Veena (1948)

This review is written by Mr Arunkumar Deshmukh

VEENA(1948), a Jagat pictures film was directed by J.P.Advani and the cast was Rehman, Hemavathy ,Veera, Leela Mishra, Sulochana Chatterjee, Giridhari, Yakub etc.

Music Director was Anil Bishwas and the Lyrics were by Narendra Sharma, Prem Dehlavi and Swamy Ramanand.

The story was about a vagabond Poet-Madan whose parents were dead and his Daadi Maa wanted him to marry a “susheel ladki” Veena. He only believes in love, hence goes away to another village and falls in love with Ratna, the villege belle, whose brother Mangaloo is a cheat but Madan befriends him. He reforms Mangloo who loves Myna.

The love blooms in Ratna and Madan when his Daadima is on death bed and calls Madan. Just before dying Daadi maa marries Madan off with Veena. Madan does not accept her. The film depicts how Veena wins Madan’s love.

Vidya (1948)

The details are provided by Mr Arunkumar Deshmukh

VIDYA-1948,a Jeet Production film(They also produced the last film of Saigal,Parwana in 1947), directed by Girish Trivedi. The story,s/play and dialogues were by Yashoda Nandan Joshi, who also wrote some songs-including the above-along with Raja Mehendi Ali Khan ,Anjum Pilibhiti and Shanti Swarup Madhukar .Y.N.Joshi also acted in this film.
Music was by S.D.Burman and the cast was Dev Anand, Suraiyya, Amirbai, Maya Banerjee,  Ghulam Mohd. , Baldev,  Madan Puri, S.P.Mehra,  Baby Rambha (This is the small girl in the above song) etc.
Vidya means Education and this was the main theme of this film.Vidya(Suraiya) induces the cobbler Bhola to educate his son Chandu (Dev Anand).Bhola agrees and puts him in the same school as Vidya. Ramsingh, her uncle is also education minded and tries to impress its importance on Harisingh,vidya’s father.Harisingh continues his lavish living as a Zamindar.When Ramsingh tries again,he is thrown out,with allegation of bad desires with vidya’s mother,Laxmi.
Ramsingh establishes new school Vidya Bhavan,which becomes nationally famous.After growing up,Vidya and Chandu fall in love,which causes jealousy with Harish,their classmate and the Father’s choice for Vidya. Chandu passes B.A. with First rank(what else ?) and there are dance parties.Harish poisons Harising,who drives Chandu out of his house.
Vidya falls ill seriously,so Chandu is called. He is again insulted by the father.Vidya leaves the house with Chandu. She teaches a lesson to her father,to understand the importance of Education. Father repents and all is well in the end.
-AD 212

Vidyapati (1937)

This review is written by Mr Arunkumar Deshmukh

VIDYAPATI-1937,was indeed a landmark movie.

Produced by New Theatres, Calcutta, it was special in many respects. The director was Debaki Bose, who wrote the story, screenplay and dialogues also along with Qazi Nazrul Islam, one of the greatest Rebel poets of Bengal.

Qazi Nazrul Islam(1899-1976) migrated to Bangladesh in 1972, on that Govt’s invitation and died there only. He is called the National poet of Bangla Desh. He has written over 4000 songs and is considered next only to Tagore.

The music was by R.C.Boral and all songs were written by Kidar Sharma. Kidar Sharma was doing his stint at Calcutta, just before going over to Bombay in 1940 and churning out films in Ranjit Movietone.

It was only 5-6 years since the Talkies started and Music played a major role in any film’s success those days. People used to throng at Theatres to listen to songs, as Record availability was not that common till then and otherwise also having a Gramophone was a luxury in any case.

The film had a very impressive star cast of that time-Prithwiraj Kapoor, Pahadi Sanyal, Kanan Devi, K.C.Dey, Chhaya devi, K.N.Singh, RamPyari (more about this actress some other time), Leela Desai, Nemo, Kidar etc.

The story and screenplay was fast moving and a new technique of moving the camera on Trolleys was used-as against the usual static camera position. Music also played a major role in its success.

The story hovered around King of Mithila, Shiv Singh(Prithviraj Kapoor), who loves his wife Queen Laxmi(Chhaya Devi) very much. The king invites noted poet Vidyapati(Pahadi Sanyal-real name Nagendra Nath) as a Court Poet. He comes with his trusted follower Anuradha(Kanan Devi).

Queen Laxmi falls in love with Vidyapati.The king becomes very sad and falls ill, after knowing this. Anuradha tries to console him. The queen also is disturbed due to her duel loyalties and decides to commit suicide.

She is encouraged by the Prime Minister(K.N.Singh), for his own reasons.

At the end of the film both the King and Queen sacrifice their lives before the statue of God Vishnu(who sheds tears, in the film). K.C.Dey’s song ‘Panghat pe kanhaiya aata hai’ became very famous. In the film this song is almost 8 minutes long with chorus. He does the role of Rajguru.

Village Girl (1945)

This review is written by Mr Sadanand Kamath

VILLAGE GIRL aka GAON KI GORI (1945) was produced under the banner of Ramnik Productions and directed by K Amarnath. The star cast included Noor Jahan, Nazir, Durga Khote, Rama Shukul, Anant Marathe, Jagdish Sethi, Bikram Kapoor, Shanta Patel, Rajkumari Shukla etc. The film had 12 songs, all penned by Wali Sahab and set to music by Shyam Sundar. Since I have watched the VCD, let me share the story of the film with a caveat that the duration of the VCD is of less than 90 minutes. So there must be lots of cuts and deletions in the VCD. I noticed that at least 3 of 12 songs in the film were deleted from the VCD including an all-female qawwali song like the one in ‘Zeenat’ (1945).

In a village, mother (Durga Khote) lives with her two sons Jani (Nazir) and his very young brother (Anant Marathe). Jani is a vagabond and does nothing to earn. He spends most of his time with his friends playing quail fights. Because of his mischief and wrong doings, his mother always receives flake from the villagers, sometime branding the family as outcast. Jani on a visit to a neighbouring village meets a village girl Billo (Noor Jahan) and they fall in love. Hari (Rama Shukul) who comes from a well to do family also has a soft corner for Billo. One day Jani sees Hari giving Billo a small bag full of money to be handed over to her father. After some arguments with Hari, Jani feels that it is now time for him to show him doing something better to earn and show Billo that he also has money with him. He goes to a money lender and takes a loan for buying a pair of bullock for farming against the mortgage of his house and starts earning. When Hari comes to know about this, he goes to money lender and coerces him to tear Jani’s loan papers so that he can tell in front of the villagers that Jani bought bullocks with false promise to the money lenders. His bullocks are confiscated.

When Jani goes to the money lender in a angry mood to question him about his lies, he finds that money lender has already been murdered. Hari gets Jani framed for his murder. Later the real killer is identified and Jani is released from the jail. World War II has already started and Jani enlists himself in the army. Jani is deployed for fighting with the advancing Japanese army. He gets medal for his bravery and return home to find that his beloved Billo is about to tie the knot with Hari. Just before the wedding ceremony, a village girl comes with a new born baby to tell the gathering that Hari is the father of her baby. The village council forces Hari to marry the village girl thus paving the way for Jani and Billo to marry.

The story of the film would appear to be on an expected line as movies with more or less similar story were made in the 50s and 60s also. But I guess that this story in 1945 was something new to the audience. The film with its hit songs was one of the top grosser of 1945.

Vishwaas (1943)

This review is written by Mr Arunkumar Deshmukh

The story of film VISHWAS-1943-
Niranjan, son of Sir Rajendra falls in love with a poor Pujari’s daughter Sharada. This is resented by his father and Niranjan and Sharada leave the town. In the Train they meet dada Gyan and his daughter Prabha. Gyan Dada helps them and gets them married too. When Niranjan gets a job in another town, he starts by train. Unfortunately, the trains meets with an accident. Niranjan becomes mad due to the shock caused by the accident and he starts wandering in jungles.
Here Sharada gives birth to Baby Madhuri. She does tailoring jobs for survival. After a few years, Madhuri joins the same school where Prabha is teaching. Dada Gyan is dead by then.
Coincidentally mad Niranjan comes to this town and meets Madhuri.They become friends. Sir Rajendra and Prakash-his younger son are the trustees of the school where Prabha is teaching.
On one visit Rajendra gets attracted towards Madhuri and plays with her, while Prakash promptly falls in love with Prabha.
After a few days, Prakash refuses to marry Prabha fearing his father’s ire and Prabha decides to commit suicide. Madhuri learns this and she brings Sir Rajendra there. He has already regretted losing one son so Rajendra stops Sharada from suicide and blesses Prakash and her.
Niranjan appears there and when he tries to sit on Rajendra’s car. Prakash beats him, thinking him to be a mad man. Due to this impact Niranjan regains his memory and remembers everything.
Now everybody recognises everybody and all is well with Niranjan/Sharada and Praksah/Prabha.