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. For those who are fed up with her, you can go here (for example!)
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 (47)
- film reviews (92)
- practical info (1)
- Book reviews (18)
- miscellaneous (3)
- Trip to India (8)
Nutan photos
Bolly blogs I visit (ask me to include yours!)
- Greta's Memsaabstory
- Madhulika's Dustedoff
- Bollyviewer's Old is gold
- Sharmi's old films and me
- Bollywooddeewana
- Carla's blog Filmigeek
- Beth loves Bollywood
- A2line's Bollyblog
- Amodini's movie reviews
- Anu's conversations over chai
- Daddy's girl's Dharmendra praise blog
- The fabulous Pitu
- Harvey's blog
- Satyam's blog
- Shweta's Apni EA Company
- 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
- Darshit's dunkdaft
- Ajnabi's Paisa Vasool - or not
- Shell's Bollyworld
- The BollywoodFan
- Alan's Bellevue to Bollywood
- Pessimisissimo's Exotic entertainment
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Latest posts
- Peepli live: long live the media!
- Subarnarekha, Ritwick Ghatak's ode to Life
- Chhalia, Nutan's contribution to the Indo-pakistani peace process
- Mera Naam Joker: too big? Too much?
- Kanchanjungha, the moment of revelation
- Dhobi ghat, looking for a new centre
- Yeh raate, yeh mausam
- Ram teri Ganga maili, RK's last opus
- Abhijan, a remarkable moral fable
- Parakh, or: what is a good man?
Archives
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- août 2010 (8)
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Mardi 17 janvier 2012
2
17
/01
/Jan
/2012
23:20
I thought at first I wouldn’t have much to say about Peepli live (Anusha Rizvi, 2010), but as I started writing, the following article poured out very easily! I had told myself that the film wasn’t much more than a properly engineered denunciation of the antidemocratic shifts in today’s India, plus the scathing condemnation of an economic system that lets its farmers die for lack of any viable support, and somehow I wasn’t very enthusiastic. Perhaps the film was too much of a documentary nature? It’s true that this is one of my limits: I do enjoy a certain amount of glamorization, and lo! There isn’t any in Peepli. The film is also rather dry on beautification, and perhaps for the good […]
Lundi 9 janvier 2012
1
09
/01
/Jan
/2012
17:57
What is the soul of poetry? Isn’t it a kind of universal music which, universal as it is, springs fresh and clear from a homely and unique source of inspiration? When Tagore writes: Nahin kisi ko pata kahaan mere raja ka rajmahal Agar jaante log, mahal ye thik pata kya ek pal I hear a very Indian voice evoking a king’s palace and telling us that even if it is made of gold and silver, in the reality of whispering truth it stands “at the corner of our terrace where the tulsi-plant grows”. The tulsi is that traditional little tree in the centre of the courtyard, the same aromatic plant we in the West know as Basil (etymologically the king) which means immortality in Hinduism, and is […]
Lundi 26 décembre 2011
1
26
/12
/Déc
/2011
19:54
In Chhalia (Manmohan Desai, 1960), we have another of Raj Kapoor’s avatars: his character personifies a “chhaliya”, translated by Philip as a cheat, or artful deceiver, but who in fact doesn’t deceive anyone, and I wonder whether we shouldn’t say “cunning middleman”. In the story, indeed, Chhalia intervenes to restore the broken bond between Rama and Sita, or at least their earthly representatives, Kewal (played by Rehman) and Shanti (Nutan). These two, here in the context of the Indo-Pakistani Partition period, are husband and wife, but they have been separated by the events, and as the film starts, we follow Shanti arriving in India, after an absence of 5 years. We learn through […]
Lundi 19 décembre 2011
1
19
/12
/Déc
/2011
14:12
The cinematographic monument Mera naam Joker, which was directed, produced and starred by Raj Kapoor took 6 years to complete, cost millions and was a catastrophic flop when it came out in 1972 (see the wikipedia page). No wonder: the first version was more than 5 hours long! And even in its present length of 3 hours 44 minutes, it has two intermissions. Each of its three main episodes could almost be a full feature. Yet the movie has everything one could wish: Raj Kapoor at the steering wheel, a crowd of great actors and beautiful girls, romance, humour, great moments of showmanship: so why the disappointment? On Imdb somebody comes up with this explanation: “This supposedly […]
Samedi 19 novembre 2011
6
19
/11
/Nov
/2011
17:02
I owe Sharmi an IOU because she’s the lover of “threadbare movies” who watched and beautifully reviewed Satyajit Ray’s Kanchanjangha (1962) on her blog and made me want to watch it! Well, everybody whose review I read (check here and here) calls it a great cinematographic experience, some because of the fact that the film’s story wonderfully fits in the time it takes to be seen, some others because the characters (especially Chhabi Biswas) are so good, others again for…other reasons, but all seem in fact rather puzzling. They do appreciate the movie, that’s for sure, but then why can’t they pinpoint a striking, convincing reason? It’s almost as if they the film’s good on the sole basis […]
Jeudi 10 novembre 2011
4
10
/11
/Nov
/2011
14:39
Dhobi ghat (Kiran Rao, 2010) is a pleasant enough film to watch; it has a seductiveness, an allusiveness whose charm lasts a while in the mind, and one wonders, after the last unfulfilled pictures have gone, what was this? What sort of movie did I watch? Surely, not a classic Bollywood flick, not a social manifesto, so perhaps an arty evocation of a changing society? A meditation on the new reality India is going through? One could also say, an emerging director’s state of the art research. Kiran Rao, Aamir Khan’s second wife, is here busy demonstrating she’s got the guts to go it alone, after her spectacular successes as assistant director in such blockbusters as Laagan and Swades. Do […]
Samedi 22 octobre 2011
6
22
/10
/Oct
/2011
16:27
Here’s my belated commentary of Ravi’s song Yeh Raate yeh mausam in Dilli ka thug sung by Kishore Kumar and Asha Bhonsle, lyrics by Majrooh Sultanpuri (I had promised it to Suja! Cf. here). Below you'll find the video, the lyrics and their translation. Yeh raatein, yeh mausam, nadi ka kinara, yeh chanchal hawa Yeh raatein, yeh mausam, nadi ka kinara, yeh chanchal hawa Kaha do dilon ne, yeh milkar kabhi ham, na honge judaa Yeh raatein, yeh mausam, nadi ka kinara, yeh chanchal hawa Yeh kya baat hai aaj ki chandni me? Yeh kya baat hai aaj ki chandni me? Ke ham kho gaye pyar ki raagni me Yeh baahon me bahen, yeh behki nigaahein Lo aane laga zindagi ka maza… Yeh raatein, yeh mausam, nadi ka […]
Vendredi 23 septembre 2011
5
23
/09
/Sep
/2011
18:22
I have read so often about Raj Kapoor’s last movie, Ram teri Ganga maili (1985, Ram, your Ganga is sullied), that I wanted to have a personal opinion about it. The movie has itself been sullied as obsessively concerned with Mandakini’s nakedness and the director himself as a scandalous and ageing admirer of young feminine beauties. If you haven’t seen the movie, and you google the film’s name, you’ll inevitably summon up the “hot” waterfall scene, of course quite innocuous by today’s movie standards, but which sparked the censors’ condemnation. We can start talking about that, and get it out of the way. Ganga (which refers both to the girl and the river) was born in the Himalayan […]
Vendredi 29 juillet 2011
5
29
/07
/Juil
/2011
23:49
Abhijan (the Expedition, Satyajit Ray, 1962) is the story of Narsingh (dependable Soumitra Chatterjee), a Kshatriya taxi-driver, who after having had his professional license taken away from him for imprudent overtaking, becomes jobless, and heads towards the Shyamnagar province in Bengal. There he gets involved in opium trading. A man he had given a lift to, Sukhanram (Charuprakash Ghosh, very good), is the one who lures him into the business, and that same man also deals in buying women for a time because he has the money. This time he has Gulabi (Waheeda Rehman) with him, and she, aware of her plight, tries to catch the attention of Narsingh who seems to her an honest guy, so as to […]
Jeudi 30 juin 2011
4
30
/06
/Juin
/2011
14:42
Bimal Roy’s Parakh (Test, 1960) is an experiment. Not so much in democracy, as some people say, even though they’re right, it does contain an implicit criticism of democratic processes, but this is only a side-issue. It’s an experiment in morality or in human nature. What happens when a community is asked to determine who is the best man in its midst? What is virtue? And how does one make one’s worth known to the group? True, the means to trigger this test is rather risky: a 5 million rupee reward! In effect, this proposal is bound to wreak complete havoc in the moral organisation of any community, and probably create the wrong experimental conditions. Furthermore, with such a sum at […]
Mercredi 22 juin 2011
3
22
/06
/Juin
/2011
13:48
Tere ghar ke samne (1963) has a Molièresque quality to it. I don’t know if English-speaking readers know about Molière, but this story of two young lovers who want to marry in spite of their cantankerous fathers immediately made me think of L’Avare, or Le bourgeois gentilhomme, where such situations are standard fare. The line that made the connection was this one, where Sulekha (Nutan)’s father, Seth Karamchand, actually admits he was a fool to counter-bet his arch-enemy Lala Jagganath, for the purchase of a plot where to build his future house: But foolishness doesn’t stop these rich neighbours from waging a very serious war, a war of influence and bad-tempers, a war of old men stuck […]
Vendredi 17 juin 2011
5
17
/06
/Juin
/2011
13:45
There are some films I watch where I have to struggle to find information and reviews. As soon as they are gone from the screens (not to mention movies from the 50s or 60s!) it’s like you are unearthing archaeological artefacts. With Deepa Mahta’s Fire (1996) however, there was so much to read that my eyes still ache from screen reading! The film itself is partly drowned in the avalanche of political and religious controversy which it created. It’s thus impossible to speak about the film on its own, as if it held an independent cinematographical status. It’s strange (or perhaps not) that some other movies, which tackle seemingly as controversial issues, have not sparked such furore. I’m […]
Vendredi 10 juin 2011
5
10
/06
/Juin
/2011
23:43
Gulzar’s acclaimed Achanak (Suddenly, 1973) suffers from a bothersome defect, its well-meaning intentions. The film contains much worth, but it is too preoccupied by the demonstration process for its own good. What a film says is as important as how it says it, and what it says is important. But Gulzar uses too much the story in order to demonstrate his argument, instead of letting the story unfold and the message flow out of it naturally. I wonder whether this doesn’t happen because of Gulzar’s honesty as a poet (see his profile here), but I’m not sure, this being the first Gulzar movie I watch. Somebody says that the film is very un-Gulzar like in so far as it doesn’t correspond to […]
Mardi 12 avril 2011
2
12
/04
/Avr
/2011
01:07
Ray’s 1956 Aparajito (Unvanquished) enters triumphantly the collection of my best loved films, and effortlessly so. It’s been some time I’d watched Pather Panchali and I don’t remember everything about it, but I do recall enough to connect it with Aparajito’s anything-but-naïve innocence and simplicity. But once you’ve said that, the difficulty is how to account for it. Where and how does Ray get it? Same question as always! This time I think I have a concrete answer: young Apu’s face. Whatever happens behind it, it’s set. No expression, it seems. Apu (Pinaki Sengupta) runs along the streets of Benares with his friends, Apu runs along the ghats, Apu runs in and out of home, barely […]
Lundi 28 mars 2011
1
28
/03
/Mars
/2011
23:39
C.I.D (Raj Khosla, 1956), starring Dev Anand, Shakila and Waheeda Rehman, unlike some other classic golden-age B’wood stuff, has been amply reviewed, and very aptly so too. Leading the gang is Corey Creekmur, at UIOWA.edu, who writes an extremely well-informed analysis of the Guru Dutt production. It’s a masterful historical and artistic contextualisation review, where Creekmur underlines the influence of the Navketan cinematographic Institute, and focuses on the meaning of the songs as part of the Circle and encircling symbolism of the movie. In dustedoff’s review one will find a summary of the action and a very good description of the rhythm of the movie, a feature which all […]