Night in London
Director: Brij
Music: Laxmikant- Pyarelal
Year: 1967
Running Time: 135 Minutes
Rating: 5.0
This 1960's spy film has a lot of the
elements of a Bollywood movie that hit my sweet spot - glamorous women, twists
and turns, a large set of nasty villains, a lot of shag carpet, geographical
sightseeing, a score from Laxmikant- Pyarelal and Helen - but the film is
such a mess from a script and continuity aspect that it felt like a draft
print. Now back in the 60's perhaps most Indians did not know that London
has no beach but it does here - also river rapids - imagine their surprise
when visiting London and bringing their bathing suit. And there are so many
scenes which jump from one location suddenly to another that they must have
portals. For example, our hero jumps through a glass window onto a busy street
in the middle of a city with the bad guys right behind him - and the next
shot is of him driving a car in the middle of nowhere with two cars chasing
him. Admittedly, in Bollywood films from this period you get this sort of
thing and just overlook it - but this film is rampant with it from London
to Hong Kong. It is like Jack the Ripper did the editing.
The plot itself is rather absurd but in
spy films the more absurd often the better but this one made even less sense
than usual. A formula for the destruction of the world has been somehow and
for some reason written on a set of diamonds in a necklace that is being
held by an English Lord in London. He has no idea of this and why anyone
would put this formula in such a place is never explained. Ok - a MacGuffin
- I get it. So one group of villains - there are three after these diamonds
- who represent the Chinese - kidnap the son of the man who made these diamonds
and force his daughter Renu (Mala Sinha) - after showing her that he is in
a room where the walls close in with spikes attached - to impersonate a Princess
and go get the diamonds. That goes smoothly but then everything gets nuts.
Helen shows up to dance - disappears for
most of the film and then reappears to dance again and try to drug the hero
and then disappears again. Renu has the diamonds stolen from her but they
are not the real diamonds - but are magically tied to carrier pigeons - and
on to the scene comes lover boy Jeevan (Biswajeet) who tells her he loves
her within fifteen minutes after meeting her and who clearly has an agenda
of his own. The action moves to Hong Kong where all the bad guys, Jeevan
and Renu converge for more nonsense and lots of action. But in both London
and Hong Kong we get one of those sightseeing songs in which they traverse
the city and sing. I have to admit I enjoy these - a chance to see Hong Kong
in the 60's.
Mala Sinha was an elegant beauty who was
a big star during the 1960's in both the Hindi and Bengali film industries.
Big lustrous eyes and a perfectly oval face makes her stand out. She gets
to do no dancing in this film as all her musical numbers are pretty stationary
or walking or drugged - Helen gets the two dance numbers. She looks great
in an assortment of attire from Egyptian style to glam. This is my first
contact with Biswajeet and I can't say I was impressed - kind of a bland
chipmunk face and not much charisma - but he too was a star of both Bengali
and Hindi films in the 1960's. Both of these leads are still alive. The director
is Brij who I have to lay most of the blame on for this film for not being
as good as it should have been - he had his share of hits and this may have
been one of them - and I enjoyed his film Bombay 405 miles though it too
suffered from a surfeit of coincidences. Later in life tragically he got
drunk, killed his wife and daughter and then himself. Not a good ending.
