FilmIndia (1946)

FILMINDIA April, 1946 It seems to be rather a 'catty' situation with so many around Kanan in "Rajlaxmi." king and after some more si ly talk all are brought back again to the temple on the hillock and at the express wish of the dacoit-devotee he is buried in the ground and the final miracle of arrows turning into flowers, is performed. Thus ends a good subject which only Indians can spoil and make silly and only Indians can see and believe. NO PRODUCTION VALUES As is usual with many Ranjit pictures "Prabhu-Ka-Ghar" also pre sents weak and indifferent production values The photography is far from being uniform or pleasant. The recording is more bad than good. Th^ music is common. The songs are pretty well written this time by Pandit Indra bar a few twisted words for rhyming purposes. Song No. 10 is a well-written protest in the form of a prayer to Divinity. The dialogue is hardly forceful while parts are definitely wrongly expressed. The orchestration behind the songs is very unhappy and runs away from the words leaving the artiste miserably a' one with her words. The ghost voice chosen for Bipin Gupta's song is from the hostile group. It is diametrically against the natural tone of the speaking voice of Bipin Gupta besides being too weak and tender for the role of a dacoit. When choosing ghost voices it is essential that only such voices as can be found in sympathy with the spirit of the role and in near harmony with the natural voice of the main artiste should be chosen. But in Ranjit there doesn't seem to be any such planning or design in work. It is therefore no wonder that both the songs of Bipin Gupta fail to appeal. Imagine the effect on the audience when they find a dacoit that roars and thunders throughout the early parts of the picture, suddenly singing like a cuckoo when he becomes a devotee in a semi-effeminate voice. The least that people can do is to suppress a laughter. The direction of Vajahat Mirza is in short a misdirection of so much energy. NOTHING TO REMEMBER None of the players gives any outstanding performance which can be remembered even for a day. As is usual, Khurshid does her work in her usual manner in the role of Alka. but from the beginning to the end she fails to convince about the spiritual aspect of her role. In parts she actually vamps and at other places when she works there is neither devo tion around nor any spiritual light within. Khurshid plays the role as 'prettily' as she did in 'Pardeshi' without realising that the two characters were different. Bipin Gupta makes his maiden appearance in Bombay in this picture. Had they not stripped Bipin and shown his poor flesh it would have been easier to believe his role as a ruthless dacoit. The man has a voice and stern features to match but below the neck he has poor flabby flesh which is never a distinctive feature of hardboiled dacoits. Whenever, therefore. Bipin thunders he gives an impression of a lamb roaring like a lion, Bipin's dialogues need a lot of polishing. From the histrionic point of view, however, Bipin has done his work with some understanding of the spirit of his role. Trilok Kapoor in the role of Arvind walks through the picture like the Commander of the army which he plays. Even in his love scenes with Alka he does not relax his military discipline and remains stiff, true to the military traditions. No wonder Alka could not make up her mind finally. Sheikh Hassan in the role of Sarang becomes conscious of the fact that he has to play up the comedy role with Nanda played by Sulochana Chatterjee. Between the two they continue a tug of romance constancy looking at the audience for approval and to make sure that they are doing the right thing. Theirs is an obliging perfor mance which needs constant approval from the spectators and it seems that without constant pulling they wou d not have gone to the end of the story. Prakash, a new-comer, does pretty well as Kanchan Seth without being camera-conscious. He is worth considering for future pictures. Munny Aga is the most humorous king we have seen in any motion picture. His pan-painted teeth could be seen from a mi.e away and the way he spoke his dialogues he gave an impression that the king was feeling funny somewhere at the end of his spine. From the beginning to the end he behaved like Alice in Wonderland. After a 1 said and done, no one need be very disappointed widi "Prabhu-Ka-Ghar". This picture carries further the recent traditions of Ranjit. A slight relief is that this one is a shade better. 66