Nutan mania
I've decided to become a full-fledged promoter of Nutan! Below you'll find pictures of her I've collected
since I've started watching films with her: here's my
list of her films. I hope you'll enjoy her as
much as I do! 
Practical Info
About me
I'm a French lover of Indian cinema, but I'm also interested in literature, science, art, and reflection in general. This blog will reflect these tastes more or less!
Categories
- letstalkaboutbollywood (52)
- film reviews (109)
- practical info (1)
- Book reviews (20)
- miscellaneous (4)
- Trip to India (8)
- Poetry (1)
Nutan photos
Bolly blogs I visit
- Greta's Memsaabstory
- Madhulika's Dustedoff
- Carla at Filmigeek
- Beth loves Bollywood
- Sharmi's old films and me
- Bollywooddeewana
- Suja's Music to my ears
- A2line's Bollyblog
- Bollyviewer's Old is gold
- Amodini's movie reviews
- Anu's conversations over chai
- Harvey's blog
- Satyam's blog
- Banno, Dhanno and Teja
- Shweta's Apni EA Company
- Julie and Jenny's Diablog
- Daddy's girl's Dharmendra praise blog
- Post-punk CC
- Nida's Bitten by Bollywood
- Sanni's So they dance
- Stephen 's Bollywood banter
- Blissful Nirvana
- Maria's Filmiholic
- Philip Lutgendorf 's fil-ums
- Neha's Black
- Doc Bollywood
- Amaluu's Bollystalgia
- Darshit's dunkdaft
- Ajnabi's Paisa Vasool - or not
- Shell's Bollyworld
- The BollywoodFan
- Pessimisissimo's Exotic entertainment
Archives
- avril 2013 (1)
- mars 2013 (1)
- février 2013 (2)
- janvier 2013 (3)
- décembre 2012 (1)
- novembre 2012 (1)
- octobre 2012 (2)
- septembre 2012 (2)
- août 2012 (2)
- juillet 2012 (1)
- juin 2012 (3)
- mai 2012 (1)
- avril 2012 (2)
- mars 2012 (3)
- février 2012 (2)
- janvier 2012 (2)
- décembre 2011 (2)
- novembre 2011 (2)
- octobre 2011 (1)
- septembre 2011 (1)
- juillet 2011 (1)
- juin 2011 (4)
Subscribe to the posts
Lundi 29 avril 2013
1
29
/04
/Avr
/2013 18:45
Famous, witty, challenging… and brilliant in the way some works of genius are, but Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie pleases and displeases at the same time. It certainly strikes the reader as a fascinating work of art, technically and stylistically; one follows the life and pranks of its main protagonist, Saleem Sinai, while wanting to know where all of it will take us, and there are some crunchy bits which reward the faithful reader. But I’m afraid there is also a lot of quirky narrative during which one wonders: “What’s this leading to?” Perhaps you know that the reason for the story is the parallel between the hero’s career in life and the birth and evolution of India. The two […]
Mercredi 13 mars 2013
3
13
/03
/Mars
/2013 16:16
Thanks to Ashok I have been fortunate to discover the treasure trove of these Old Indian photos, where much more than what will be discussed here is to be found: it’s a real Ali Baba’s Cave. But going through some of its riches, I stopped at these pics because they seemed to say so much about a certain Bollywood style of relationships back in the 1950s. My first reaction was perhaps slightly on the sleazy side (like what this person says at Bollywood Life, when she describes the “murky side of casting couch”…), but I have taken a good look and I find the pics much less offensive than instructive. You judge! These pics (here’s the lot) are said to have been taken in 1951 by photographer […]
Jeudi 21 février 2013
4
21
/02
/Fév
/2013 15:35
Hello all, It's been some time I wanted to share with you some of the clownish photos of Nutan that I've collecting, and well, why not the occasion of her death anniversary coming up this Feb 23rd? Nutan passed away 22 years ago on that date. I know the tradition for anniversaries is more auspicious on the birth anniversary, but precisely, a collection of zany photos, where our favourite actress is pulling out her tongue and squinting, doesn't this participate to the celebration of life, even beyond the shuffling off of our mortal coil ?? You judge! That's all for now folks!!
Mercredi 20 février 2013
3
20
/02
/Fév
/2013 15:02
Umrao Jaan (Muzzafar Ali, 1981) belongs to the genre of tragedies which describe the destiny of a doomed character in a beautifully told narrative such as will bring out the pity and sorrow necessary for spectators to be cleansed of their own sins. And yet the story escapes the genre in two ways: the heroine doesn’t die, and there is an insistence on the fact we aren’t in the grips of destinies, but only wrong and contingent circumstances. We’ll see if and how far these two elements modify our appreciation. If you don’t know the story, check it here, told by Philip Lutgendorf. He also highlights many of the movie’s details and its relationship with the original novel, Umrao Jan Ada by […]
Lundi 28 janvier 2013
1
28
/01
/Jan
/2013 23:05
I think I can safely say that Satyajit Ray all his life tried to fight for individual rights and a critical outlook on traditions. If you have in mind the film Ganashatru (An enemy of the people), where a Western-looking scientist struggles against the forces of bigotry and charlatanism, you see what I mean. Yet in Devi, which was shot in 1960, Ray doesn’t deal his cards as squarely, and the film is shrouded in a more ambiguous light, which perhaps makes it more interesting. It’s the simple story of a young Brahmin couple in 1860 Bengal, who live a peaceful life in the family haveli of all-powerful but benevolent Kalikinkar Roy (Chhabi Biswas, seen in Jalsaghar or The music room). […]
Dimanche 20 janvier 2013
7
20
/01
/Jan
/2013 17:19
One cloud-capped day, somewhere along the bank of a Bengali river where waterfowl chirp their little bedeep, bedeep, a young woman clad in white walks out of the canopy of some century-old oaks that spread their gigantic branches all the way to the river in a benevolent gesture of protection and majesty. She comes closer and we hear the whistle of a train whose full load of passengers arrive from afar. Nearby, close to the water, her brother is practising his singing. She stops a while to listen to him, in spite of the roaring train, and, smiling, passes out of sight. We are in the poetic world of Ritwik Ghatak, and this is The cloud-capped star (Meghey Dhaka Tara, 1960). In separated […]
Samedi 12 janvier 2013
6
12
/01
/Jan
/2013 00:46
(Could this be this what happened to the great RK???) For Raj Kapoor the director, Bobby appeared in 1973 between Mera naam joker (1972) and Satyam shivam sundaram (1978) and so I was rather interested to have a look at it in order to bridge that gap. Well, even if I’m told the movie heralded RK’s conversion to masala, and that he needed Bobby to make up for the box-office disaster of MNJ, there is still a gap, and the two very personal, even shockingly original landmarks of 72 and 78 tower high above it. What’s striking is how so many of Rajkapooresque resources were present, which could have given depth and meaning to the movie, but went unused. It’s as if RK hadn’t been able to […]
Lundi 17 décembre 2012
1
17
/12
/Déc
/2012 23:05
Rishte Naate (family relationships) is a 1965 Gopalakrishnan movie, with Raj Kumar, Nutan, Nazir Hussain, Jamuna and Ameeta as main actors. It does seem like I’m exhausting my reserves of Nutan movies, because while this film has more than a few qualities, it certainly cannot match Nutan’s greats, and she imperceptibly seems to underplay her character. The story is one of its good points: half-way between quirky and exaggerated, it is sufficiently original to attract attention. It revolves around Thakur Narendrapal Singh (Hussain), a rich landowner who, while having a son and a daughter, dispossesses his son from his normal inheritance and thrusts it on one of his workers, Sundar (Raj […]
Mercredi 14 novembre 2012
3
14
/11
/Nov
/2012 22:48
Reading about Mr. & Mrs 55, Guru Dutt’s 1955 sparkling romantic comedy on the net, in order to prepare this review, has been very pleasant; this devil of a director has produced some insightful commentaries from many of my blogging friends, along with some equally fascinating exasperated remarks, and last but not least, truly touching declarations of rapturous affection towards his work… I don’t know what he would have thought about the latter! But I can certainly understand what Harvey says about the movie: “It is so hard to decide if I like this film or not”, he writes. An important declaration, because it means there is something disturbing in the film which one cannot get one’s arm […]
Jeudi 25 octobre 2012
4
25
/10
/Oct
/2012 13:00
Yash Chopra passed today; because of the importance of the guy, I decided to post this eulogy of him written some time ago, but which I still feel is appropriate. Yash Chopra… Say this name and immediately vast landscapes appear, green slopes where lovers mirror their gaze in the other’s eyes, enchanting music lifts up a crowd of spring birds, dark men march towards their destiny, violence smoulders in the heart, suffering mothers obey their dharma, and love reigns supreme in spite of all odds. Mr Chopra’s reputation as an incurable romantic is so ingrained that it’s difficult to start with something very different! You might as well adore him or hate him, in fact. YC is Bollywood at […]
Dimanche 21 octobre 2012
7
21
/10
/Oct
/2012 23:34
Hi, sorry to have been away so long, too many things in the going. This one took me some time assembling and researching, but was great fun! When I was a boy, my brother François and I used to collect stamps, mostly French ones of course, and I still retain names of people and places that appeared on the little slips of sticky paper, immortalised by their colourful and evocative drawings. We had great moments buying them, sorting them out, calculating their prices and treasuring them. They're now somewhere at my other brother's home, I think, he kept the collection as he left home later than we did. Anyway here's the lot of the Indian cinema stamps. Only 60 people! Can you find any […]
Samedi 22 septembre 2012
6
22
/09
/Sep
/2012 14:48
The Brave New World of Naya Daur (New Era, BR Chopra 1957) opens with a striking quote by Mahatma Gandhi: So from the start we know that the film is going to be about the biological (bios = life) relationship between men and the Earth, and that this bond takes the shape of a symbolical Great Tree that cannot be shaken off its roots by any man-made machinery, powerful as it might be. Of course the analogy is first social and political (the references to Labour and machinery smack of good old Socialism), but we’ll see that its implications reach deeper and confront the contextual message of 1957 India with a universal problem concerning the way humanity deals with its Mother Earth. The […]
Dimanche 9 septembre 2012
7
09
/09
/Sep
/2012 21:43
You probably all know - but I don't care: Memsaab's latest instalment is a hard day's scanning work of 75 pages of text and awesome portraits from a 1952 book by Baburao and Sushila Rani Patel’s called “Stars of the Indian Screen.”And it's FABULOUS. For all those who are into B'wood oldies, it's a fascinating take on 36 actors and actresses (many more of the second sort!!), in majority before they became really great - well, some of them of course had already done their important work, but others were only on the threshold, Nutan for one: Wow, "rigidly thin!!" - well, I suppose she was simply *growing*, wasn't she? At 16, you can't expect to have acquired all the *flesh* that later […]
Mardi 28 août 2012
2
28
/08
/Août
/2012 12:07
This 1954 film by M. Sadiq has qualities I wasn’t expecting. With movies that no one is reviewing or speaking about, you are faced with the unnerving problem of wondering whether you aren’t giving value to a work of art out of an idiosyncratic feeling that nobody else has felt what you think you feel, and therefore shouldn’t be put forward as relevant. Of course, there’s always the remote possibility that the work has been forgotten by the critics and disregarded, and that the happy reviewer has unearthed a treasure! Still, the charms of Shabab (youthfulness, beauty) are many and I’m not only saying this as a blinded admirer of Nutan. The story contains a poetic scenario, combined with […]
Jeudi 2 août 2012
4
02
/08
/Août
/2012 18:46
After having watched Kapurush (see previous instalment), I was strongly urged to see Mahapurush, Satyajit Ray’s twin production in the tandem that came out in 1965. The theme of the manipulative bigot is a famous one in French culture (see for example Molière’s Tartuffe, and the many lovers of Asterix and Obelix will also remember the immortal Le Devin!) and so Ray’s opus struck a familiar chord.The tricks used in order to create credulity and at the same time to expose them thanks to humour were very recognizable. Even so, Ray’s short film works as a superb satire of religious manoeuvring, and is naturally aimed (like Ganashatru) at targeting Indian shallow and irrational religiosity, […]