Mahabharat (1965) MHCe DVD5 - Eng Subs - Pradeep Kumar., Padmini

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2014.11.17


Mahabharat (1965) MHCe DVD5 - Eng Subs - Pradeep Kumar, Padmini [DDR]

Mahabharat is a 1965 Hindi film based on the Indian epic Mahabharata, starring Abhi Bhattacharya as Krishna, Pradeep Kumar as Arjuna, Dara Singh as Bhima, Padmini as Draupadi, Tiwari as Duryodhan and Jeevan as Shakuni, and directed by Babubhai Mistri.
The music for the film was composed by Chitragupta and the title song was sung by Mohammed Rafi.

CAST:- Pradeep Kumar, Padmini, Dara Singh, Abhi Bhattacharya, Manhar Desai, Jeevan, Jeevankala, Achala Sachdev, Maruti, Bhushan Tiwari, Mumtaz Begum, Tiger Joginder, Anoop Kumar, Madhumati, Sujata, Johnny Whisky

Directed by Babubhai Mistry
Produced by A. A. Nadiawala
Written by Veda Vyasa, Pandit Madhur
Music by Chitragupt
Lyrics by Bharat Vyas
Playback Singers:- Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Asha Bhosle, Mahendra Kapoor, Usha Mangeshkar, Kamal Barot, Suman Kalyanpur
Running time 163 min.

Songs are included in MP3s (Many thanks to Surjit)
Mahabharat (1965) 00. Mahakavi Shri Ved Vyasa - Rafi- Title Music and Screen Credits,
Mahabharat (1965) 01. Champa Kali Chhup Chhup Jaaye Re, Asha Bhosle, Bharat Vyas, Chitragupt
Mahabharat (1965) 02. Sakhi Ri Baaje Man Ki Baansuriya, Lata Mangeshkar, Bharat Vyas, Chitragupt
Mahabharat (1965) 03. Meri Chhun Chhun Payal, Suman Kalyanpur, Kamal Barot, Bharat Vyas, Chitragupt
Mahabharat (1965) 04. He Rakhee Bandhaane Wale Kahan Chhipe Ho, Bharat Vyas, Chitragupt
Mahabharat (1965) 05. Tanan Dir Dir (Tarana), Lata, Bharat Vyas, Chitragupt
Mahabharat (1965) 06. Chakravyuh Ka Chakra Ghira Hai, Rafi, Bharat Vyas, Chitragupt
Mahabharat (1965) 07. O Chanda Aaj Ki Raat Na Dhalna, Lata, Mahendra, Bharat Vyas, Chitragupt
Mahabharat (1965) 08. Hari Hari Dharti Hai, Lata Mangeshkar, Bharat Vyas, Chitragupt

MOVIE REVIEW:- Mahabharat (1965)
Although the earliest Indian-made feature films were based on sacred stories drawn from the copious epic and puranic literature of Sanskrit, creating a cinematic genre that would become known as “mythologicals,” this genre fared poorly in Bombay cinema after the early 1920s (though it remained strong in some other regional cinemas, especially in the South), rapidly losing ground to action-packed “stunt” and “historical” films, and later to the omnibus genre of the “social”: a melodrama with a contemporary setting and theme. After the advent of sound, only a comparatively small number of mythological films—which a Bombay director once aptly described as “stunt films that happen to be about gods”— continued to be made, generally with low budgets and catering to a niche market of pious grandmothers and rustics (e.g., JAI SANTOSHI MAA, 1975, which, however, became an unexpected hit). Occasionally, though, a major director or studio would undertake a big-budget spectacle based on the great pan-Indian epics; thus special-effects pioneer Babubhai Mistry directed SAMPOORNA RAMAYAN (“complete Ramayana”) in 1961—remaking the 1936 Telugu opus that was allegedly the only film that the prudish (but Rama-loving) Mahatma Gandhi would ever consent to watch—and four years later he took on the other and darker Sanskrit epic, the fratricidal and ominous Mahabharata.

Given the infamous length and complexity of this text—100,000 couplets comprising a veritable encyclopedia of classical didactic and narrative literature—any cinematic adaptation is inevitably going to be partial and significantly condensed. In look and spirit, Mistry’s production most closely resembles a popular “Amar Chitra Katha” comic book come to life, presenting a synopsis of the epic’s core story of warring clans of cousins as a series of brief episodes, most of which are centered around tableaux that closely adhere to the conventions long established by popular visual artists—the creators of the ubiquitous and brightly-colored “god posters” of the Indian bazaar. The director assumes that his audience is already familiar with these episodes, allowing for even greater condensation; some key narrative events, indeed, are merely alluded to in passing. Sometimes badly-garbled subtitles add to the challenge that this film poses to uninitiated Anglophone viewers (see additional comments on this problem below, in the final section concerning the DVD), but those who have already been introduced to the Mahabharata story should generally be able to follow what’s going on. Though there is little in the way of original interpretation here, this brightly-tinted spectacle appears to have helped cement some of the visual and character conventions that, decades later, would be echoed B. R. Chopra’s hugely-popular (and hugely huge) 94-episode television serialization.

The film entirely skips the complex origins of the disputed succession to the throne of Hastinapura (“city of the elephant”), contested by the descendants of the half-brothers Pandu and Dhritarashtra—the Pandavas and Kauravas—and opens with the “graduation” tournament in which all these princes, schooled in weaponry by the brahman preceptor Drona, show off their skills. We see the mace-fight between the second Pandava brother Bhima (played by champion wrestler and stunt-film star Dara Singh) and his arch-enemy Duryodhana, which is ultimately interrupted by the elders when it threatens to become too violent. This is followed by the surprise challenge to the supreme archer Arjuna (Pradeep Kumar), by his near-double Karna—ostensibly a lowly charioteer’s son, though in fact the illegitimate first son of Arjuna’s own mother, Kunti, begotten by the sun god himself. After being ridiculed in the arena as a non-kshatriya (non-aristocrat and warrior, and hence an unsuitable sparring-partner for Arjuna), Karna is befriended and given a nominal kingdom by the senior Kaurava prince Duryodhana, resulting in his fateful oath of lifelong loyalty to his benefactor.

In keeping with some folk interpretations of the Mahabharata, Duryodhana is portrayed as an oafish puppet whose strings are pulled by his mama or maternal uncle, the sinister dice-master Shakuni. The latter is invariably accompanied by his son Uluk (“owl,” a bird regarded as both impure and stupid in Indian animal lore), who serves as a buffoon. Shakuni and his disciples plot the ruin of the five Pandava brothers—the rightful heirs to the Hastinapura throne—by first trying to burn them alive in a highly-combustible “Shellac Palace”—a famous episode that is here greatly compressed (the fire, set by the builder Purochana himself, occurs on the princes’ first night in Varanavata, and the tunnel through which they escape has been built without their knowledge at the command of their uncle Vidura; a wordless and momentary vignette of a peasant woman and her five sons running into the palace as a storm approaches alludes to the tribal Nishada family that is burned to death in the Pandavas’ place, confirming the false report that they have died). This quickly leads to Bhima’s encounter in the forest with a brother-sister pair of rakshasas (monstrous but magical supernaturals who guard wild places and often devour human beings), Hidimba and Hidimbaa. The latter’s love for him occasions the film’s first song and dance sequence (Champakali chhup chhup jaye re, “flower buds are bashfully hiding”), and after Bhima dispatches Hidimbaa’s brother, mother Kunti blesses their odd union (a telling contrast to the treatment of the rakshasi Shurpanakha in the Ramayana!), which produces the giant Pandava-ally Ghatotkacha (“pot-head”—of the vessel variety). When Krishna—the Pandavas’ doting cousin and also the avatar or incarnation of god Vishnu—encounters the latter in the forest, he thus learns that his favorite cousins have survived the Varanavata inferno.

This leads to his recognition of them when, disguised as brahmans, they attend the swayamvara or marriage tournament of princess Draupadi of Panchala (Padmini), a willful and sharp-tongued lass. Following the failure of Duryodhana and other princes to hit a cleverly-contrived target with an arrow, Arjuna succeeds and wins the bride’s marriage garland. But when he brings Draupadi to his mother, the latter’s accidental remark that he and his brothers must share the “alms” they have received that day leads to the story’s famous and unorthodox polyandrous marriage. Now wed to the daughter of a powerful ally, the Pandavas return to Hastinapura to demand their share of the kingdom, and the timid Dhritarashtra consents to give them the uninhabited forest tract of Khandavaprastha, which (with Krishna’s help) the divine architect Vishvakarma (not, as in the Sanskrit text, the asuric builder Maya) soon transforms for them into a glittering new capital, Indraprastha. Here the Pandavas conduct an imperial Rajasuya sacrifice in the course of which their guest-of-honor, Krishna, decapitates King Shishupala of Cedi, after the latter repeatedly insults him. The film adds a common folk expansion on this episode: Krishna nicks his finger on the buzz-saw-like discus used to accomplish the slaying, and Draupadi hastens to tear off a strip of her sari to bandage it—an act of devoted service that (viewers know) Krishna will quickly and abundantly repay. There follows the comical episode of the “Maya Mahal” (“palace of illusions”), a sort of fun-house that Vishvakarma has thrown into the Indraprastha master-plan. When Arjuna offers his rival cousins a tour, Duryodhana is dazzled by its wonders and repeatedly embarrassed by its trompe l’oeil tricks, culminating in Draupadi’s cruel mockery of him (when he falls into a concealed pond) as “the blind son of a blind father!” Returning to Hastinapura, he vows to take revenge.

This happens during the fateful dicing match, when dharma-king Yudhishthira, unaccountably possessed by gambling fever, wagers the brothers’ wife as his final stake, and loses. The epic’s two matches are here condensed into a single game of a mere three wagers, and its shocking insults and horrific vows are somewhat sanitized (we are not told that Draupadi is menstruating, Duryodhana slaps but doesn’t bare his left thigh, and Bhima vows to rip off Duhshasana’s arm rather than to tear open his chest and drink his heart’s blood), but the film endorses the popular tradition of Draupadi vowing never to bind her hair until she can oil it with Duhshasana’s blood. Much of the scene, expectedly, is devoted to Duhshasana’s attempted disrobing of the Pandavas’ queen, and to the miracle of the endless sari, invisibly renewed from Krishna’s own hand, that protects her modesty.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:-
Video Codec: MPEG-2
Video Bitrate: 2230 kbps
Video Resolution: 720x480
Video Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1
Frames Per Second: 29.970
Audio Codec: AC3
Audio Bitrate: 64kb/s CBR 48000 Hz
Audio Streams: 2
Audio Languages: Hindi
RunTime: 2:42:48
Subtitles: English
Ripped by: Trinidad [DDR]
Duration: 163 mins