Director: Mehboob Khan; Writer: Zia Sarhadi, Babubhai A. Mehta, Wajahat Mirza; Producer: Mehboob; Cinematographer: Faredoon Irani; Editor: Shamsuddin Kadri; Cast: Sheikh Mukhtar, Nalini Jaywant, Harish, Kanhaiyalal, Husn Bano, Swaroop Rani, Shahzadi, R. Choube, Baby Meena (aka Meena Kumari), Bhudo Advani, Agashe, Iqbal Begum
Duration: 02:33:19; Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1; Lightness: 0.303; Volume: 0.190; Cuts per Minute: 7.481; Words per Minute: 69.222
Summary: Classic Mehboob incest film. Elder brother Amar (Mukhtar) saves the life of his infant sister Bina and raises her, becoming very possessive about her. When Bina grows up (Jaywant), the progressive social activist Rajendra (Harish) wants to marry her. Amar then plots to get a thief, Moti (Kanhaiyalal), to marry and immediately abandon her so that she will forever remain dependent on Amar. Eventually she does get married and the brother’s grief is alleviated only when his sister delivers a child (in a remarkable sequence featuring the nurses at the hospital). The incest motif was widely used to represent the complexities of an ‘Aryan’ agrarian-feudal patriarchy (e.g. the New Theatres’
Meri Bahen, 1944, and, classically, in Ghatak’s
Subarnarekha, 1962), but Mehboob was distinctive in making it a central focus.
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