Mother India 1957

Mehboob Khan directed Mother India 1957 tops the list of my most all time favorite movies. It seems like Nargis jee was born for that role. Raj kapoor wasted her in all of his movies and when she came out of his shadow she gave a performance that no actress can match till now.

Movie might seems to be sad and boring if you just read the story, but if you see the movie you will realize that it inspires us to brave enough to face every problem in life. There are a bunch of scenes to prove it. First would be the one when Radha along with her sons work in the fields when her husband leaves her. Second would be the one where whole village is leaving except her and she inspires them to stay back as these fields are our mother and we cannot leave our mother. The scene where she cooks for her sons during the floods. Epic scene is the climax in which she kills her son for doing wrong.

Mehboob khan made the movie on a lavish scale with big indoor sets and lavish art direction. I believe he could have shot the movie without big sets and interiors but he has already done so in Aurat (1940), so this time when he remade it, he took the story execution and art direction to the highest level of his career. 

Sunil dutt's role was written so well and acted even better. He perfectly was able to deliver the rebellious character of Birju's character. He was so brilliant that for the years to come he was typecast in similar type of bandit roles.

One more strange thing in the movie was that there no comic artist in the movie as was the trend those days. To accommodate that Sukhilala's character was shown as villain as well as a comedian. Kanhaiyalal as an actor showed his range as a villain in the scene where he tries to molest radha and as a comedian in all the scenes involving his an birju's interaction.

Radha's character till now remains as one of the most strong female character in hindi cinema. Nargis jee will always be remembered for this role and Mehboob Khan for his powerful direction,beautiful and lavish set design and a multi-layered story which gave us a masterpiece like Mother India. .

Munindra