Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs

Posts Tagged ‘Achhoot Kanya


“Achhoot Kanya” (1936) was made at an era far far removed from the present day. It was produced by Bombay Talkies. Its producer was Himanshu Rai and it was directed by a German director called Franz Osten. It was a case of an indophile German directing a Hindi movie on a sensitive topic like untouchability and doing a great job. And those were the days when India was under British occupation too. And Ashok Kumar, a lab assistant with Bombay Talkies found himself being made the hero of the movie when the heroine Devika Rani eloped with the original hero, only to come back subsequently. And she was the wife of Himanshu Rai ! And the music director of this movie, a Parsi lady faced stiff resistance from members of her community who were against her decision of joining the film line as a music director.
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“Achhoot Kanya” (1936) was a Bombay Talkies production. It was produced by Himanshu Rai and directed by Franz Osten. The movie had Ashok Kumar and Devika Rani in lead roles with P F Pithawala, Kamta Prasad, Kishori Lal, Kusum Kumari, Pramila, Anwari, Ishrat etc also there in the movie.
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This article is written by Ava Suri, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular conributor to this blog.

Here is another song from Achhoot Kanya. This has to be one of the first bullock cart songs. In the early years of the past century, the hero and heroine did not, or could not get physical during romantic numbers. Despite that constraint, Ashok Kumar and Devika Rani share a lovely chemistry during this song. They sit close together, lean into each other and smile often.
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This article is written by Ava Suri, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.

A few days back I found myself translating a song from Achhut Kanya for Raja who is subtitling the movie for the famous DVD restorer Tom Daniel.

The movie is one of the most celebrated ones of Hindi Cinema, an early classic, and an Indo-German collaboration that starred Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar. However, what I didn’t know was that it contained a dance by Mumtaz Ali, the father of Mehmood and Minoo Mumtaz. I found Mumtaz Ali so captivating, his dancing and singing so natural and so impromptu that I went off on a google fired discovery of facts about him. As is often the case, any information on artists of this era is not easy to come by. After a day of looking high and low, I managed to unearth only one thing, that he was a scion of the royal family of Arcot.
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