Jhumroo: a musical Kishore da

Film: Jhumroo

Director:Shanker Mukherji
Music: Kishore Kumar

Language: Hindi

An interesting yet now-typical story of ‘Jhumroo’ revolves between a rich landlord Dwarkanath (Jayant) & a village clutched under his cruelty. The story begins with Dwarkanath’s daughter Anjana (Madhubala), who returns home from the city, after many years. A simpleton pretty girl, Madhubala is appalled by her father’s brutality towards the poor. It is a classic shot taken, where a man wails in pain as he gets whipped by a fatty, but the whole thing is presented in seamless silhouette. While Anju is heaped with many regulations by her disciplinarian father, she finds herself getting attracted to a village boy Jhumroo (Kishore Kumar). Jhumroo lives in the village with his mother Kamali (Lalita Pawar) and is loved by everyone in the village.  

Now, the tragic plots of the story: who is Jhumroo? Who is Kamali? Who is Anju?

Credit: Bitter Films

Obviously Dwarkanath wouldn’t tolerate his pretty daughter roaming around with a filthy villager & he will do what every villain does. So he locks up his beautiful daughter & fixes her marriage with a funny-looking guy Ramesh (Anoop Kumar), who happens to be his secretary. This surprised me because I wondered that if Dwarkanath was so class-conscious, why he would want to fix-up his sensible daughter with a buffoon? Dwarkanath’s brother Bihari (M.Kumar) is a drunkard, who giggles through his scotch with baseless dialogues. He lives in an outhouse and happens to be in permanent depression for losing his wife & only son. Jhumroo‘s mother sniffs in dark corner of her kitchen, craving for her daughter, who was kidnapped 20 years ago. The usual tom & jerry chase between the rich & the poor, the prince & the devil and the movie obviously throws a happy ending: the hero & heroine live happily ever after!

I couldn’t understand till the end, what was the script all about. The actors definitely did full justice to their respective characters, however the sudden jerks in the story made it all look awful. The screenplay was well-written, but there were major & noticeable continuity breakages throughout the film. For instance, there is a scene where Jhumroo is helping Dwarkanath climb the hill and I could see Dwarkanath on the screen, but in the very next second there are two characters on the screen Jhumroo & Dwarkanath ‘Bhoom, he appeared & disappeared. It all seemed like director just wanted to make this film & get rid of it, as the loose ends in the film, induced criticism.

Madhubala

However, I loved the way movie opened into train whistling through the tunnel with the title track playing as Madhubala catches the breeze by her window.

Watch the Title Track!