Mother India [1957] : Mehboob Khan

 

Mehboob Khan’s Mother India [1957] is a melorealistic movie [I prefer to use MELODRAMA when the story is written fully on fictional ground & MELOREAL when story is adapted from real incidence with fictional touch] I have seen after Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin [1954] just the following Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali [1955]. It’s evidently clear that South Asian cinema had flourished after post-independence & partitions.

 

The first half, till Ramu & Birju being grown up, is a superbly a true realist film and is commendable but it turned into melodramatic with so many subplots and compulsively emotional chronicles that made Mother India a near epical cinema.

Mother India had a probability to fall into the genre of Akira’s Rashomon [1950] in respect of the high morality of women character and with all the loopholes of social justice. But its hyperbolic melodrama kept it stayed back with the Indian formula film.

 

There are some establishing and epic scenes and sequences made Mother India [1957] an outstanding framings and compositions especially the rain scene, the flood sequence and the fire sequences had been shot in a larger scale in that period only Mughal e-Azam could achieve it in battle sequence between Akbar and Selim.

 

The most enchanting & soothing cinematic compositions in Mother India are its horizontal compositions shot by wide-angle lenses with high contrasts along with low-key lighting tinged with shades and tints of black.  And the most striking sequence I have seen in Mother India is the long fight sequence among Radha [mother] & sons [Ramu & Birju]. I am surprised Nargis and Sunil Dutt or any other actors who are spouses in real life could act as mother and son in such an intense and intimate long scene; though Nargis & Sunil were not a spouse when they were shooting. These characters are one of the best due in the Indian cinema as for on screen & off screen.

 

Mother India [1957]

Mehboob Khan

Hindi, India