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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

March 25, 2011, 1:38 am
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Less than two months ago, a couple whom I am distantly connected to by marriage were in town. The lady’s American; her husband is Indian, and they live in New York. We were chatting about this and that, and the lady told us an interesting story: of how, some years back, they had been invited [...]
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Ten of my favourite bird songs

March 29, 2011, 11:58 pm
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Birdsong? No, really. Bird songs. I spent a bit of last Sunday at Delhi’s Okhla Barrage Bird Sanctuary. The barrage on the Yamuna hosts a vast number of migratory birds through the winter. Most of them are gone by this time of the year, but there’s plenty of bird life still to be seen: The [...]
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Teesri Kasam (1966)

April 3, 2011, 11:38 pm
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One reason I’m glad I began this blog is that, because of it, I’ve met (although in most cases only in cyberspace) a lot of other people who are as enthusiastic about cinema as I am. Through these friends, I’ve been introduced to ‘new’ old films, to songs and directors and actors and styles of [...]
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Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

April 6, 2011, 9:45 pm
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The site stats for this blog sometimes show decidedly odd search terms that bring people to www.dustedoff.wordpress.com. ‘bollywood hide and seek behind a tree’; ‘sailing boat naked’; ‘iwanttohearmukeshsonginmukeshvoice’; ‘saree of kolkata grandmother’; and – this is one I can agree with, wholeheartedly: ‘cary grant being beautiful’. Yes, Cary Grant was very beautiful indeed (would ridiculously [...]
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Jahanara (1964)

April 12, 2011, 9:00 am
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Hindi cinema’s fascination for the Mughals is – well, fascinating. Even before independence, we were busy churning out semi-historicals such as Humayun (1945) and Shahjehan (1946); then, in the 50s and 60s, there followed a spate of rather more big-budget extravaganzas, complete with big names, vast armies, glittering palaces and superb music: Mughal-e-Azam, Taj Mahal [...]
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Rattan (1944)

April 19, 2011, 4:00 am
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In an interview, while reminiscing about his first few years in the Hindi cinema industry, Naushad mentioned how, after he had moved to Bombay and become a music director, his parents arranged his wedding. “We have told your future in-laws that you are a tailor,” his mother said. “If we’d said you were into music, [...]
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How to Steal a Million (1966)

April 26, 2011, 7:47 am
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Ever noticed how many old films were set in Paris? The Last Time I saw Paris, Gigi, An American in Paris and countless others celebrated the French capital’s reputation as one of the world’s most romantic cities. Interestingly, too, a lot of films that weren’t primarily romances were also set in Paris. Ninotchka, A Shot [...]
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Ten of my favourite ghoda-gaadi songs

April 28, 2011, 11:57 pm
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This post is dedicated not just to music directors like O P Nayyar and Naushad (who made ‘tonga beats’ an important musical style), but also to friend and blog reader pacifist, who came up with the idea. Writing to me some weeks back, pacifist made a request: that I do a list of horse-drawn vehicle [...]
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Abe-Hayat (1955)

May 4, 2011, 2:10 am
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I’ve been very busy the last couple of days, and the busy-ness doesn’t look like it’ll come to an end soon. My husband, therefore (and what a model of husbandly devotion!) offered to write the review of Abe-Hayat for me. This, mind you, without having seen the film, just on the basis of a very [...]
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I Remember Mama (1948)

May 8, 2011, 6:00 am
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The Times of India ran an interesting little article yesterday (I tried searching for it online, but sorry – can’t find it), as part of its run-up to Mother’s Day. It was a little piece about a mother who found herself reduced to a pair of hands – “can you open this?”, “can you fix [...]
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Ek Saal (1957)

May 14, 2011, 10:49 pm
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Did the producer and director Devendra Goel specialise in film names that incorporated numbers? Have a look at this (admittedly select) filmography: Ek Saal, Ek Phool Do Maali, Ek Mahal ho Sapnon ka, Do Musafir, Dus Lakh…  Was he, perhaps, doing a countdown to what he hoped would be some blockbuster magnum opus that would [...]
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North-West Frontier (1959)

May 20, 2011, 11:09 pm
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While I was writing the review of Ek Saal last week, I was reminded of this film. And that for what might seem an obscure reason to some: I S Johar was the man who suggested the story idea for Ek Saal, and he – now as actor, not writer – plays one of the [...]
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Ten of my favourite train songs

May 27, 2011, 5:10 am
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Continuing with my plan to link every post to the previous one… well, what next? (Harvey: you were close when it came to guessing!) My last post, North-West Frontier, was set mostly in a train – and that too a train in the Indian subcontinent. So it seemed appropriate to do a list of my [...]
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The Train (1970)

June 6, 2011, 1:56 am
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While, in the world of Hindi films, songs are often sung on trains, alas – trains too are occasionally dangerous places to be in. And I’m not simply talking about a train in which a heartbroken and lonely hero or heroine is travelling [such trains invariably have frightful accidents in which the hero(ine) is about [...]
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And Then There Were None (1945)

June 10, 2011, 6:22 pm
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Since The Train was, all said and done (though I’m not convinced about it) a suspense film, I decided to stick to that genre for this post as well. And Then There Were None is a classic suspense film, based on Agatha Christie’s book of the same name. Christie’s book (originally titled Ten Little Niggers) [...]
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Gumnaam (1965)

June 17, 2011, 12:22 am
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For anybody who’s been following my idea of ‘linked posts’ – each post connected to the one before, and to the one after – this probably comes as no surprise. And Then There Were None was based on Agatha Christie’s highly popular novel and play; Gumnaam is, in turn, an adaptation of And Then There [...]
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The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)

June 24, 2011, 5:45 am
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My last two posts were related in a way common in cinema: the first was a review of a film based on a book, and that was followed by a review of a film that was a remake – in another language – of that film. So here’s the first of another duo of reviews, [...]
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Bees Saal Baad (1962)

June 30, 2011, 9:49 pm
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Several people who read my last post – which, as I’d mentioned, was an adaptation of a suspense novel, and in turn was remade in another language – guessed what this post would be all about. You were all kind enough to not let the cat out of the bag, but I guess you all [...]
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Ten of my favourite Waheeda Rehman songs

July 7, 2011, 11:55 pm
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What made Bees Saal Baad such a good watch was its music, its fairly good suspense – and its lovely heroine. Waheeda Rehman had it all: an immense amount of talent, a rare beauty, a grace and dignity that few possess – and she was a superb dancer. What’s more, as I discovered in a [...]
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Some thoughts on the songs of Pyaasa

July 14, 2011, 6:02 am
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Why not begin, I thought, where I left off in my last post? The last song I listed in my post on my ten favourite Waheeda Rehman songs was Jaane kya tune kahi, from Pyaasa. Interestingly, this was also the first song in the film. It’s a film I’ve seen a few times – always [...]
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