Amitabh Bachan and Raakhee in Kabhi Kabhie (1976)

Amit Malhotra (Amitabh Bachchan) woos Pooja (Raakhee) with his poetry but, in accordance with their parents’ wishes, she marries an architect Vijay Khanna (Shashi Kapoor) while Amit goes into the family business. Pooja and Vijay form a happy family with their son, Vicki (Rishi Kapoor), who falls in love with Pinky (Neetu Singh), the daughter of Dr and Mrs Kapoor (Parikshit Sahni and Simi Garewal). The Kapoors and the Khannas discuss the dilemma they face in telling Pinky that she is adopted. Pinky finds her birth-mother, Anjali (Waheeda Rehman), who pretends to her husband, Amit, and their daughter, Sweetie (Naseem), that she is her niece. When Vicki arrives, he hides his connection with Pinky and works in Amit’s quarry; Sweetie falls in love with him. Vijay brings Pooja with him on a business trip to build a hotel. When he realises that Pooja and Amit were lovers, he laughs it off, but when Amit finds out that Pinky is the illegitimate child of Anjali and an airforce pilot who died before their marriage, he rejects Anjali. Events come to a head when Sweetie, on discovering that Vicki and Pinky are lovers, tries to commit suicide by heading for the part of the quarry where the blasting is about to begin. She is saved by the concerted efforts of all. Amit suddenly remembers Anjali and rushes back to the house to find her about to leave. The film ends with the marriage of Vicki and Pinky, where the three sets of parents perform the rites and Sweetie is the bridesmaid.

Kabhi kabhie weaves together two different stories, contrasting romantic love over two generations in the context of love in the nuclear family unit. The first story, the Romantic poet who cannot free himself from the past, was inspired by the life of the film’s lyricist, Sahir Ludhianvi, while the second is about adoption and its impact on families.

The theme of family love is very strongly developed here and is used to establish a generational contrast. The happy families are those who place an emphasis on trust and love. The norm is the nuclear family, characterized by great love between husbands and wives, parents and children, whether natural or adopted, the joking relationships of in-laws and the love of friends for each other. The final scene allows Pinky’s adopted parents, her natural parents and her new husband’s parents to take an equal part in the kanyadaan or the giving away of the bride.

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1976, Genre – Drama, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Yash Raj Films, Director – Yash Chopra, Music Director – Khaiyyam, Cast - Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, Raakhee, Waheeda Rehman, Neetu Singh, Rishi Kapoor, Naseem

Dacait (1987)

Cast: Raakhee, Sunny Deol, Meenakshi Sheshadri, Paresh Rawal

Director: Rahul Rawail

Music: R.D. Burman

Lyrics: Javed Akhtar

Capsule Review: Dacait takes us into the ravines of Chambal Valley to show the class persecution of Deol’s character and his family to the extent that he becomes an outlaw. Rawail’s treatment of the dacoit drama is singularly striking. Never before have the crust-brown deserts and the parched-yellow ravines looked so threatening and symbolic of the persecutions of the downtrodden. There are harrowing moments of violence, more damning for their emotional than physical impact. The implosive impact of Deol’s performance was complemented by Paresh Rawal’s portrayal of the loutish law-defying cop who is as unscrupulous as he is avaricious. Dacait painted a landscape of abject desolation and despair.

Shakti (1982)

This film is always remembered as the one time that Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan played father and son. While both stars had played the role of the person who becomes a criminal but remains honest and decent, here the father is the police officer while the son is the outlaw with whom he comes into conflict. Although there have been debates about who is the better actor, I think such discussions are pointless. These are two of the greatest actors in Hindi cinema and should not be viewed as competitors.

Told in flashback, by the elderly Ashwini Kumar (Dilip Kumar) to his grandson (Anil Kapoor), in front of his daughter-in-law, Roma (Smita Patil), the film begins with the birth of a son, Vijay, to Sheetal (Raakhee Gulzar) and Ashwini, a police officer. Vijay is kidnapped as a small child but never forgets his father, choosing to stay within the law even at the risk of losing his son. The gangster who helps Vijay escape becomes more of a father to him, especially when he ends up on the wrong side of the law and comes into conflict with his father. Although Roma breaks most of society’s conventional rules for women, she wants to unite her partner with his parents. However, his father must uphold the law and once again has to choose between that and his son’s life …

Most of the songs are fairly forgettable, even though composed by R. D. Burman, the film being made chiefly by the powerful dialogues, which would stand alone as great speeches but are even more powerful delivered well and in character. The majority, of course, are between the father and son, who can both speak eloquently about love and justice but are incapable of saying that they love each other or talking about their feelings in order to discover that one is constantly misinterpreting the other.

Raakhee, who had played Amitabh’s heroine in other films, becomes his mother here, while Anil Kapoor makes a guest appearance as the posthumous son. Amrish Puri plays J. K. the villain, with Kulbushan Kharbanda as the surrogate father figure. Smita Patil has a largely insignificant role in the film, although her transformation from the carefree girl who lives with a man she has only just met to a dutiful daughter-in-law gives her the desire for a family that leads to the final bonding of the fractured family.

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1982, Genre – Crime, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Mushir Alam, Mohammed Riaz, Director – Ramesh Sippy, Music Director – R.D. Burman, Cast – Raakhee Gulzar, Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan, Smita Patil, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Amrish Puri