FilmIndia (1946)

July, 1946 FILMINDI A CONVEYED "I happened to see Shantaram's Dr. Kotnis at Swastik, Bombay in the second week of this month. I had heard much of this picture and all the three pictures of Rajkamal Kalamandir were seen by me while at Bombay. I found this picture the worst with no charm, no direction, no action, no music and no reality in the story. Will Mr. Patel convey this review to Mr. Shantaram the only director of the country?" Jagat Xarain Misra (AWXPORE. PRIMITIVE BALUCHISTAN "Baluchistan seems to be absolutely separated from the rest of India. People from all over the country send you their grievance-, but no one has thought of doing it from Baluchistan which I am sure has the most. There are only two theatres running at present in Quetta, and naturally they are always crowded. The cinema halls are always full of smoke, having exhaust fans, or if any, none working. The sanitary arrangements can't be described. The lavatories kill. The furniture gives backache. The theatres observe no regulations at all. The management engages goondas and no one dares to report to authorities for fear of getting it in the neck. "The Inspector of Boilers and the Sanitary Inspector do not seen: to be much interested in their jobs. I suppose they get free passes and are satisfied." QUETTA. Jaidev Dopvani. WAIT AND SEE "I am very much, convinced by your review of V. Shantaram's "Dr. Kotnis ki Amar Kahani". I would like to know through your cohunns whether the "great" Shantaram has got courage enough to explain his position point by point as regards your grand review of Jiis picture. Has he got the courage to face boldly and prove his position thus making his name "AMAR" as he made his picture "Amar Kahani", or will he behave before you just as a "rat" does before a "cat"? Will the 'great' Shantaram do that — Mr. Patel?" KARACHI. Raj Kumar Chadha. OLD FASHIONED "The management of the Picture House and the Empire do not start advance bookings when a new picture starts. It is a pity that all the tickets are sold at the window. You can't expect everybody and specially respectable people (with or without families I to stand in a queue." KARACHI. Xandkumar Bhatia. ONCE BITTEN "Very recently I had the misfortune to see a Tamil Picture 'Valmiki'. which had all the disqualifications of a bad picture. The picture starts in the "Maro" fashion of our old Master Vithal films and till the interval one wonders what the film is about. It is only after the interval and that too towards the end. one can find some traces of Valmiki, the famous writer of Ramayana. "I rarely visit a Tamil picture and this time I had a very bad taste of it. I fervently appeal to the Tamil producers to give us something real and something appealing. Will they?" MYSORE. H. S. Venkata Rao. YES. A PITY. "It is a pity that such an excellent and topical theme as Prithvi Theatres' "Deewar" should be missed by many as it is a stage play. It would, indeed, be greatly welcome if it is filmed and shown on the screen all over the country, especially when we are shown rotten and nonsensical stuff as screen stories." .1/. Abdid Rasheed. BANGALORE. I SYMPATHIZE "I wonder why Indian producers give us too many songs in their films. Broadly speaking most of these songs, besides being bad poetry and bad music, are quite out of place. After all we do not go to the films for songs. The radio, the gramophone, the musicians, my friends and yours, would well provide us with these. What we want in the films is a story, well-knit, interesting, emotional, and leaving us the wiser. But then these out-of-place songs would come, and slow the tempo of the story, make us yawn, and take us not a step with the story. The producer would thus proceed till the interval, and then, roused, as it were from sleep, would give us one or two high-pitched scenes and round off. But surely we did not go all the way from home merely for this: a few purple patches and for the rest 'noisy shrieks'." Raghu Xath Doss Baijal KOTAH .In. J NO "Mr. Patel! Shantaram's "Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani" is not so bad a picture as to receive such a severe condemnation from your pen. Honestly speaking, I have liked the picture as one of the best hits in these times when rabid, putrid and rotten pictures from talented men like. Barua, Sardar Chandulal Shah. Shashodhar Mukherjee and Mehboob etc. are continuously killing our interest in the filmworld. Indeed, "Dr. Kotnis has its own shortcomings and does not come up to the usual Shantaram standard established by him in the past by films like "Admi" and "Padosi."* The music of this picture is not melodious. It is hard and meaningless. Shantaram's selection of his own self to play the leading part is indiscreet and void of any wisdom. This fellow, no doubt, puts in a very balanced performance with nice and appealing histrionics but unfortunately his dialogue diction is absolutely hopeless and disappointing. He speaks frog like (if at all an animal analogy is needed) . The direction is mediocre and unimaginative and this makes the story look transparent. Shantaram has not been able to maintain the continuity of situations satisfactorily. He has intermixed humour and pathos without any sense of proportion. Because of this the story becomes abrupt and loses much of its charm. Not minding these defects (we should be generous enough to allow a concession to Shantaram in consideration of his past services), "Dr. Kotnis" is a fairly 67