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Padosan
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Wikipedia article
'Padosan' is a 1968 Indian Hindi-language musical comedy film directed by Jyoti Swaroop and produced by Mehmood, N. C. Sippy and written by Rajendra Krishan. It is a remake of the Bengali-language film 'Pasher Bari' (1952) based on a short story of the same name by Arun Chowdhury starring Bhanu Bandyopadhyay and Sabitri Chatterjee. The film stars Sunil Dutt and Saira Banu. Kishore Kumar, Mukri, Raj Kishore and Keshto Mukherjee played the supporting roles. Mehmood as the South Indian musician and rival to Sunil Dutt is among the highlights of the film. 'Indiatimes Movies' ranked the film amongst the "Top 25 Must See Bollywood Films". Music was composed by R. D. Burman. Kishore Kumar sang for himself while Manna Dey sang for Mehmood. Many of the scenes were shot in Brindavan Gardens located near the city of Mysore.
Plot
Bhola (Sunil Dutt), an innocent young man lives with his maternal uncle (Mama) Kunwar Pratap Singh (Om Prakash). Bhola is enraged at Pratap Singh who has been searching for a girl to marry despite his wife being alive. Angry, he leaves his uncle's house and moves in to live with his Aunt (Pratap's wife). There, he finds a beautiful neighbour Bindu (Saira Banu) and falls in love with her. Bindu however, gets annoyed by Bhola and refutes his advances. Vidyapati (Kishore Kumar), who is a singer and theater actor and Bhola's friend and mentor comes to his rescue and spies on Bindu.
Bindu tolerates advances of her South Indian music teacher Master Pillai / Masterji (Mehmood). Vidyapathi realizes that Bindu loves music and that is the reason for her closeness with Master Pillai. He tries to teach Bhola to sing but fails miserably. Inspired by dubbed songs, he devises an idea and asks Bhola to mimic the lyrics to songs while he does the real singing in the background himself. Their plan to impress Bindu succeeds and Bindu slowly starts falling for Bhola, much to the chagrin of Pillai.
When singing at Bindu's birthday party, one of her friends becomes suspicious at Bhola's voice. She leads Bindu to discover Bhola's fake act. It makes Bindu angry and in a fit of rage, she agrees to the marriage proposal of Kunwar Pratap Singh, which she had earlier rejected upon knowing that he is Bhola's Maternal Uncle. Vidyapathi and his gang visit Pratap Singh and plead him to reject the proposal for his nephew's love, to which Pratap Singh agrees. This further enrages Bindu who decides to marry Pillai, just to get even with Bhola.
Helpless to stop the wedding, Vidyapathi comes up a last-ditch plan to fake Bhola's suicide. They arrange a suicide scene and start shouting and mourning Bhola's "death". Everyone arrives at the scene including Bindu who is deeply shocked and tries to wake him up. Vidyapathi tells her that only her unrequited love could have a chance of bringing the dead back and encourages her to try harder. After some more pretending, Bhola finally cries and wakes up, embracing Bindu. Everyone including Master Pillai is happy and shocked to see the power of true love. In the end, Bhola's Maternal Uncle and Aunt also reconcile and bless the newlywed couple. In the last scene of movie, Master Pillai is shown playing 'Shehnai' with tears in his eyes.
Cast
* Sunil Dutt as Bhola
* Saira Banu as Bindu
* Mehmood as Master Pillai/Masterji (Bhola's rival)
* Kishore Kumar as Vidyapati/Guru (Bhola's Friend)
* Mukri as Banarsi
* Keshto Mukherjee as Kolkatiya
* Raj Kishore as Lahorie
* Om Prakash as Kunwar Pratap Singh (Bhola's uncle)
* Moolchand as Pratap Singh's servant
* Dulari as Bhola's aunt
* Agha as Bindu's father
* Sunder as Pandit Janki Prasad/Panditji
Music
The music of the film was composed by R. D. Burman. The lyrics were written by Rajendra Krishan.
Kishore Kumar's character in the film was inspired by the personality of his uncle, Dhananjay Banerjee (a classical singer),Filmfare (115 November 1987) and music director Khemchand Prakash. The song Ek Chatur Naar was originally sung in the 1941 movie Jhoola by Ashok Kumar.
Legacy
Indiatimes Movies ranked the film amongst the "Top 25 Must See Bollywood Films" Kamal Haasan who included it in his list of "70 favourite movies since 1947" stated "Hindi films never played in Chennai for many years because of the agitation against force-feeding the language to Tamilians. When I went to see Padosan, I went to protest against it we had been told it was a film where South Indians were made fun of. We went in to agitate, came out smiling, as fans of Mehmood saab, imitating him. I told Mehmood saab this story many years later when I met him. And thats how I started watching Hindi films again."
Characters of animated series 'Guru Aur Bhole' which aired on Sony Yay, were inspired by Kishore Kumar's and Sunil Dutt's characters from the film. The voice artist for the character Guru is Amit Kumar, son of Kishore Kumar.
References
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