nice guy and very protective of the people around him; there’s a reason they call him “Hero,” and a reason why he’s caught the eye of sultry bar-dancer Sylvie (Sheila Ramani).

When Hero rescues Mala (Kalpana Kartik, the future real life Mrs. Anand) from a pair of lecherous goons, life suddenly gets complicated. Mala is a simple girl from the village, in Bombay to look for Ratan Lal, the music director who complimented her voice while passing through the village a year ago. Unfortunately, the address she has for Ratan Lal is a year old, and she has no idea how to track him down. Mala has no money, and she can’t go home, so Hero takes her to his apartment, and goes outside to sleep in the car.

The next day, Hero and Mala look for Ratan Lal, without success. The day after, they do it again. Gradually, though, their odd living arrangement becomes the new status quo; Hero returns to driving the taxi, but with Mala as his secret house-guest.

Just when everything is going well, Hero’s sister-in-law comes for a visit. There’s no way she would understand an unrelated woman living in Hero’s apartment, so he quickly comes up with the worst plan possible, and disguises Mala as a boy, probably just so we can see Kalpana Kartik learn to swear and walk like a man. Bizarrely, it works, and soon Mastana and the rest of the gang are introduced to “Rajput”, Hero’s new cleaner.

One of the lecherous goons from the beginning of the movie (I don’t think the character is ever named, but I like to call him Frenchie, since he’s a string of onions and a beret away from looking like a stereotypical cinematic Frenchman) hasn’t forgotten about the girl who literally got away. he follows Hero to the bar, hoping to pick a fight, but Sylvie manages to defuse the situation with a quick dance number. Undeterred, Frenchie and the gang steal Hero’s taxi and use it as the getaway car for a bank robbery. Hero makes a full report to the police, and he and Mala are both in danger when the gang decide they need to be silenced.

As a romance, Taxi Driver works very well; Anand and Kartik have a fun, light-hearted chemistry and the relationship that develops onscreen is so understated that neither character seems to notice it until it’s threatened. As a gritty crime drama? Well, there is crime, and the movie’s Bombay certainly looks and feels seamy, but it’s nowhere near as seamy as it could be. And Frenchie and his gang are so wildly incompetent that it’s hard to take them seriously; when you try to silence a witness by shooting him in a crowded nightclub full of potential witnesses, you’re probably better off in jail, anyway.

Bhooty Call: Mahal

Mahal (1949) has all the trappings of a Bollywood ghost story: an abandoned mansion, a mysterious woman singing at night, and scary stock footage of bats and snakes. It’s really a tragedy rather than a horror movie, though. Just like Hamlet and Oedipus and Othello, Mahal‘s protagonist is a potentially decent guy whose life is consumed and ultimately destroyed by a single overwhelming flaw; in this case, he’s the most gullible man in the world.

On a dark and stormy night, Hari Shankar (Ashok Kumar) visits the mysterious old mansion his father bought at auction. He convinces the kindly old gardener, the mansion’s sole caretaker, to tell the story of the tragic lovers who lived and died in the mansion thirty years ago, then sends said old gardener to tell his friend Shrinath (Kanu Roy) that he’s in town. On foot. At two in the morning. Through a rainstorm. And Shrinath lives four miles away.

Once the gardener leaves, Hari discovers a portrait which looks very much like him. He’s already half convinced that he’s the reincarnation of the doomed lover who built the mansion when he hears a mysterious woman’s voice singing. He follows the voice, and manages to catch a few glimpses of the beautiful woman (Madhubala) singing, but she vanishes every time. Whatever she is, though, she’s not a hallucination, because Shrinath, who arrived just in time, can see her too.

Shrinath convinces Hari to leave the house, but he can’t stay away for long. he returns, and speaks to the woman, who calls herself Kamini. She explains that yes, she’s a ghost, and he is the reincarnation of her lost love. Now they can finally be together, but first Hari must kill himself (which he gleefully agrees to do) in which case they can be united in death, or he can kill the gardener’s daughter, allowing Kamini to take over her body so that they can be united in life. Hari hesitates for a split second, then agrees to do whatever Kamini asks of him.

Before Hari can kill anyone, though, Shrinath returns, accompanied by Hari’s father (M. Kumar). They take Hari away and quietly marry him off to Ranjana (Vijayalaxmi), hoping that he will settle down and forget all this ghost nonsense.

Unfortunately, Hari can’t forget this ghost nonsense. On the wedding night, just as he’s about to lift Ranjana’s bridal veil, he hears a clock and is immediately consumed by thoughts of Kamini. He decides to take his wife to a far away place where he can love her, free of the distractions of his imagined past, and, after an odd interlude in which they watch a tribal woman suspected of adultery undergo a trial by knife, they settle in an old creepy cabin in the mountains which is infested with stock footage bats and snakes and unconvincing crow puppets.

(Trial by knife is just like trial by fire, except that instead of setting you on fire, they throw knives at you. If none of the knives hit you, then you’re innocent. As the basis for a legal system, I can see some flaws.  Also, if she survives the trial, you're legally obligated to kiss her.)

After two years, Hari still hasn’t lifted his wife’s bridal veil, literally or metaphorically. Ranjana is living in a desolate cabin in the middle of nowhere, isolated from nearly all human contact, with a husband who completely ignores her and will not tell her why; it’s hard to blame her for taking desperate action, even though it ends badly for pretty much everyone.

Mahal is considered one of the great classics of Indian cinema, and I can understand why; the cinematography is great, and it features attractive, doomed people making lovely speeches at each other. On the other hand, it’s difficult for me, sitting in my living room in suburban Utah in the year 2011, to really understand Hari, or “Kamini”, who isn’t exactly a ghost and turns out to have a lot more in common with Hari than either of them realize. These are Tragedy People; they make horrible decisions, then speak beautifully about Fate when things go wrong.

And while he is indeed incredibly gullible, that’s really Hari’s tragic flaw. He knows he’s a Tragedy Person – he wants to be a Tragedy Person. As soon as he sees the portrait, he’s instantly consumed by the idea of being the tragic hero haunted by the ghost of his lost love. It’s easier to pine for the wife you lost in your last life than it is to get to know and learn to live with your wife in this one. Being fifteen for your whole life must be exhausting; it’s no wonder he dies young.

Bhooty Call – Bees Saal Baad

Bees Saal Baad (1962) is an adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, perhaps the most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Since this is Bollywood, of course, there are some significant changes. Most notably, there’s no hound.

After the death of his uncle, Kumar Vijay Singh (Biswajeet) returns to his ancestral estate. The superstitious locals try to warn him away; years ago, his grandfather had preyed on the local girls, and since that time an angry ghost has been preying on the family. Kumar is the only one left.
Kumar isn’t afraid of ghosts, however, so he moves in anyway. And right on cue, spooky things begin to happen. Somewhere in the mansion, a woman is crying. And every night, at 9:30, the sound of anklets lures Kumar into the swamp.

The swamp is, in fact, remarkably crowded. At various times Kumar bumps into: his creepy neighbor Mohan (Sajjan), who is clearly up to something; his old friend Doctor Pandey (Madan Ouri), who lives across the swamp; bumbling detective Gopichand (Asit Sen), who hopes to catch the murderer and claim the reward; and spunky village belle Radha (Waheeda Rehman) and her elderly uncle Ramlal (Manmohan Krishna). In addition, Kumar’s creepy servant Lakshman (Dev Kishan) is sending nightly signals to someone.

Sharp eyed readers will have noticed a distinct lack of violin playing, drug addicted super detectives. (Gopichand really doesn’t count. He’s an idiot.) There is a Holmes analog in the film, but he’s in disguise, and doesn’t emerge to solve the case until near the very end. Instead, the film focuses on Kumar; it’s an interesting idea, an adaptation told from Henry Baskerville’s point of view.

The problem is, nobody cares about Henry Baskerville! Rather than watching a brilliant detective at work, we watch Kumar being scared but resolute, Kumar wooing Radha, and scene after scene after scene of Kumar bumping into people while wandering the swamp. Bees Saal Baad is very atmospheric, but it’s also incredibly slow.

Might as well face it, you’re addicted to chess.

While watching The Chess Players (1977), it’s easy to think that nothing is happening. That’s not true, of course; a man dies, shots are fired, two marriages are about to collapse, and the fate of an entire kingdom hangs in the balance. Mir (Saeed Jaffrey) and Mirza (Sanjeev Kumar) don’t notice, though, because they’re too busy playing chess.

The opening, narrated by Amitabh Bachchan and interspersed with bits of animation, explains the political situation. Wajid Ali Shah (Amjad Khan) is the Nawab of Oudh, one of the last independent kingdoms of India. The Nawab is much more interested in art and music and prayer and his many wives than in the day to day business of ruling, and the British East India company, reluctantly represented by General Outram (Richard Attenborough) plan to use this as justification for deposing him and taking over the kingdom.

Meanwhile, Mir and Mirza, two idle noblemen, play chess. They play a lot of chess, all day, every day, completely ignoring everything else. Kurshid (Shabana Azmi), Mirza’s wife, is desperately lonely and craves her husband’s attention, but he’s too wrapped up in the game to notice. Mir is even more oblivious; when he walks in on his wife (Farida Jalal) with another man, he’s too wrapped up in the game to even think that anything is amiss.

The Chess Players is warm and funny and at times, thanks to the passive protagonists, really, really slow. This is an inaction movie, a sometimes affectionate character study of men who are too caught up in trivialities to notice the changes taking place in the world around them, and ultimately too weak to do anything but go along with the flow.

Swashbuckling and Sincerity

Aashiq Hussein (Sanjeev Kumar), hero of Husn Aur Ishq (1966), is so moved by reports of the beauty of the Princess Rukshana (Sabina) that he immediately sets off for Baghdad hoping to win her hand, despite the fact that she’s a princess and he’s a common man with no apparent source of income.

En route, Aashiq literally stumbles across a group of soldiers plotting to assassinate the Sultan on behalf of the evil Vizier (Jeevan). The soldiers chase Aashiq through the desert and then through the city before he swashbuckles his way to freedom and finds himself face to face with Rukshana herself.

Rukshana is not impressed by his attempts at flirting, but she does take his warning about the assassination plot seriously. She warns her father, but while the plot is foiled, he refuses to believe that the Vizier could be involved, and he won’t listen to anything else she says on the subject because she’s a girl.

When Aashiq returns, Rukshana is much more receptive to wooing, and the two are soon in love. The Vizier, on the other hand, is less enamored; Aashiq is an obstacle to his new “Marry the Princess and become the official heir to the throne and then kill the Sultan” plan, so he has the young man captured and placed into the worst deathtrap ever. (Seriously, I know it’s a trope of the genre, but shouldn’t you at least look to see if the hero has stopped moving before automatically dumping the body in the ocean?)

Aashiq is, naturally, still alive, and finds himself in a mysterious cave, where he’s given a magical lamp containing a genie. With the jolly genie’s help, Aashiq disguises himself as a prince, returns to the city, and if this is all starting to sound familiar, it’s because Husn Aur Ishq is a remarkably faithful adaptation of Aladdin.

Apart from the changed names, the big difference between Husn Aur Ishq and other Aladdins is the focus on the human characters; the genie doesn’t appear until fairly late in the film, and mostly serves as a sidekick and a tool to further Aashiq’s romance, rather than the romance serving as an excuse for wacky genie hijinks.

Husn Aur Ishq is practically reviewer proof; it’s one of the most straightforward movies in the history of ever. It’s a simple story of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back with the help of a supernatural creature, without a trace of irony or any heavy handed moralizing.

Let’s twist again, like we did last summer.

Bhoot Bungla (1965) has all the elements of a fine psychological thriller. On the very day that Rekha (Tanuja) returns to India after three years in England, her father is murdered. Days later, her insane uncle Ram (Nana Palsikar), who hints that he knows the killer’s identity, is murdered as well. Her surviving uncle Shyam (Nasir Hussain) decides to move what’s left of the family to the city, and leaves the ancestral house in the care of the creepy, snaggletoothed gardener, but that’s not the end of Rekha’s problems; soon she’s tormented by constant phone calls from a mysterious man who promises to kill her soon.

Of course, this is Bollywood, where genre does not work that way. During a rare night out, Rekha is introduced to Mohan (Mehmood) and his friends in the Youth Club, a band of wholesome youths who spend all their time doing good deeds, playing harmless pranks, and dancing the Twist. (They really, really love the Twist.) Despite the rules of the Youth Club clearly stating that members should “love everything but women,” Mohan is promptly smitten, and when he learns about Rekha’s troubles, he puts the entire Youth Club to work using their wacky disguises and dancing skills to help her.

It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that the ghosts in Bhoot Bungla are of the Scooby Doo variety; from the start it’s assumed that the mysterious murderer threatening Rekha is entirely human, and there’s no indication of anything ghostly until Mohan and fellow Youth Club member Stocky (legendary Bollywood composer R. D. Burman) spend a night in the old mansion being terrified by men dressed in the same skeleton costumes that would later be seen in Karz.

In another movie, the sudden changes in tone from suspense to squeaky clean romantic comedy to a sudden outbreak of West Side Story to slapstick ghostbusting and back would feel disjointed. That’s not the case here, perhaps because the plot is so simple and straightforward. Bhoot Bungla is charming, and more than a little silly. That’s a good thing.