For the 22nd Death Anniversary of the Exceptional Pakistani Dancer-Actress Named Rani…

Earlier this month, while I was putting the list of clips together for my Pakistani cabaret post, I did some research and saw that we were not far away from the death anniversary of Rani. I had been wanting to honor Rani for a while, and I had also talked about this exceptional dancer-actress with another “Bolly” blogger, Miranda, who does Filmi~Contrast. Actually, Miranda had sent a comment in February on a post that I had put up three and a half years earlier for the Pakistani film Umrao Jaan Ada (1972) because she had also become a fan of Rani and was busy working her way through Rani’s films. Miranda said to me, “I’m so happy I’m not the only one who likes her,” and I kind of felt the same way, because, in these blogging circles that focus mainly on Bollywood, it’s not so easy to find people who appreciate an actor, actress, or dancer from Pakistani cinema (unless it is a performer who had also made some contribution to Bollywood). But after I did a little more (minor) research on Rani, I found out that she actually had been well appreciated in Pakistan (at least), and so I had, indeed, been on to something. (For a good example of this appreciation, see the article that appeared last year in Dawn.com, In Memoriam: The Rani of Our Heart Lives On.) Meanwhile, I know that Miranda has done more of her own research on and off, and she will be writing a post about Rani in the near future, too. I will link to that post from here when it appears, and I am almost certain that it will be a more thorough post than the tribute that I am doing here, which consists of just a few clips. Nonetheless, I hope that some readers out there find these scenes as enjoyable as I did and might also at some point become fans of Rani…

The first dance I wanted to post here is a rerun from the last post. Rani won an award for this film (the Nigar Award), and it was a breakthrough for her after a few years of having a not-so-spectacular start. The film was Mera Ghar Meri Jannat. Before I had seen this dance, I had mainly seen Rani in semi-classical dances and folk dances, but I was not surprised that she was versatile enough to make a breakthrough with a mod cabaret dance. She was a very good dancer, with a lot of energy, and she had a distinctive face, with very expressive eyes (and eyebrows, as the Dawn article pointed out).

It took me a few minutes to decide which dance to post from the film where I first really noticed her, Umrao Jaan Ada (1972). I was thinking about a very dramatic dance that she did with playback from Noor Jehan, but I decided in the end to post this mujra scene that she did with playback from Runa Laila. She is very fun and charming here, and the song is also pretty nice to listen to (in fact, I understand that it was a hit.)

The film Anjuman (1970) had a few exceptional dances by Rani, and it was even more difficult to narrow my favorites down to one. In fact, I couldn’t. It was difficult to narrow them down to two also, but that’s what I did.

This first dance is a sweet semi-classical number… Though I think it is far from real classical dance, and it would be fair to say that it merely contains references to Bharatanatyam. Nonetheless, it is very enjoyable to watch. We also get some nice close-ups of those expressive Rani eyes and eyebrows.

By the way, it should be noted that the song sung by Noor Jehan for this scene had also been sung by Lata Mangeshkar for the same music director, Nisar Bazmi, in the film Kar Bhala (1956).

The other dance from Anjuman that I had to post is a more modern, seductive dance, in a scene with her frequent co-star Waheed Murad. The song is another delightful hit by Runa Laila.

Now for a somewhat different sort of scene, here is Rani being wooed (I would assume) in a rural setting in the Punjabi movie Chan Makhna (1968). There is another scene in which her character is singing this song, but I like Rani in this scene more. (Her expressions are wonderful!) The singer both on-screen and off is Inayat Hussain Bhatti. And by the way, this song can really get stuck in my head – the way many good Punjabi songs do.

The same pair starred in the film Sucha Souda (1971). This is a crazy scene from there… Rani isn’t the one doing the mod dancing this time, but she is getting great playback singing from Noor Jehan:

And now for the last selection… Actually, I didn’t know that I would be closing this post with several film scenes starring Rani and Inayat Bhatti, but as I looked for good Rani clips, I realized that there were a lot of good Punjabi films starring these two together. This final sequence is a quintessential Punjabi song from Sajjan Pyara (1968)…with vocals by Noor Jehan (of course) and terrifically energetic dancing and emoting by Rani.

I guess that most of the Rani selections that I have decided to post here come from the early side of her career (though even these films were released a little later than most of the films from India and Pakistan that I tend to favor). I gather, from what I have seen, that she actually did reach her peak in the ’60s and ’70s (at a normal age for a movie actress in this time and place to do so), but she continued to act in films as well as a TV serial up until the early ’90s. Then, in 1993, cancer took her, when she was only 46 years old. Like a few other of our favorite actresses, she died a tragically early death and went through a lot of difficulties before that. But according to the accounts that I have read, she faced it all with great strength and vitality.

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P.S. 5/30: Miranda’s Rani post is up now, and it is good: some very good general writing about Rani along with a nice, detailed review of Ek Hi Rasta (1967).

A Few Favorite Cabaret Dances From Lollywood

I know that many fans of Indian cinema love their cabaret dancers. This is evident from the continued interest that I see in the old Cuckoo post that keeps getting revived via the comments section (and which, itself, had originated from a comments section for an older Cuckoo post). For that, I mainly have Mel to thank and, more recently, Tom Daniel. They are probably doing much more to keep the post lively than I am at this point. (And by the way, if anybody doesn’t know this, you can see the latest comments in that post by looking at the sidebar on the right and following the links there.)

Lately, though, I have been very charmed or intrigued by some cabaret dances from Pakistan. These generally are a little more recent than the cabaret dances from Indian cinema that I have been posting or discussing, and that difference is obvious. On the other hand, there are close parallels between some of these Pakistani dances and the Indian dances from the same era; that is, 1960s and 1970s. But many people are very aware of the cabaret dances from Indian films made in the ’60s and ’70s, and that’s one reason I find it more interesting now to dig up the equivalent dances from Pakistan. Also, I think that these days, many people would not expect mod or rocking dances to appear in films made in Pakistan. And another reason that I am focusing on somewhat later dances from Pakistan is because their film industry started later. Of course, when Cuckoo started getting noticed and Azurie was at her peak, Pakistan didn’t even exist…

But speaking of partition, etc., a couple of the dancers that I am showing here actually were in Indian films from the 1940s, and I basically followed them to Pakistan. Actually, I followed them a while ago and did some posts about it then, but those posts are at least a few years old now, and some of them have even lost clips. So, there’s yet another reason for me to write this post today!

Without further, unnecessary prefacing, here are some fun dances:

There is something about this first dance that is very unusual. It appears in Zinda Laash (1967), which is a horror/vampire film (which might explain why it is so strange). The dancer is Cham Cham, and she is very good. .

This next dance was the breakthrough dance for Rani. Rani was very talented as both an actress and a dancer, and I also really like the way she looked. She is one of my favorite actresses from Pakistani cinema. I had originally started to notice her after watching her great performance in Umrao Jaan Ada, which came out in 1972. But this very modern dance from the 1968 film Mera Ghar Meri Jannat is just fantastic!

The actress doing this next cabaret dance in Mousiqar (1962) is one of the ones I followed from Indian films, and fans of 1940s Hindi films might recognize her face since she was the “Lara Lappa girl” in Ek Thi Ladki some 13 years earlier. I posted this Meena Shorey clip in a subtitled version five years ago, but that clip was taken down. This is one of Tom’s clips and so it’s pretty good-quality, but unfortunately, it never got subtitled. So for those who don’t understand Urdu, I’ll give you a quick summary of what the songs says, which is, basically, life stinks so you might as well just get drunk as hell every night. (I believe that’s the gist of it…) And Meena Shorey is kind of fun as the vamp in this film, though she was better as the very un-vampish kind of character that she played in Ek Thi Ladki.

Speaking of vamps… Going up to the mid 1970s, I have been watching some scenes from a “notorious” Punjabi film called Pindiwal. These are simply indescribable – and so is Neelo at this point.

And while watching such a film from the 1970s, it is amazing to think that in the 1940s and early 1950s, someone like Rehana was considered “vulgar.” But speaking of Rehana, I will close with this nice dance from Dil Ne Tujhe Maan Liya, which came out in 1963. This clip was originally sent to me by Mr. Jinx in comments to a post about five years ago. Mr. Jinx pointed out that the song, “Mutafadelun Badrun Wa Hilala,” was sung half in Urdu and half in Arabic. That’s just one unusual touch in a song-and-dance sequence that is not only a lot of fun but also unique. (Unfortunately, you’ll have to go to YouTube to watch it, but this copy is much better than the embeddable one.)