An impossibly innocent villager named Ganga comes to the big city to find a girl who would agree to become his wife. The first girl he meets is actually a troubled prostitute named Champa whom he manages to rescue from the brothel she has been in for some time. He takes her home and in a most typical Hindi film style, announces her as his sister. Along with them lives a crippled middle-aged man. Ganga falls for a beautiful girl named Barkha, and her parents agree to have them married, but alas, Barkha's brother Rakesh identifies Champa and the marriage is cancelled as a result. A short flashback reveals that in the past Rakesh and Champa were lovers, she left her home to marry him, but he refused to accept her and literally sold her in a brothel.
A very typical kind of a story which is quite boring at times, Pehchan is a rather melodramatic fare which does not really work. It has its moments and the music is very good, but on the whole it just doesn't make sense. The script is poorly written, the dialogues are often clichéd, and the characters lack depth. Manoj Kumar plays the male lead, and he is downright annoying as the overly innocent and naive young man. In all fairness, it is the script which lets him down. Babita is pretty, but she too is cast in a rather ordinary role. The saving grace is of course Balraj Sahni who is good as always, while Chand Usmani gets the meatiest part and does pretty well. I say give this movie a skip, there's nothing particularly good to look out for in it.
A very typical kind of a story which is quite boring at times, Pehchan is a rather melodramatic fare which does not really work. It has its moments and the music is very good, but on the whole it just doesn't make sense. The script is poorly written, the dialogues are often clichéd, and the characters lack depth. Manoj Kumar plays the male lead, and he is downright annoying as the overly innocent and naive young man. In all fairness, it is the script which lets him down. Babita is pretty, but she too is cast in a rather ordinary role. The saving grace is of course Balraj Sahni who is good as always, while Chand Usmani gets the meatiest part and does pretty well. I say give this movie a skip, there's nothing particularly good to look out for in it.
