FilmIndia (1946)

OUR REVIEW "Gouri" Flops Ht The Box Offices! Bad Direction Kills A Good Story Idea ! This is another (Cedar Sharma picture from the Ranjit Studios and it is therefore not surprising that it has failed to attract the crowds. As critics, however, we don't keep company with the crowds. In fact, we run away Er< m them with Art as our handmaid and with purpose as our goal to a lonely corner to evaluate the work of Kedar Sharma about whom we still nurse an early impression ol being both an artist and an intellectual.' Judged from our lonely critic's corner, "Gburi" remains a dying effort ol a very tired man, who having come across a good thing just wondered what to do about it and kept wondering from the beginning to the! end of it. It is amazing how many people in this country indulge in random and erratic thinking. Take the instance of this fellow Kedar Sharma. He starts to produce a progressive picture by putting his heroine in the brothel of a city and sending a humanitarian villager to rescue her from her world of sin and viee. But just in the nick of time, Kedar Sharma shivers with conventional fever and quite hurriedly, through the mouth of the heroine, tells us that though two peop'e, one drunken and the other crazy, had passes at her she was still a virgin — untouched, even though one of them had dared to s'ap her. Kedar wants to tell the world, much against the tempo of the story, that his heroine — an overgrown woman — fought one and all and remained a virgin conlined in a solitary eel! of a brothel, in spite of constant attempts made on her. This is a bclievc-it-or-not story and we are asked to believe it by Kedar who would have to show otherwise a woman lost against her will, no longer a virgin, at the sight of whom the puritanic vi1 lager would run miles away. Besides, what would our conventional society say if they found the educated and rdmcctab'e Kedar Sharma trying to reclaim a lost woman at the hands of a Mellin's-Food-villager, untouched by human hand? "GOURI" Producers: Language: Story, Songs ^ Dialogue: Photography: Sound: Ranjit Movietone Hindustani Kedar Sharma G. K. Mchta Thakorbhai Patel Music: Khcmchand Prakash Cast: Prithviraj, Shamim. Monica Desai and others Released At: Central, Bombay. Date of Release: 16th February I94,6DIRECTOR: KEDAR SHARMA Kedar Sharma, the intellectua', fancied this theme in his wild dream but Kedar, the wordly-wise film director, trembled at its thought and sen: the purpose of this theme flying to the winds by giving us the conventional twist to the basic thematic aspect of the heroine's portrayal. Imagine the size and age of the heroine as seen in the picture and see whether you can strain your imagination enough to believe that she is still a virgin. If not in the brothel it might have been in the original village from where she came, the heroine seemed to have lost her virginity, looking at the figure presented on the screen, long long before. And yet, we are asked to bring a cloud ol fantastic imagination before our eyes and belie them by not seeing what they actual'y see. A VILLAGER'S ADVENTURE With this terrific strain on the mind and the eye we begin the story of Binoy, a young villager, who goes with Raja, the village barber, to Calcutta for the first time. Binoy strays into a brothel where he meets Gouri, the heroine, who is a virgin in a brothel, (according to Kedar Sharma). Moved by her talc of woe. Binoy rescues the maiden and returns to the village with her like the Prince in a fairy talc. to Recruit S. L. Nayar of Meripara, Meerut, has talent in acting and skill in make-up. He sent us several photos but this one has his original face. In the village, Binoy has a sweetheart in Padma, a beautifu' village belle. After the usual interludes Binoy wins his mother over and marries Gouri. Padma is heart broken and takes the usual line of the wounded tigress. It is after this marriage that Kedar Sharma's romantic instincts outstep his philosophic ideas. He cannot make up his mind whether to keep his heroine at the conventional level of dignity and poise as a Hindu wife or to make her a frivolous partner of a villager's life. The wa'y she actually behaves alter marriage, we feel that she had brought brothel mannerisms into the married life, forgetting this technique completely during her brothel sequences in which she had behaved like a normal, subdued woman. This cheap and vulgar interpretation ol her role alter marriage forfeits all the sympathy one could have with the heroine. Actually, later on, when the heroine is driven out of the home and separated from her child, no one feels sympathetic for her sad lot. Kedar Sharma's frivo'ous treatment of her married life costs the heroine the much-needed sympathy of the audi The story proceeds on the usual lines in which the heroine gets a child and through petty jealousies and intrigues by mean neighbours is mcrci 62