Joshila (1973)

The premise of this story seemed interesting: a love story that starts in a jail -- and the beginning was promising. Amar (Dev Anand) is working in a prison camp with the other prisoners. He offers food and rest to a fellow inmate, Madanlal Dogra (Madan Puri), and also stops to pick up the scattered pages of poetry dropped by a startled visitor, Shalini (Hema Malini). Shalini is intrigued by Amar's philosophical acceptance of his position and his great gentleness of temper.

That night Amar sings from the jail one of Shalini's poems. It's a beautiful song, and I was pretty excited about the movie at this point.

Shalini, who is visiting the jailor (Manmohan Krishna) is able to visit Amar as often as she likes and to read his file. She learns that Amar is in jail for killing (in a fight) a man who had tried to rape someone. The man also happened to be the son of his boss and the brother of his girlfriend, Sapna (Raakhee). Unfortunately, the attempted rape victim had been bribed to testify falsely against Amar, and he was convicted. His father had died not long before this incident, and his family is in straightened circumstances.

Shalini is clearly interested in Amar at this point, but Amar seems to still be in love with Sapna, and everything is set up for a sweet and interesting film (I was thinking Bandini style).

Well, here's where the plot gets a bit weirder (and a lot more scattered). After Amar almost single-handedly puts down an uprising in the jail, he gets an early release. He comes home and is horrified at his family's new poverty (what was he expecting?) and discouraged with looking for a job. When he finds one, he turns it down because he finds out Sapna is now the boss's wife. Immediately after that, he finds out that his sister dances sleazy dances at a nightclub -- and Amar's philosophical acceptance starts fading fast.

At this point he runs into his old jail friend Madanlal Dogra, who offers him help, acting pretty sketchy. Amar is either unaware of Madanlal's sketchiness, or he ignores it (neither of which seems to match his intelligent, decent demeanor in the jail).

The job Madanlal is offering to split with Amar has been offered him by a man named Kundan, and the job description is to take a letter of recommendation and become estate manager to a rich landowner, then murder the landowner (so Kundan can marry the widow and seize the property).

Madanlal asks Amar to meet him later at a nightclub to learn the details. When Amar gets there, the club is crowded with frantic dancers, (seriously, these guys seems to have contracted St. Vitus' dance), and the whole atmosphere is definitely not great. Madanlal offers him a large portion of the money and the letter of recommendation he is going to give the landowner.  Then, suddenly, Madanlal gets on the wrong side of the pretty rough clientele around there, and I thought Amar would try to come to his aid. But Amar watches passively as Madanlal is murdered, and then he runs away, fearing he'll be pinned to this murder as well.

Not knowing what else to do, and taking some of Madanlal's earlier advice about being less conscientious about taking his opportunities, Amar heads off to impersonate Madanlal as estate manager, not knowing the homicidal part of the plan. On his way there he runs into Shalini again and flirts with her, coming across a little too smarmy to be comfortable.

The landowner is Thakur Saab (Pran), a handicapped gentleman with great hair. His wife is Rani (Bindu), who meaningfully examines Amar about getting the job done. And then, weirdly, she starts trying to seduce him, and Amar acts like he's going along with it, and I start thinking, "Amar, I don't think you're thinking what she's thinking." As it turns out, though, he was. Either that or he doesn't see anything wrong with hanging out with his disabled boss's wife in their bathrobes, singing sketchy songs and drinking cocktails.

I do, though, and I lost whatever interest I still had in this movie. What's weird about it, too, is that Rani still treats Amar with suspicion and distrust, and Amar still treats her with distrustful diffidence as well. Nothing seems to change about their relationship, and it doesn't seem to make sense with either of their characters to this point.

And then, when Shalini shows up (she's Thakur's daughter, of course) and begins to suspect an affair between her stepmother and Amar, Amar acts so injured.

Whatever. The first song is nice, Pran is awesome as usual, and the fake horse stunts in the final fight scene are pretty funny, but I don't really think any of them are enough to recommend the movie. There are plenty of others that are worth watching.