It has become a trend in Bollywood to keep the titles of movies in English now a day. Even the songs will have some English lines here and there. But do you know, as far back as 1960, Sunil Dutt starrer Hindi film ‘Ek phool char kante’ had a full fledged English song by Iqbal Singh-‘Beautiful Baby Broadway’ .
Subsequently, music director Shankar Jaikishan made singer Vivin Lobo (voice similar to Mahendra kapoor) to sing an English-German song ‘ Ich Liebe dich, I love you’ for Raj Kapoor’s film ‘Sangam’ in 1964.
Many of the films made by students from Film Institute, Pune were tagged as ‘Art Movie’ or ‘Experimental Movie’ during 70s.But long before this; Sunil Dutt had made an out & out experimental film in 60s called ‘Yadein’ featuring himself all alone. Yes, no other artists or extras featured in the film. Only the voices of Nargis dutt and children were used to depict conversation. Unfortunately, no mention of this film is made by any film writer, critic or artist while discussing trend setting movies. B.R.Chopra was another director who made a full fledged court room drama in a song less movie some time in 60s called ‘Kanoon’. The film had only a ballet dance sequence.
If you think animation is new to Bollywood and is still in its primitive stage as compared to Hollywood, here is some good news. In 1957 came a children film called ‘Aab Dilli door nahi ‘ which had a song ‘Chun Chun karti Aayi chidia’ sung by Mohammad Rafi and in this song, animal characters were show in animation!
Never herd of these films or songs? Well, check out at YouTube and search for these songs/videos to enjoy the once upon a time songs!
