AMAR is a typical pre-Bollywood epic from the 1950s. The running time (145 minutes) is far too long for the slight storyline, and is padded out with a never-ending stream of songs that add nothing to the primarily tragic story. The pacing is also extremely erratic: some important parts of the story are barely given a nod of recognition by director Mehboob Khan, while aspects that hold less interest, and are of less consequence, occupy an unjustifiable amount of screen time. The editing is also extremely untidy, almost irritating at times, and renders certain elements of the story ambiguous, to say the least.
AMAR, like many Indian movies of the period, relies heavily on spectacle. It's therefore a shame that it was filmed in black-and-white - no doubt an economic, not artistic decision - because, in B/W, it is, visually, a sometimes cluttered movie, and one that relies on a Cinderella storyline that would undoubtedly be enhanced by colour, despite its relatively negative stance.
This is a movie written for Indian audiences, so it's probably impossible for a western viewer to attempt a fair review - their tastes are different to ours; having seen half a dozen Indian flicks over the past few weeks, it's clear that that country's audience demands musical interludes in the majority of its tales (unless the BBC season has been hopelessly skewed), and leans towards fairy-tale plots. Nevertheless, there is one outstanding scene in this movie in which Sonia, the peasant girl, having eluded Sankat, the village bully, crawls around the bottom of a pond to avoid the steps of Sankat as he searches for her. Her moves are concealed by the thunderstorm that rages overhead (the whole episode may be intended as a homage to silent cinema, but, this being a 50s Indian movie, it's impossible to be sure) and the ingenuity evident in the filming of this scene epitomises what is so frustrating about Indian cinema of this period: nuggets of sublime creativity hidden within a surfeit of hyperbole.
AMAR, like many Indian movies of the period, relies heavily on spectacle. It's therefore a shame that it was filmed in black-and-white - no doubt an economic, not artistic decision - because, in B/W, it is, visually, a sometimes cluttered movie, and one that relies on a Cinderella storyline that would undoubtedly be enhanced by colour, despite its relatively negative stance.
This is a movie written for Indian audiences, so it's probably impossible for a western viewer to attempt a fair review - their tastes are different to ours; having seen half a dozen Indian flicks over the past few weeks, it's clear that that country's audience demands musical interludes in the majority of its tales (unless the BBC season has been hopelessly skewed), and leans towards fairy-tale plots. Nevertheless, there is one outstanding scene in this movie in which Sonia, the peasant girl, having eluded Sankat, the village bully, crawls around the bottom of a pond to avoid the steps of Sankat as he searches for her. Her moves are concealed by the thunderstorm that rages overhead (the whole episode may be intended as a homage to silent cinema, but, this being a 50s Indian movie, it's impossible to be sure) and the ingenuity evident in the filming of this scene epitomises what is so frustrating about Indian cinema of this period: nuggets of sublime creativity hidden within a surfeit of hyperbole.