Screening for Tuesday 21 July: Awara

Director: Raj Kapoor
Country of origin: India
Year of release: 1951
Running time: 193’

If one person can be said to have created the magic formula of Hindi cinema—Bollywood as it is commonly known—that person is director/actor/producer Raj Kapoor. And if one film more than any other set the standard for the Hindi film as we know it today, it is Kapoor’s 1951 classic, Awara.

Awara is an atmospheric social commentary about Raju (Raj Kapoor himself) a cheerful Bombay slum-dweller who has taken to petty crime to feed himself and his ailing mother, Leela. Both were thrown out on to the streets by Leela’s husband, the district judge Raghunath (Raj Kapoor’s real-life father, Prithviraj), who wrongly believed his son to not be his own but that of a sworn enemy.

While on a thieving caper, Raju meets up after many years with his childhood friend, the beautiful, budding lawyer Rita (Nargis). The two fall in love, but little do they know that Rita’s guardian is none other than Raju’s estranged father himself. A violent encounter follows the discovery, which leads to a date in court for Raju and a difficult first case for Rita.

A landmark in Hindi cinema, Awara firmly established many of its hallmarks, from the lovers hampered by a rich/poor divide, to the fantasy-dream song sequence, to the testosterone-appeasing fist fights. Yet the movie is perhaps best loved for the radiant chemistry of the two leads, Nargis and Raj Kapoor, whose romance both on and off screen remains the stuff of legend.

(Some information taken from filmjournal.net)