Kala Bazar (1960) :
Brief Review -
Not entertaining due to the dark theme, but definitely a powerful film for society. Kala Bazar has one of the most entertaining black ticketing scenes. Raghuveer (Dev Anand) is fired from a job, and he sees a few people selling movie tickets in black. He sees a poster of Mother India at Liberty Cinema (Mumbai) and buys a bunch of tickets for sale in black. From Rs. 3 of Rs. 1.5, he intends to make it bigger, up to Rs. 10, and it reaches Rs. 100 at the end. All because of the celebrities' appearances. Nargis, Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Mehboob Khan, Mohammed Rafi, Rajendra Kumar, and many more celebrities are seen in a cameo role in that celebrity premiere of Mother India (1957) scene. It was so lovely to see them back-to-back and people cheering with their names and personalities. Raghu makes a lot of money and becomes a rich person. However, he decides to turn the Kala Bazar into a Safed Bazar after he falls in love with an honest girl who is engaged to her boyfriend. Obviously, Raghu makes enemies too for this switch (or sacrifice, if you call it that). Here, the love triangle sees a shift, and I was hoping it would turn into "Casablanca" (1942), but I was wrong. The film then turns into a social drama about bad people's reformation. The dark theme fails to entertain after those black-ticket sales scenes, and the romance isn't exciting either. "Khoya Khoya Chand" is the most beautiful song in the entire album. Kala Bazar, a semi-hit at the box office, was the only film in which all three Anand brothers shared the screen together. The year was dominated by a big-scale spectacle like Mughal-E-Azam, so I can understand why this dark and slow film didn't stand a chance to become a big grosser. Nevertheless, it was a damn important film for its time, just like many other romantic crime dramas that shed light on non-habitual criminals in society. Although stretched, this one has a good message at the end.
RATING - 7/10*
By - #samthebestest.
