FilmIndia (1948)

OUR REVIEW " Mangalsutra " Gives A Splitting Headache ! Picture Completely Flops In Entertaining ! MANGALSUTRA Producers: Golden Pictures Language: Hindustani Story: Gunjal Dialogue & Songs: V. Gaur Music: Ratanlal Photography: Jal Mistry Audiography: Panchal Cast: Urmilla, Anand, Kolhatkar, Motibai, Shanta Kumari, etc. Released At: Swastik, Bombay Date of Release: 5th December, 1947 Directed By: GUNJAL It is difficult to imagine a more rotten picture than "Mangalsutra". It is an all round idiotic show and it does not provide even a moment of relief throughout its eleven thousand and odd feet of length which one feels to have been stretched to almost a hundred thousand feet throughout the unbearable martyrdom of two and half hours. Though Gunjal's name as a director was a sufficient warning to filmgoers considering his old record of flops, it is remarkable how quickly a picture fails in Bombay. At the first show on the second d?,y of the release of the picture in the city, the seats were begging for patrons, who, of course, never come once they get a bad smell about a picture. SLEEPING CENSORS! As if the direction of the picture was not enough of a risk, even the story and the scenario have been written by Gunjal. The story opens with a very objectionable and anti-social interpretation of jail life. Gunjal tells us that jail life is all fun and free board and lodging. One of the prisoners actually says that though he was a watchman, he robbed his employers to provide his own family with lot of comforts and after two years of jail he himself would rejoin his family to enjoy the fruits of his ill-gotten gains. Another prisoner considers the jail as His Majesty's guest house where he returns for free food and lot of fun after committing crime upon crime. All this means that crime and punishment are merely toys of time and law and order are items of ridicule. The sleeping censors ought to have cut off these scenes as they tend to bring law and order into contempt a,nd make light of judicial punishment given for crime. DAYAL MAMA To this jail comes Dayal, a social worker in a village, as a poli ! I tica,l victim. His wife Laxmi and daughter Radha soon become destitute and are picked up on the road by a good man who has a shrewish wife. After several years, the wife at last succeeds in driving out Laxmi and Radha, now a grown-up and educated girl. Dayal in the meantime comes out of jail and gets heartbroken at missing his wife and daughter. He stops the wild horse of a zamindar and saves his life and in return is rewarded with shelter and friendship by the good natured zaminda.r. Mohan, the zamindar's son, looks upon Dayal as an uncle and respects him. Gunjal brings in a tiger to get rid' of the zamindar at a bogus shikar party. Dayal now becomes the guardian of the zamindar's family. At this stage, Laxmi and Radha walk into the village and Radha gets a teacher's job at the school which Dayal ha,s built in the memory of the tiger-killed zamindar. Everyone in the little village soon knows Radha and Laxmi as also Dayal, the patron saint of the village. But Dayal and Laxmi don't meet each other throughout the story, till of course Gunjal thinks them sufficiently grown-up to meet at the climax. And the village is small with four or five men, six or seven women and about fifty children. Mohan, the new zamindar, falls in love with Radha, the school teacher who teaches only proverbs and national slogans to the vil