Can’t believe it’s been four long years since my last film review. Though I thought of giving it a go once again, it never happened. This time though all the pieces fell into place.
This year, my sister’s blog completed one year and we thought of a collaborative post. Legendary actress Helen is my favourite and I have been planning a film review of one of her movies. And then I remembered Helen and her birthday on 21st November. Meanwhile my sister was thinking along the same lines.
Here’s what she adds about her thoughts,
“Harper Collins has recently published a hardback edition of ‘And Then There Were None’ by Agatha Christie with the solution sealed in an envelope at the back. That spurred me on to re-reading it. I knew that Anup was thinking of restarting his film review posts but that didn’t happen due to one thing or the other. My blog has been going for over a year where I share my views about the books I like and both of us are big fans of Agatha Christie. Suddenly a thought popped into my mind. Why not write a review of the said book with the film review of Gumnaam based on the book together. We had a chat and brother dear was up for it. So here goes….our first joint effort…. I hope you like it”
So here I’m with my review of Gumnaam (1965) and a short version of my sister’s blog-post about ‘And Then There Were None’.
Gumnaam (1965)
Starring – Nanda, Manoj Kumar, Pran, Helen, Dhumal, Tarun Bose, Manmohan, Madan Puri, Naina & Mehmood
Music composer – Shanker Jaikishan
Lyricists – Shailendra & Hasrat Jaipuri
Producer – N N Sippy
Banner – Prithvi Pictures
Director – Raja Nawathe
The film opens the way a suspense thriller should! We see a man coming out of Hotel Metropol.
A speedy car knocks him down and the man is dead then and there. The dead man is Seth Sohanlal, a wealthy man. Khanna (Hiralal) managing the things and keeping an eye on the happenings, sitting in a sleazy room overlooking the hotel, gives a nod of approval.
Now a man comes to him, collects a handsome sum and goes. We don’t get to see his face. Khanna is now busy making phone calls. Again we don’t get to see whom he is talking to, except the last call. He calls a man, a doctor and asks him to issue a death certificate. Then he calls a lady telling her to send the will to the right place. Then again to a man telling him that the will will reach him tomorrow morning and the rest he knows better.
The last call is to Asha, (Nanda) who’s Seth Sohanlal’s niece. Khanna breaks the news to her. She immediately breaks into tears. She is first distressed and then horrified as she hears gunshots from the other end. Khanna is shot dead by yet another unknown assassin.
At this point the titles roll.
As we rejoin the narrative, we see Princes club with a rock n roll song picturised on Laxmi Chhaya and Herman. The winners of a lucky draw are soon announced, who won a foreign trip for a fortnight by a chartered plane.
The winners include,
Barrister Rakesh (Pran)
Dharamdas (Dhumal)
Kishan (Manmohan)
Miss Kitty (Helen)
Dr Acharya (Madan Puri) Madhusudan Sharma (Tarun Bose)
And the final winner,
Miss Asha, who seems to have recovered from the trauma of her uncle’s death.
The trip soon starts and in addition to the seven winners, there’s the only flight attendant, Anand (Manoj Kumar) on the board. The pilot suddenly announces an emergency landing as there’s a fault in the engine. He adds that the repair will take an hour or two and the passengers may roam around if they wish. Anand seems to have taken an immediate fancy to Asha. As the party starts doing it, they hear the sound of ignition of the engine.
And to their biggest surprise and horror the plane takes off after (thankfully) throwing all their baggage out of the plane, to leave the party at an unknown place. They all try to corner the flight attendant, Anand but he summarily declares his innocence. But Asha doesn’t believe it and holds Anand responsible for it. While they all think of what next, she sets out alone to find a shelter.
However her search is immediately halted by a spooky laughter of a lady, who breaks into an ominous song. After traveling through the jungle and the sea shore, they see a mansion that appears even more spookier than the song.
The party enters the house. Barrister Rakesh, who’s expressions convey as if he’s enjoying the situation, closes the door, and everyone starts looking around only to find a human figure clad fully in white cloth lying on the table. The figure raises stiffly up the table without support, turning everyone around horrified.
However, the figure turns out to be an in-charge of the mansion (Mehmood) who will look after the guests. He will cook for them and take care of their comfort. He knows everyone by name as he has a list of guests with him. The list has everyone’s name except Anand’s.
After showing the guests their rooms, he serves them food.
In Butler’s diary, in addition to the daily expenses, Anand finds a message for all the guests accusing them guilty of a murder and that they have been deliberately chosen and brought to the place for punishment. They will have to pay for their sin with their own lives.
Everyone is shocked at the thought when the same eerie song starts again in the background sending chills down their spines.
That night Anand goes on an investigative expedition and peeps inside everyone’s room to find Rakesh flirting with Kitty, offering her a drink. Dr Acharya handling a bottle labeled poison, and Dharamdas slipping a dagger under his pillow. Kishan catches him red handed, but he neither questions him nor demands an explanation. Both of them just go their own ways.
The next day is almost uneventful till dinner time. Kitty goes to swim to conclude that there’s no way to get any help. Anand flirts with Asha, singing a song. Dharamdas is busy catching fish. While a big ship is seen passing by, all attempts to attract it fail.
When Kishan doesn’t return for dinner, Anand and Asha go in his search, only to find him on the sea shore stabbed to death. Anand finds a half burnt cigar near the corpus.
Also found is a note addressed to the group, that says the man killed by the group members is Seth Sohanlal and Kishan was driving the car that ran down Seth Sohanlal. Anand also adds that the dagger used to stab Kishan is the one possessed by Dharamdas, who used to keep it under his pillow.
Everyone accuses Dharamdas of the murder and no one believes his pleas. Sharma gives him time to prove his innocence.
His innocence however proves itself when Asha and Anand find his body in the deserted ruins near the mansion. Dr Acharya declares it as a death due to strangulation. At the moment the ominous song starts again in the background.
Rakesh accuses Dr Acharya of the murder of Dharamdas by poisoning him, as his body turns bluish afterwards. The latter denies it. But the atmosphere in the mansion gets stirred.
A chain of assassinations follows……
There’s panic, confusion, chaos in the group. There’s distrust, suspicion and horror among them.
The killer is definitely someone amongst them. But who? How to get to him / her? Is someone really taking revenge for Seth Sohanlal’s murder?
Highlights of the movie –
- For someone who hasn’t read ‘And Then There Were None’, the story would definitely appeal. And as the titles of the movie don’t at all mention about the connection, one doesn’t get an idea.
- The star cast of the movie is good enough for the viewers to watch it. Mainly Pran and Helen are good and very natural. Pran’s expressions are wonderful and his portrayal of a fraud, cheap, drunkard barrister Rakesh is very convincingly infuriating.
Helen is, for a change, not there just for a dance or song. She’s one of the main characters of the movie and portrays Kitty very well. She’s beautiful and her wardrobe is stylish. She’s brilliant as Kitty. She was nominated for the best supporting actress at the Filmfare that year - Mehmood brings moments of relief by his comedy and his Hyderabadi Hindi sounds fun. Though I’m not his fan, I really liked him in this movie. He was also nominated for the best supporting actor at the Filmfare that year.
- Nanda does her job well, though she’s underutilized. Manoj Kumar is not bad either. Tarun Bose also gets to play a different character than his usual roles. In all, the cast is one of the strong points of the movie
- The director succeeds to keep an aura of suspense throughout the movie.
Negative points –
- To make it a typical Hindi film, the lead pair is innocent and virtuous. How can they commit a sin?
- There are a few plot holes as well. A few unanswered questions!
There’s no clear cut mention or clues to the place being an isolated and deserted island. Only once Helen says it as a passing remark. Viewers don’t get the gravity of being completely cut from the rest of the world - Why does Dr Acharya carry poison on a vacation tour?
- Who steals Asha’s photo with her uncle from her room and why? Why does she suspect Anand of the offense? Anand and Asha’s quick love seems a bit too fast! She wonders who Anand is? Though she thinks over these matters, she only has Anand’s own words for it.
- How does Anand manage to get on the plane?
- How does Mehmood manage the task that he performs in his entry scene? I agree that it builds suspense, but how does he do it?
- The suspense, when it unfolds, doesn’t sound astonishing at all. It turns out to be a cliché for a regular Hindi film viewer.
Songs –
- The songs are good and popular.
- The songs occupy around 30 minutes of the movie. The title song creates a perfect aura of a suspense thriller and plays several times during the movie. It’s like the theme song of the movie. Helen’s song at the sea shore comes at a very tense moment in the movie and gives a few moments of enjoyment and relief.
- The other songs seem unnecessary and obstruct the narrative in my opinion. Only if the producer / director would have dared to make it a movie without songs. The story actually doesn’t need songs
- But the movie follows the cliché ‘A commercial Hindi masala movie has to have songs, it can’t be made without songs’
- Actually the producer and the director would have made the movie more crisp and could have added more details of the characters instead of adding songs.
I hand you over to my sister’s musings about the book on which Gumnaam is loosely based on, here goes;
And Then There Were None
By Agatha Christie
The book was first published in 1939 by Collins Crime Club. It’s 300 odd pages long so you can easily finish it in a couple of days with pleasure. The book title is inspired by a nursery rhyme Ten Little Soldier boys. The main crux of the story revolves around the rhyme with the theme of justice, answerability and accountability. Ten strangers are invited to an island under the pretense of free vacation. There are rumours around about who owns the island which is famous for incredible parties. They meet and greet on their arrival but something’s not quite as it should be. Soon the murder and mayhem begins scaring them witless. What are they to do? They plan to escape but nature conspires against them erupting into a vicious storm leaving them stranded. The blame game begins, accusations fly, they begin to suspect each other and it leads to a gripping psychological thriller.
The characters are well developed and the basic story line is simple to follow, what might be confusing in the beginning is there are a lot of them. The story is dark, emotionally charged, terrifying with some gruesome details. So I particularly liked the idea of bite sized subsections in a chapter, easy to handle. Christie lays bare the true nature of individuals revealed by the crimes they have committed. The use of bleak and isolated islands to show the entrapment and helplessness is so appealing. She herself was satisfied with this novel and she has expressed her thoughts in her biography saying “It was well received and well reviewed, but the person who was really pleased with it was myself, for I knew better than any critic how difficult it had been.” Give it a try you might enjoy (or be haunted by it) it too. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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Comparison to the book –
The book is far better than the movie. Even if we consider the limitations of a movie, the detailing of the narrative is missing in the movie. The book devotes the first chapter to the introduction of the characters as they travel to the island. In the movie, the viewers know nothing about all the characters. For a character like Kishan, we practically know nothing.
The suspense in the book, about the entire planning of the murders, thrills the readers. The book story of a lunatic for justice by taking law in his hands, can’t be compared to the story of a revenge in the movie.
Verdict –
Not a bad movie, but don’t compare with the book. The film anyway doesn’t claim any connection between the two. The book was voted the World’s favourite Christie in a global vote to mark Agatha Christie’s 125th anniversary in 2015, and it still delivers. It entertains, horrifies, frightens and holds you in its clutches right till the end.
Share your thoughts about the book and the movie with us.
Image courtesy – Ultra Movies
Disclaimer –
Mehfil Mein Meri, claims no credit for any image, screenshots or songs posted on this site. Images on this blog are posted to make the text interesting. The images and screenshots are the copyright of their original owners. The song links are shared from YouTube, only for the listening convenience of music lovers. The copyright of these songs vests with the respective owners, producers and music companies.