Awaara 1951  N/R, 193 min.
Genre: Foreign / Drama
aka: The Vagabond
Director: Raj Kapoor
Cast: Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Shashi Kapoor, Prithviraj Kapoor, K.N. Singh, Leela Chitnis, Om Prakash, B.M. Vyas, Leela Mishra, Rajoo
Indian director and actor Raj Kapoor brings a strong case of environment vs. heredity to the screen in this film. Raj (Kapoor) is estranged from his father (Prithviraj Kapoor), a judge, who had also banned Raj's mother from his house. Raj, now a tramp, lives with a low-life bandit. When Raj finds out that the bandit was responsible for his mother's fate, he kills the bandit and sets out to kill his father. Instead, he is captured and is now in court in front of his father with his father's student and Raj's childhood girlfriend, Rita (Nargis), defending Raj.
|  | |
The Deceivers 1988  PG-13, 112 min.
Genre: Action
Director: Nicholas Meyer
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Saeed Jaffrey, Shashi Kapoor, Helena Michell, Keith Michell, David Robb, Tariq Yunus, Gary Cady, Neena Gupta, Salim Ghouse
While serving in India during 1825, an agent of the British East India Company, William Savage (Pierce Brosnan), infiltrates a gang of highwaymen and finds himself succumbing to their ways and committing his own secret acts of murder.
| | |
Heat and Dust 1982  R, 133 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: James Ivory
Cast: Julie Christie, Greta Scacchi, Christopher Cazenove, Julian Glover, Susan Fleetwood, Shashi Kapoor, Madhur Jaffrey, Nickolas Grace, Zakir Hussain, Barry Foster, Patrick Godfrey, Jennifer Kendal
Fascinated by her Great-Aunt Olivia's (Greta Scacchi) letters, Anne (Julie Christie) heads to India to research Olivia's life and find out why she was a subject of scandal 60 years ago. As she investigates, Anne is pulled into India's culture as the film cuts back and forth from modern-day India and Anne's life to life in India as seen by Olivia.
| | |
In Custody 1994 PG, 123 min.
Genre: Foreign / Comedy
Director: Ismail Merchant
Cast: Shashi Kapoor, Om Puri, Shabana Azmi, Sushma Seth, Neena Gupta, Tinnu Anand, Prayag Raj, Parikshat Sahni, Sagar Arya, Alakh Nandan
Professor Deven (Om Puri) is given the opportunity to interview his hero of Urdo poetry, Nur (Shashi Kapoor). When they meet, Deven is surprised to find that Nur is now an ailing alcoholic, and his condition affects the quality of the interviews.
| | |
Siddhartha 1972   R, 90 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Conrad Rooks
Cast: Shashi Kapoor, Simi Garewal, Romesh Sharma, Pincho Kapoor, Zul Vellani, Amrik Singh, Shanti Hiranand, Kunal Kapoor
A young Indian (Shashi Kapoor) leaves his family and travels in search for the meaning of life through spiritual enlightenment. On his journey he falls in with holy men, meets a courtesan who teaches him sensual pleasures, and eventually becomes a rich merchant. Based on the Herman Hesse novel. 1 User Review
| User Review |
| | Three-dimensional version of the Herman Hesse novel | Paxcorpman 02/06/2007 | Rooks managed to do two things worth doing in this movie. First, he told the Indian version -- the "real version" -- of the story of one man's enlightenment-through-life-experience, using India as the background. It was physically stunning, beautiful beyond compare, to see India still this way, as it was through the early Seventies when Rooks made his film in Northern India.
Second, Rooks made a better use of some of the characters than even Hesse did, which is often only possible through a medium such as film. This movie contains the first real kiss in Indian cinema, and the first real love-making in an Indian film. In particular, Sashi Kapoor's eyes, after his first act of lovemaking, showed his feeling of loss of innocence, as his background through the sadhu years was overturned by one act.
Having lived in India for several years, and had the honor of meeting Conrad Rooks at a dinner party -- a small one at that -- in Bombay, I was thoroughly entranced by finally seeing the film we spent all evening discussing in 1971 in Bombay (OK, for modern purists, Mumbai...). It will remain one of the strong memories of my life, and in my mind, rates much higher than the two stars of the rater at the head of this site. As a work of art, I would give it a 3.5 or 4 star rating, and say, I have rarely enjoyed a movie made from a book as I did this one.
Paxcorpman@aol.com |
|
| | |
| 1. Awaara (1951)
aka: The Vagabond
2. The Deceivers (1988)
3. Heat and Dust (1982)
4. In Custody (1994)
5. Siddhartha (1972)
In The News
|
