Sahara - 1958 - Meena Kumari

Sahara, 1958
Director: Lekhraj_Bhakri
Music Director: Hemant Kumar
Lyrics: Bharat Vyas
Playback: Aarti Mukherji, Hemant Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Sudha Malhotra
Choreography: Badri Prasad, Prem Dhawan
Cast: Meena Kumari, M. Rajan, Kuldip Kaur, Kanhaiyalal Chaturvedi, Badri Prasad, Leela Mishra, Niranjan Sharma, Sunder, Daisy Irani

English Translation included.

This film reminds me of nothing so much as the old American blues song - Born Under A Bad Sign - and its iconic refrain, "If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all". Poor Meena Kumari has nothing go right in her life. Made an orphan by her father's untimely death, she becomes a virtual slave in her uncle's family. She gets married off but is falsely accused of infidelity on her marriage night. She gets kicked out, winds up in the clutches of some crooks that blind her so she can be sent out begging. And it only gets worse. Of course, being an Indian film she does gain some measure of justice by by the end, but not near enough to compensate for the sheer misery she endures for years, in my opinion. The long suffering Meena Kumari is magnificent in the film and her fans will enjoy one of the films that gave rise to her becoming the "Tragedy Queen".

Meena Kumari reseived a Filmfare Best Actress nomination for the film.

There's a playlist of the nine songs available here ;
https://studio.youtube.com/playlist/P...

TOOLS USED FOR THE FILM:
AviSynth for the video editing
Audacity for the audio work.
Aegisub and Subtitle Edit for the subtitles

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
The Indian copyright law:
http://copyright.gov.in/Documents/Cop...

INDIAN COPYRIGHT ACT, 1957 CHAPTER I Preliminary (f)
"cinematograph film" means any work of visual recording on any medium produced through a process from which a moving image may be produced by any means and includes a sound recording accompanying such visual recording and cinematograph shall be construed as including any work produced by any process analogous to cinematography including video films.”

"CHAPTER V Term of Copyright 26.Term of copyright in cinematograph films.
In the case of a cinematograph film, copyright shall subsist until sixty years from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the film is published."

My words:
Indian film copyright (including video, dialog, music, lyrics, songs) lasts for sixty years and any film and its songs released more than sixty years ago is in the public domain. No extensions, no renewals, no exceptions. This film is no longer protected by copyright.