Starring a very young Waheeda Rehman and a charmingly boyish Dev Anand, who had not yet cast himself into a rigid stereotype, Solva Saal is one of my favourite movies of the black and white era!
I couldn't find a very good print to watch (although from some of these pictures- courtesy: http://memsaabstory.wordpress.com/- you can tell that an HD version does exist), but the photography, crisp movements of the camera and beautiful shots in silhouette that I saw, makes me truly love Guru Dutt again.
[update - The great thing about the net is that sooner or later some wonderful soul puts up all the amazing movies you'd always wanted to see but couldn't get your hands on. :)
WATCH ONLINE: Megavideo or just choose one of the other servers from this site. The prints are exactly what I was talking about.]
His depressing, humanitarian movies had driven me off.
But Solva Saal (the sixteenth year - though there was not a single character here under eighteen) is funny, sweet, sincere and fast.
Majority of the story happens in just eight hours. From 9 pm, when beautiful and madly in love, Laaj, runs away with her boyfriend to 5 am, when she returns with Prannath, a stranger she met on the train.
She has brought with her a necklace of rare pearls that costs more than a 1000 rupees at her boyfriend's suggestion. On a station midway, he gets off with the necklace pretending to buy a cigarette case and waiting for the train to leave without him. Unfortunately, in their compartment is travelling a journalist who hears a little of their conversation and gets suspicious, so when the sly blackguard triumphantly watches the train moving away from the station, carrying away his innocent Laaj, he is stunned to see that the train slows and stops.
Laaj didn't pull the chain to stop it, but Prannath did. Eventually the guy does manage to run away with her pearl necklace and Laaj realises that he was really just using her to steal her mother's pearls.
With Prannath's help (which she only very grudgingly accepts because she has no choice), she follows the thief and the trail ends in the National Studio. Here works an actress, who is presented with the stolen bounty. Now Laaj is too ashamed of herself to go back home without the necklace and knowing herself disgraced. But Prannath promises to get the necklace as well as get her home by 5 so that her father may never know what she had done.
It is a romantic comedy, so of course there is a happy ending. But since I loved the ending too much to spoil it for you- watch it!
I couldn't find a very good print to watch (although from some of these pictures- courtesy: http://memsaabstory.wordpress.com/- you can tell that an HD version does exist), but the photography, crisp movements of the camera and beautiful shots in silhouette that I saw, makes me truly love Guru Dutt again.
[update - The great thing about the net is that sooner or later some wonderful soul puts up all the amazing movies you'd always wanted to see but couldn't get your hands on. :)
WATCH ONLINE: Megavideo or just choose one of the other servers from this site. The prints are exactly what I was talking about.]
His depressing, humanitarian movies had driven me off.
But Solva Saal (the sixteenth year - though there was not a single character here under eighteen) is funny, sweet, sincere and fast.
Majority of the story happens in just eight hours. From 9 pm, when beautiful and madly in love, Laaj, runs away with her boyfriend to 5 am, when she returns with Prannath, a stranger she met on the train.
Laaj learns that her father has fixed up her marriage with a stranger she knows nothing about and doesn't care to know because she loves someone else. Her lover convinces her to run away with him, the night before her father is to go to Delhi to meet her prospective mother-in-law and settle the marriage dates.
Laaj agrees. So after her father tells her to wake him up at 5 am, so that he can catch a plane to Delhi, and goes to sleep at 9, she leaves home and meets her love at the railway station.
She has brought with her a necklace of rare pearls that costs more than a 1000 rupees at her boyfriend's suggestion. On a station midway, he gets off with the necklace pretending to buy a cigarette case and waiting for the train to leave without him. Unfortunately, in their compartment is travelling a journalist who hears a little of their conversation and gets suspicious, so when the sly blackguard triumphantly watches the train moving away from the station, carrying away his innocent Laaj, he is stunned to see that the train slows and stops.
Laaj didn't pull the chain to stop it, but Prannath did. Eventually the guy does manage to run away with her pearl necklace and Laaj realises that he was really just using her to steal her mother's pearls.
With Prannath's help (which she only very grudgingly accepts because she has no choice), she follows the thief and the trail ends in the National Studio. Here works an actress, who is presented with the stolen bounty. Now Laaj is too ashamed of herself to go back home without the necklace and knowing herself disgraced. But Prannath promises to get the necklace as well as get her home by 5 so that her father may never know what she had done.
It is a romantic comedy, so of course there is a happy ending. But since I loved the ending too much to spoil it for you- watch it!
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