Pyaasa

Vijay is a poet. Nobody publishes him; the publishers turn him down, his family counts him idle, and his brothers sell his notebooks for waste paper. He walks the streets. There was a woman he loved at university; Meena left him and married a publisher. One day Vijay meets a woman called Gulabo; she is a prostitute and knows his poems. There is a train accident. Someone wearing Vijay's coat dies and Vijay is taken for dead. His poems are printed and the book draws great attention. Then Vijay comes back. Guru Dutt directs and plays Vijay. Waheeda Rehman plays Gulabo and Mala Sinha plays Meena; Johnny Walker is in the cast. The language is Hindi. S. D. Burman wrote the music; the lyrics are Sahir Ludhianvi's and the poems are a direct part of the narrative. V. K. Murthy is the cinematographer; the lighting is an often cited example in Indian cinema. The matter it treats is a work gaining value only after its maker dies; the film states it outright as an argument. In the last section Vijay refuses his own identity, and the narrative shows that as a choice rather than an escape. It was commercially successful on release and entered the classics in later years. Guru Dutt had a short career and died young. Its limit is form; the melodrama is strong and it runs long. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Indian cinema and narratives grounded in poetry. Who it is not for: it is long, the emotional register high, and the narrative heavy.