Ek Musafir Ek Hasina (1961) :
Brief Review -
A Raj Khosla Romantic Spy thriller that goes Random Harvest (1942) way, just to find preachy Indian drama right. Musafir Ek Hasina what a box office smash as I can guess why. It has a typical romantic plot with a memory loss term and then adds spy elements and woman's tragedy in to make it look emotional-enough drama for Hindi audiences, I guess. The film is about Ajay, who is sent on a mission right after the independence, but ends up getting injured while saving a Kashmiri girl, Asha. She takes good care of him but he suffer some memory loss and then they fall in love. One more crisis appears when Ajay leaves for Bombay yo find his past and gets injured again to lose his memory again. In a rare medical phenomenon of amnesia, he regains his old memory but forgets all about the last 6 months he spent with Asha. Amidst a gang trying to kill him for their secret, Asha comes back to help him regain his memory but Ajay goes testifies against her. Now, that's an interesting plot until it gets preachy in the last half hour. Things look too simple and predictable there and then you know, the happy ending and all that. Nevertheless, it held me for two and a half hours. There were too many songs, though, all slow paced. A typical OP Nayyar album, but I'd been more happy with at least one energetic romantic chartbuster. Joy Mukherjee plays his part well, but it's Sadhana who steals the show. I don't know why she was Khosla's favorite, but he made her look so good on the screen. A complete exposure of a superstar and a super talented actress on celluloid. Rajendra Nath and Dhumal's jodi adds a few laughters-nothing hilarious, though. The screenplay, cinematography and editing are on par level. Khosla's romantic spy thriller lacks excitement and suspense, but not engagement. Overall, a good entertainer for its time, but nothing for the future audience.
RATING - 6/10*
By - #samthebestest.
