Let's talk about Bollywood!

Hi! Last thursday my wife Frederique asked me to introduce Bollywood to her final year students, and since it was fun and also since I was not able to show the last two slides, here they all are, with the links to the two extracts! Enjoy! Bole Chudiyan...

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Rabindranath Tagore Deception 1918 From: Selected poems, translated by William Radice, Penguin classics, 1918 Click on the pictures to read the poem How much of this poem is autobiographical I cannot know, but in 1902 Tagore’s wife died young, at 25 after...

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After I saw Ganashatru, which Satyajit Ray shot in 1989 (see Ray’s website ), I noticed that it was based on Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People , and some good soul has uploaded on YouTube Arthur Miller’s adaptation of Ibsen’s play , so I watched...

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When I first watched this 1982 movie by Mahesh Bhatt I knew it was a good one, so many people had written so already. I knew that the main roles were exceptional, Shabana Azmi (Pooja) and Smita Patil (Kavita) leading the team. But Kulbhushan Kharbanda...

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Even today, I suppose all India is bracing itself, preparing itself and half-hoping that it will not come that soon, not just yet: he might still live twenty more years, mightn’t he? Our king is such an indomitable man, why fear? But then we’re all, all...

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In the Mahābhārata, Gandhar i voluntarily blindfolded herself throughout her married life. Her husband Dhritarashtra was born blind, and on meeting him and realizing this, she decided to protest silently by blindfolding herself. (source: Wikipedia – Jatland.com...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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?...

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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....

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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...

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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...

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