The header of this post is a fairly simple question I've wondered about for quite a while now, a number of years, in fact. Back in the day, going back perhaps 5-6 years, to the beginning of my Hindi film fascination, you would often find old Raj Kapoor and B.R. Chopra films on DVD that were released under the Yash Raj Films label. In fact, my own copy of Shree 420 is produced by none other than the YRF label itself.
So what happened? At what point did YRF decide that putting money into producing decent quality DVD's of the old classics was not worth the trouble? Did the rights revert back to somebody else? Or did the company just decide to look ahead instead, and promote everything new - newer films, newer stars, newer talent. I'm all for invigorating the scene, and lord knows I've enjoyed quite a few of the latest YRF releases. On the other hand, I love my oldies, too, and considering the calibre of films by Raj Kapoor, it seems a shame that their legacy is less promoted by the company than that of the other giant in their company name - Yash Chopra.
I really wonder what the reasoning is, and meanwhile I can just have my own baseless speculations. Perhaps it was simply that they sold the rights elsewhere. (Then why keep Raj in the company name?) Perhaps there's filmi politics at play here, and the company is more interested in preserving the Chopra legacy than that of Kapoor (who hardly needs the promotion, I guess). Still, as a consumer, I'd quite like for quality DVD's of Raj Kapoor's oeuvre to be released (re-released?) - there's still quite a few I've yet to see, and YRF DVD's were at least somewhat reliable when it came to release quality.
If you know anything about this, please share! I'm very interested in behind-the-scenes goings on like this.
I've done a post before where I talked about two films both named Meera, which had in terms of story, execution or even language very little to do with each other.
Similarly I'll now discuss two films called Chori Chori - the 2003 one and the 1956 one.
The 2003 Chori Chori was recommended to me a couple of times by people who knew I liked Rani Mukherji a lot, and I think every Rani fan loves her lively, "bubbly" roles, if not best then at the very least a lot. I wasn't very different in that respect, considering Bunty aur Babli is my favourite film with her in it next to Hum Tum. I had my doubts about enjoying the film, considering I'm no huge Ajay fan (don't hate the guy, just don't like him a ton, either), but enough people whose tastes I trust liked it and so I bought the film.
I was open to it, I really was, but it just never won me over and I kept watching it in 15 minute chunks because that's about all I could do before my attention span would end and I'd just conclude I didn't really care. I mean, Rani did a fine job, and I didn't hate her character. But I just didn't care, and I quit watching, and I tried again, and quit watching, and again, and again, but never far enough to actually get to the ending of the film.
And so the DVD still sits on my shelf, never watched all the way through, as I type this. And the weird thing? I can't pinpoint the problem. Somebody suggested it was Ajay's acting, that I just couldn't buy his side of the romantic pairing. I suppose .. but I'd hate to lay all the blame on him.
So anyway...
I never had any intention of watching the 50's version of Chori Chori, probably because I wasn't in general very driven to watch Raj Kapoor/Nargis films. I loved them in Shree 420, of course, but then I watched Andaz, with them and Dilip Kumar, which ended up being among the few movies I've quit watching and never gone back to.
But then one evening near Christmas they showed It Happened One Night (1934, starring Clark Gable & Claudette Colbert) on Finnish television and I loved the movie to pieces (easily one of my favourite romantic comedies of all time). Naturally I immediately went to Wikipedia and saw that it had in fact been remade in Bollywood, as the 1956 Chori Chori.
Now, it was always clear to me that ITHO was the original version and would always therefore be the best one, but I was still keen to see the Bollywood version. And this Chori Chori I definitely liked. The changes to the original story of a runaway heiress and a writer meeting on a bus journey to a big city were minimal, limited to dialogue and of course, the integration of songs and comedy characters that weren't in the original (obligatory Johnny Walker), but watching those changes was really fun for me, just having seen the original film.
While neither of the stars necessarily make my favourites category, I really enjoyed them in this film. There's a lightness to everything in the film, as there should be, but there are also a couple of very nice more emotional moments where you can tell that this a film made in Bombay, not in Los Angeles.
And what really won me over was the soundtrack. The integration of the songs can be a tad odd sometimes, relying on side characters to make sure there are enough songs, but I can be forgiving when the songs are this good.
I especially loved Jahan Main Jaati Hoon:
Fun song, and cute picturization, especially towards the end.
Anyway, I don't feel comfortable comparing the two movies with one another, because of their obvious vast differences, and the fact whoever the 2003 was made for, it wasn't for me. I know it has tons of fans and everything, and I wish I could say I enjoyed it as much as they did, but I just didn't. The older Chori Chori was my favourite purely for the fact it was easy to sit through, and an overall fun watch.
