Publié le 13 Mars 2013

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...

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Publié le 21 Février 2013

Hello all, It's been some time I wanted to share with you some of the clownish photos of Nutan that I've been collecting, and well, why not the occasion of her death anniversary coming up this Feb 21st? Nutan passed away 22 years ago on that date. I know...

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Publié le 20 Février 2013

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...

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Publié le 28 Janvier 2013

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...

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Publié le 20 Janvier 2013

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...

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Publié le 12 Janvier 2013

(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....

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Publié le 17 Décembre 2012

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,...

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Publié le 14 Novembre 2012

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...

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Publié le 25 Octobre 2012

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...

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Publié le 21 Octobre 2012

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...

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Publié le 22 Septembre 2012

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...

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Publié le 9 Septembre 2012

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...

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Publié le 28 Août 2012

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...

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Publié le 2 Août 2012

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...

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Publié le 1 Juillet 2012

Do you have an hour to spare? 74 minutes to be precise? WATCH THIS NOW . And then come back to read. « This » is Satyajit Ray’s little marvel called Kapurush (1965, The Coward), a marvel of economy and inspiration. The story begins at night (it ends also...

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