Love Marriage (1959)

No, it’s not the IPL fever, at least not yet. I was off today and took out few VCDs to watch. It was tough to decide which one to watch first – Dil Deke Dekho being my all time favourite and Anupama has been on the top of my must watch list for quite some time now.

I had a tough time just deciding between these two. I then made up my mind to get up early tomorrow and watch both the movies. 🙂 Among the other three, I randomly picked one and it turned out to be Fashionable Wife.  I was actually looking forward to seeing it (just to check out how silly it is), esp after Spy in Rome – it’s also made by the same person. 😛 But fortunately or unfortunately, there was some problem with the cd.

Rishte Naate – the title itself sounded so emotional and sentimental (most of the times I simply end up buying movies without even thinking if I’ll ever watch them). And I was in no mood of seeing something depressing today. That  left me with only one option – Love Marriage!

A Cricket match in progress and that too with such a good looking batsman, I was more than happy just looking at him hitting fours and sixes.

After winning the match, he celebrates his victory with his friends at Sporting Club of Jhansi.

Scared that he might get caught by his brother, he sneaks into the house, with his shoes in his hands only to find his Bhabhi, Uma (Pranoti Ghosh) and his nephew, Munna (Master Anwar) waiting for him to hear the result of the match.

Just then his brother, Anil Kumar (Abhi Bhattacharya) comes back home from work, and all of them get back to their duties – the entire household is scared of him, including their pet dog, who quietly gets back into his basket for the night the moment he senses Anil’s arrival, signalling the others too.

Few obvious things – Sunil Kumar (Dev Anand) or Sonu, as his Bhabhi calls him, is extremely fond of his Bhabhi and nephew. He adores his brother, but is scared of him as well. Anil, on the other hand, is tired of Sonu’s kiddish ways and feels it’s high time he starts taking his life seriously.

The next morning Anil receives a letter from Mr. Choglekar. He had spoken to Mr. Choglekar regarding a job for Sunil, who’s a first class BA graduate. And Mr. Choglekar mentions in his letter that there’s a vacancy in Bombay and that Sunil should apply for it ASAP.

Bhabhi is all worried about having to send her brother-in-law away. But Anil is adamant about sending Sonu to Bombay. When Bhabhi does his packing and makes other necessary arrangements, he goes to the Sporting Club to meet his friends.

He finds one of his friends missing. One asking he finds out that he’s been too busy visiting Neelam, a kothewali bai. And all are worried that he’ll ruin his life at this rate. So they all set out to rescue him.

Sonu literally drags his friend out of there. Now Neelam takes this as a personal insult and vows to destroy Sonu and his family.

Sonu leaves for Bombay and he goes directly to his Mamaji, Naren Babu’s house, only to find it locked. On asking his neighbours he finds out that Mamaji has left for Jhansi.

With no place to stay in Bombay, he’s pretty worried. When he sees an ad in newspaper announcing an availability of a room, he goes to see it.

He manages to drive away all the other people who’ve come with the same purpose and finally goes to meet the owner but Geeta (Mala Sinha) refuses to share her flat with a guy. She wants a female flat-mate!

He meets Mr. Shampi, Geeta’s neighbour, on his way out, who narrates Geeta’s history to him – that she’s an orphan and is looked after by her Chacha-Chachi. She was studying in Bombay but started working to support the family after her Chacha passed away. And now she wants to share her flat so that she doesn’t have to pay the entire rent.

Now, it happens that Mr. Shampi knows Anil. When he learns that Sonu, aka Sunil is Anil’s brother, he decides to help him and convinces Geeta to give the room to him.

Sunil then sets out to meet Mr. Choglekar, who’s very worried about the Cricket Match the following morning because his team doesn’t have a proper batsman.

Sunil offers to help him out and after hesitating for a while he lets Sunil bat for his team. Geeta is a huge Cricket fan – she even has pictures of lots of cricketers stuck on her wall. So it’s only obvious that she’s on her way to see the match the next morning. Sunil asks her for direction to the stadium and she’s rather surprised.

She doesn’t believe that he can play – the way he behaves she thinks he’s an illiterate and good for nothing. Anyways, she takes him to the stadium with her.

Sunil not only wins the match but manages win Geeta’s heart as well. Here’s a scene from the game followed by She ne khela he se aaj cricket match.

Next day’s newspapers are flooded with Sunil’s photos and tales on how Choglekar’s team won the match because of Sunil. Sunil goes to Geeta’s room to show her that he’s not all that bad and what he witnesses there leaves him rather surprised – he sees Geeta cutting his picture from the newspaper and talking to herself about him. Pleased he runs back to his room and after checking himself in the mirror continues to the terrace to sing Kahan jaa rahe the kahan aa gaye hum.

Geeta looks so lovely here listening to him singing.

Both fall in love but are unable to express their feelings to each other.

Choglekar throws a party to celebrate his team’s victory and Sunil invites Geeta to it. Celebration and party implies that there’s one more song here. But I found this song somehow out of place, it would be more apt in a Manoj Kumar movie. But I love the dance preceding the song, no matter what Sunil says about it – Tin kanastar peet peet .

Sunil finally gets the job he had come for and better still he gets posted to Jhansi! But he’s not very happy about it because he doesn’t want to leave Geeta and go. But is delighted to learn that Geeta has quit her job and is leaving for Deolali, which falls on the way to Jhansi, where her Chachi lives. They leave by the same train the following morning.

This time Sunil is determined to tell Geeta that he’s in love with her.  And he even partially succeeds in doing so 😛

A little after Geeta arrives home, Champa, Chachi’s house maid informs her that some Sunil Babu has come to meet Chachi. This Chachi-Sunil encounter is hilarious, followed by Hum jaan gaye sarkar tum lakh karo inkaar.

Chachi is not all that well and her last wish is to see Geeta married. When she has an attack, she makes Sunil promise that he’ll marry Geeta right away. He’s little hesitant about the idea of getting married without informing his Bhaiya and Bhabhi but seeing Chachi ji’s condition, he gives in and gets married to Geeta.

He feels that he should go home first and inform his family then send for Geeta, but Chachi remains adamant that a girl, after marriage,  should follow her husband whereever he goes. So they both leave for Jhansi.

He’s so tensed that he doesn’t even know how to face his family, esp his brother.

Scared, he jumps off the rickshaw and sends Geeta alone to handle his Bhaiya and Bhabhi – to break the news of their wedding to them.  She does manage to impress Bhabhi.

Anil and Uma are more than happy with the news and they both adore Geeta. They celebrate the occasion and my wait for Helen finally ended when she came to dance to Dil se dil takaraye (the title track) – beautiful and graceful as ever.

All’s well and everybody is happy but as expected that doesn’t last forever.

Remember, Neelam and her vow to ruin the family? When I had just started wondering what happened to her, she made an entry.

Sunil ends up visiting her regularly and takes to drinking – Kareeb aao na tadpao

When Geeta learns this, she demands for a divorce!!!!

What happens to Sunil and Geeta? What leads Sunil to Neelam in the first place? Will things ever be the same again?

It was a delightful watch. I thoroughly enjoyed watching it –  lovely starcast, great performances, wonderful songs and a good story. Inspite of the twist with Neelam, and little bit of emotional atyachar towards the end (luckily it wasn’t very long), it was good.

Both Dev and Mala were loud at times, but given the storyline, I didn’t mind much. With some one like them on screen, and not to forget those lovely songs, I hardly had the time to complain about anything.

Tags: Abhi Bhattacharya, Dev Anand, Dheere dheere chal chaand gagan pe, Dil se dil takaraye, Geeta Dutt, Helen, Hum jaan gaye sarkar tum lakh karo inkaar, Kahan jaa rahe the kahan aa gaye hum, Kareeb aao na tadpao, Lata Mangeshkar, Love Marriage (1959), Love Marriage plot, Mala Sinha, Master Anwar, Pranoti Ghosh, Rafi, Shanker Jaikishan, Subodh Mukherjee, Tin kanastar peet peet