FilmIndia (1940)

Our Review Director Kardar Giues His Best Picture! "Pagal"— Ranjit's Streamlined Production ! Prithviraj Gives Supreme Performance I Here is a picture that makes you forget Hollywood for a moment: It has that streamline-touch which makes Hollywood pictures smart and clever. It has a theme that intrigues and entertains. Its development is psychological and within natural limits of intellectual understanding. The main motif of the drama is love — love within the heart of Dr. Vasant or for that matter any doctor or any human being. And we are shown how this love passes through indifferent environment to 'emerge as an all destroying fire that maddens the man who struggled to harness it. THE IMAGINATIVE HERO The hero of the story is a wellknown doctor, young, handsome, popular, honest and imaginative. He is in charge of a mental hospital and strangely enough he is also popular with his mad patients. He is the only son of his parents — two simple minded, well-meaning folks who, in their utter sincerity of love, wish to get him married well. A combined photograph of two sisters is shown to the young man. He falls in love with one but somehow the parents misunderstand and get the other married to their son. On the wedding night, the tragic mistake is discovered by the hero. He runs out of the bridal chamber and out of the life of the woman who had become his wife. PRISONER OF CONVENTION Though spiritually a stranger to his companion, the man is compelled to live in the parental home and pursue life with a pretence of apparent satisfaction. The honest doctor is too imaginative and of too fine a fibre to accept this compro ! PAGAL Producers: Ranjit Movietone j Story and Dialogues: A. R. Kardar j I Cinematography: Krishna j | Gopal J j Audiography: P. C. Subedar » ) Music: Khemchand Prakash j J Cast: Madhuri, Prithviraj, I Charlie, Khatoon, etc. j I Released at: Imperial Cinema } | Date of Release: 5th July, j J 1940 j ( Director { » A. R. Kardar. mise. The sight of his wife reminds him of his love for the other sister. Very soon this love kindles a desire. This desire gives predominance to the evil inherent in every man. The erstwhile glowing flame of love that had warmed the heart now becomes a fearful fire fed by desires THE DEVIL IS BORN The young doctor rushes to his mind to find relief. Obsessed by desire the mind suggests only destructive methods. The doctor uses his knowledge of medicine to make his love-bird a helpless victim of his science. In the cradle of desire, the devil is born. He injects a medicine and makes the girl mad and in her madness as his patient makes love to her. His assistant stumbles against the truth and tries to save the girl. The doctor gets furious, loses control of himself and goes mad. The girl is saved but her sister — .the wife — is throttled to death by her mad husband. One more young man gone west because two foolish parents did not. study their son's problem from his point of view and in their blind affection thought that they could not do any thing wrong. Was he not their only son? They knew as parents what was the right thing for him. This idea ingrained in parents through ages is often responsible for major tragedies in the lives of our young men. THE SOCIAL IMPORTANCE The modern youth, specially during this transitional period between orthodoxy and modernity, is a problem to be individually studied in the light of the day to day developments. The sooner the oldfashioned parents realize this truth the better will be the lot of our dreamy youths who in their thousands either shamefully compromise with life or commit suicide. Half the tragedies in the joint Hindu A DIRECTOR AND A JOURNALIST— BEFORE AND AFTER "PAGAL" Directors don't seem to understand that journalists need good pictures to be friends. Here's what Kardar would have liked to do to Baburao Patel 20 But perhaps wouldn't risk it as Baburao Patel is equally capable of the same thing. So Kardar produced a good picture like "Pagal" and met Baburao this way. And it is the better, way.