Anari (1975)

Title: Anari
Year: 1975

Cast: Shashi Kapur, Sharmila Tagore, Moushmi Chatterjee, Kabir Bedi

This is definitely one of Shashi's worst (though probably not as bad as "Juari"). The plot meanders all over the place, and the Director seems to have lost all control of whatever he was trying to do here :) It is rather hilarious, in its overt anxiousness to be taken seriously.

Shashi is a never-do-well kind of guy- loafs all day in his chawl


while making sheep's eyes at Sharmila, his neighbor.

Shashi's random acquaintance, Kabir Bedi is a racketeer and full of 70s gangsta cool....he often suggests that Shashi should join his gangsta ways, but our Shashi doesn't quite agree...

Shashi also has a little family: a mom and sister to bring on the ever present waterworks, as well as a elder brother- Kader Khan, playing a rare, decent role, sans innuendos, and very slim (the man, not the innuendos!)

Kader dies quickly in a accident at the factory he works at, and Shashi finds that his unwed sister is pregnant.This obviously leads to much angst (a common word in this post:))

To wed her off to her spineless boyfriend (with a money-hungry dad), Shashi needs lots of money- at that very moment, he gets an offer from Utpal Dutt (also very young here). Utpal wants Shashi to dupe Moushmi, a rich woman, by pretending to be her childhood fiance (convenient, so she wont recognize him), marry her, and kill her. Once Moushmi dies, Shashi would share her fortune with Utpal (whoa!)

.. so he decides to walk away from Sharmila on a temporary basis (too bad she doesn't know it is temporary).....

and pretends to be Moushmi's fiance,


and sing songs.

Left with her drunk dad, Sharmila decides to become a dancer at Kabir's club to help her family- this of course makes her "impure" by 70's Bollywood standards :)

After much useless angst, Shashi walks away from Moushmi, after revealing the truth to her.

But Sharmila quickly dies in Shashi's arms while saving him,

and so he goes back to Moushmi, who has waddled through to him anyways.

Notes:

1- This was so full of angst that it got really really hilarious- the fashions were a hoot, and everyone was so much in earnest that you cannot help but smile.

2- Kabir was hot, Sharmila was hot and Shashi was angst-fully hot. Moushmi..not so much.

3- A lot of loose ends:

- What happens to Shashi's mom?

- What happens to Shashi's sister after she gets married? Do her in-laws ill treat her? She just vanishes away with her new husband in the middle of the movie, never to be seen again.

- What happens to Sharmila's family? Does her drunk dad have any regrets?

- Does Shashi's character have any real concept of love? He walks out with both Sharmila and Moushmi, but is reconciled to the former's death and walks away with the latter with great alacrity.

4- Couldn't get enough of the fashion screencaps; the ones I could not accommodate above are here, just for fun: