Raja Jani (1972) :
Brief Review -
Mysterious Anastasia (1956) brought into Bollywood with a proper commercial Hindi masala flick. Mohan Sehgal adopts the mysterious tale of Anna, who impersonated herself as Anastasia, to Bollywood with a quintessential Hindi masala flick. Ingrid Bergman delivered a mind-blowing performance, which reminded me of Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion (1938). Hema Malini plays that role here, but since she is an Indian girl and a princess, she adds a different cuteness to the character. In the beginning, she is extra cute with that abusive language because Hindi audiences don't expect a leading lady to speak such language. When Dharmendra tells her, "Iss ghar me gaali mat do," she instantly replies, "Yeh saala gaali kon deta hai," not realizing that "saala' is sort of a gaali. Also, the way she says saala "Khuskat." Johnny Walker also gets a very nice role to play. At first, you wonder why he hates Hema's character so much, but later, when he reveals the past of his boss, you realize that he was right to hate any coming to his boss' life. That entire portion before Hema goes to the palace as a princess is so cute, so romantic, and so lovable. It was a perfect example of a pure entertaining romantic comedy. The songs are good, but nothing great or evergreen. The film sets itself in a completely different mode in the second half from what was there in Anastasia. Durga Khote's character is totally different here from the original, and the real identity of the princess remains unsolved in the original, whereas Raja Jani has a typical Indian "lost and found" formula. Dharmendra is charming, Prem Chopra and Premnath make good villains, and Durga Khote was fairly decent as Rani Maa. Overall, this is actually an entertaining adaptation of Anastasia, and it also has a lot of new things to offer in the second hour.
RATING - 6.5/10*
By - #samthebestest.
