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 (93)
- practical info (1)
- Book reviews (18)
- miscellaneous (3)
- Trip to India (8)
Nutan photos
Bolly blogs I visit
- 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
- Julie and Jenny's Diablog
- 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
Subscribe to the posts
Latest posts
- Their hands can see: Sparsh
- 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
Archives
- février 2012 (1)
- janvier 2012 (2)
- décembre 2011 (2)
- novembre 2011 (2)
- octobre 2011 (1)
- septembre 2011 (1)
- juillet 2011 (1)
- juin 2011 (4)
- avril 2011 (1)
- mars 2011 (4)
- février 2011 (1)
- janvier 2011 (1)
- décembre 2010 (5)
- octobre 2010 (2)
- septembre 2010 (4)
- août 2010 (8)
- juillet 2010 (2)
- juin 2010 (3)
- mai 2010 (3)
- avril 2010 (3)
- mars 2010 (2)
- février 2010 (1)
- janvier 2010 (2)
- décembre 2009 (4)
- novembre 2009 (3)
- octobre 2009 (2)
- septembre 2009 (1)
- août 2009 (2)
- juin 2009 (4)
- mai 2009 (4)
- avril 2009 (1)
- mars 2009 (1)
- février 2009 (2)
- janvier 2009 (1)
- décembre 2008 (1)
- novembre 2008 (2)
- octobre 2008 (2)
- septembre 2008 (1)
- août 2008 (3)
- juillet 2008 (4)
- juin 2008 (4)
- mai 2008 (2)
- avril 2008 (4)
- mars 2008 (4)
- février 2008 (4)
- janvier 2008 (3)
- décembre 2007 (3)
- novembre 2007 (5)
- octobre 2007 (3)
- septembre 2007 (6)
- août 2007 (3)
- juillet 2007 (5)
- juin 2007 (6)
- mai 2007 (5)
- avril 2007 (4)
- mars 2007 (3)
- février 2007 (7)
- janvier 2007 (5)
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 […]
Mercredi 23 mars 2011
3
23
/03
/Mars
/2011
21:09
The main beauty of this little film, Katha (Sai Paranjpe 1983), which suffers somewhat from clichés that are perhaps enjoyed by a certain type of audience, is the delightful portrayal of the Suburban chawl where a community of friends and neighbours live together, united by a community spirit which I have rarely seen as warmly described as here. It’s perhaps a little idealistic, but surely the level of good-natured friendliness belongs to the best of what one likes about India, that frank and open humanity, where each person can have a chance to be part of the whole. I had first been attracted to Katha thanks to Carla’s excellent review, where she underlines this quality too. I am […]
Mercredi 9 mars 2011
3
09
/03
/Mars
/2011
00:20
This is a lovely, very readable, and at the same time, a rather unusual little book. Unusual because it doesn’t follow the common pattern of what might be expected from such entertainers. It gears itself towards an all-important cricket match, which the hero of the story, young Swaminathan and his 11 year-old friends, are eagerly preparing, with the very special enthusiasm of that age, and instead of the heroic chapter expected, something completely different occurs. We are deprived of victory, and even of the match! Instead, we follow Swami losing himself in the nearby forest, being recovered by a cartman passing that way, spending the next day recovering (when he should have been […]
Mardi 1 mars 2011
2
01
/03
/Mars
/2011
20:48
You’ll have to expect from me, more and more, reviews of boring / outlandish movies where Nutan or perhaps Waheeda Rehman have starred, and which I will have seen out of sheer silly infatuation (mind you, I cannot bring myself to review films that would have no interest at all). And so, take a guess: is Kanhaiya one of them? This 1959 story is actor Om Prakash’s only directorial attempt, and perhaps this is another downer. But you be the judge; here’s the *story*!! Shanno (Nutan), a young village beauty, becomes love-struck by the divine magnificence of Krishna Kanhaiya, as, one night, some performers acting out a passage of the Gita, pass through her village. She becomes so engrossed […]
Mardi 8 février 2011
2
08
/02
/Fév
/2011
23:30
I am not sure I shall be able to do justice to Khushwant Singh’s little novel (published in 1956). It seems both too simple, too factual, and so because of that, too deeply rooted in Indian history and drama (Oh, for those who need the plot, go here). Not being Indian, how do I talk about it adequately? Here and there people say that the present upcoming generation is forgetting (has forgotten?) the events it relates, and such oblivion too is a formidable fact. We intellectuals would tend to consider History as necessary to the identity of a nation, especially if this history tells of its “mistakes” (but what are a country’s mistakes? How do you hold it responsible?) So what happens if […]
Mercredi 26 janvier 2011
3
26
/01
/Jan
/2011
16:51
There are many reasons why the spectators might not have liked Guru Dutt’s opus, Kaagaz ke phool back in 1959. First its badly-humoured despondency (why go to the cinema and see sad things, life is sad enough as it is), then its flaunting of proper morals and conventionality (the film contains a rather crude picturisation of family dirty linen); the absence of a satisfying happy end (the director dying an absurd death because of his abuse of alcohol)…Many people still think today that the movie drags on, that it’s self-indulgent… I’m not going to say that all this criticism is wrong. Certainly the film has flaws, but I wonder whether these defects aren’t the signs of Guru Dutt’s genius […]
Vendredi 31 décembre 2010
5
31
/12
/Déc
/2010
21:45
Manzil (Mandi Burman, 1960) was a partial disappointment. Not that I had so much to expect from a film that I didn’t know before, and that I just got hold of because of Nutan. But it starts pleasantly, with two childhood friends meeting again now that time has passed and that they’re adults: certainly, a classic theme, but when it’s Nutan and Dev Anand, and they’re both of them charming, one easily suspends one’s disbelief, and stretches in one’s chair in hope! I started thinking of Devdas, which has a somewhat similar story, and wondered whether it was going to be a variation of Bimal Roy’s famous movie. There’s the childhood friends theme, the distancing of the two lovers, Raju’s […]
Mardi 28 décembre 2010
2
28
/12
/Déc
/2010
16:03
In Satyajit Ray’s Home and the world (1984), there is a mystery: why does Nikhil (whose name means “free”), the open-minded husband who wants his wife to espouse modern ideas and leave the traditional confinement of the home (the Purdah), let her see his friend and soon rival Sandip: doesn’t he have eyes? Doesn’t he know that his lovely and inexperienced wife is falling in love with this manly orator and activist? Does he harbour some perverse intention to watch his wife fall in another man’s arms? And his first move, to let her leave the seclusion of the home, so as to have her confront a “world” which she wasn’t asking to confront, was this wise, was it healthy? His own sister in law, […]
Mercredi 15 décembre 2010
3
15
/12
/Déc
/2010
13:57
Seema (1955, Amiya Chakrabarty) has been hailed as Nutan Samarth’s cinematographical revelation. In this story of a wronged young girl, she shows a sensitivity and a maturity which are striking for one so young. At only 19, she effortlessly steals the show, so that one wonders what is left to say about the film apart from her. But rest assured, there’s lots. Before I forget: thanks Madhu for having made it possible to see Seema, I had an unsubtitled copy and my level of Hindi isn’t yet that good to enable me to understand a movie from beginning to end. She indicated to me that some considerate fellow (thank him, too) had uploaded the movie on YouTube in 14 instalments… If you’re reading […]
Dimanche 12 décembre 2010
7
12
/12
/Déc
/2010
15:09
As unofficially self-proclaimed supporter and glorifier of Nutan, I am proud to admit within the very close circle of Nutan worshippers Sharmi, whose site is devoted to pastime movies, and especially contains some wonderful praise of Nutan Behl. She has agreed to my quoting what she writes in several passages of her wonderful blog, as it so exactly matches my own admiration of the actress. Here are the extracts where she speaks about her: On Sujata: “Nutan's just inexplicable! She's in plain cotton sarees in the entire film, wears no makeup barring a bindi and kohl, and still looks picture-perfect. Her poise is infectious! Her eyes mirror her heart. When she is sad, her tears choke you, […]
Mercredi 1 décembre 2010
3
01
/12
/Déc
/2010
23:35
S araswati Chandra (Govind Saraiya, 1968, last Bollywood movie in B & W) tells the story of a young aristocrat, Saraswati (Manish), who is indifferently raised by his step-mother and yet grows up and becomes a compassionate person who has lofty ideas and decides to do without his personal happiness without informing his father, who fixes his marriage to Kumud (Nutan), an educated girl from a rich family. Saraswati decides to cancel the engagement and writes to Kumud to inform her. But soon she replies and soon the two keep on exchanging letters. Soon Saraswati decides to defy the customs and pays a visit to his fiancée. The two soon serenade and a short-lived romance takes place. Soon […]
Dimanche 24 octobre 2010
7
24
/10
/Oct
/2010
01:22
This classic 1964 by Satyen Bose is one of superlatives, "one of the best pictures ever made", a "golden movie", a "perfection from the past" (see IMDb user comments)! It’s certainly worth the praise, in spite of the chock-a-block melodrama. But very surprisingly, it’s its simplicity and directness which are appealing: unlike some movies, where complex a story issue taxes your concentration capacities! Here, there’s no strain! Oh, the storyline, told by IMDb contributor rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com) : Mr. Gupta passes away after an accident while on duty, leaving behind his ailing wife and school-going son, Ramnath. Both await some compensation, and when they are informed that the […]
Mercredi 13 octobre 2010
3
13
/10
/Oct
/2010
23:34
Satyajit Ray’s “Mahanagar” (The Metropolis, 1963, based on a short story by Narendranath Mitra) is a fascinating and thoroughly original work of art. It is at once a beautifully realistic love story, a profound sociological study into men and women’s relationship, a portrayal of the world of work from the point of view of women, and an analysis of the clash of modernism and traditions in a middle-class urban family. I will first leave an IMDb contributor (sbansban) sum up the story, something he does with a very convincing personal touch: “In an era when working women in Calcutta (and perhaps many other places in the world) sometimes invited snide implications of inadequate income […]
Jeudi 30 septembre 2010
4
30
/09
/Sep
/2010
22:19
Hi, I've found this text written a long time ago probably after having seen KKHH one of the first times! Enjoy! Where does the poignancy of love come from? This love in need of love, this need which screams in the face of the loved one “I will make you happy!”, this tearing of the future when love isn’t fulfilled? The movie rapturously delays the moment of relief, which should be its dominant feature, that of the Happy end, and yet what remains with me is the sorrow, the pain of love when it is offered and unrequited, its naked beauty and its violent softness. This is what characterises Rahul and Anjali’s story. She has loved him from the start; for her, he’s the one. She’s his friend, […]