Pyaasa ("The Thirster") represents a high point in Indian cinema that, along with Mother India (also 1957) and major films by Raj Kapoor and Bimal Roy, confirms the 1950s as Hindi cinema's golden age. In his seventh film as a director, Guru Dutt -- taking a role originally intended for Dilip Kumar, who rejected it as too similar to his 1955 Devdas -- established his definitive screen personification as the anguished poet Vijay, whose artistic efforts are only appreciated by his loyal mother, his early but eventually materialistic college girlfriend Meena (Mala Sinha), his comical pal the masseuse Abdul Sattar (Johnny Walker), and, most profoundly, the young prostitute Gulab (Waheeda Rehman, who had premiered in Guru Dutt's production C.I.D. the previous year). Vijay's sensitivity and the world's indifference are established in a prologue depicting Vijay composing a poem in nature as he watches a bee flitting from flower to flower; suddenly, the bee is crushed by a passing stranger, the first in a series of innocents trodden under cruel heels throughout the film. Thrown out of his home by his coarse brothers, who have sold his poems as scrap paper, Vijay encounters Gulab singing one of the poems (Ho lakh musibat rasten men) she has learned from the papers purchased from the junk dealer. Flirting with Vijay as a potential customer, but rejecting him when he is found to be penniless, Gulab discovers that this "worthless" man is the poet whose work has so enchanted her. (Later, when Meena asks how a gentleman like Vijay could come to know a woman like Gulab, the latter quietly and wisely replies, "Saubhaagya se" [through good fortune]). Meanwhile, Vijay begins working for Meena's arrogant husband, the powerful publisher Mr. Ghosh (Rehman). Recalling his lost love, Vijay strains their marriage while his desire for recognition as a poet is continually thwarted. After he is sacked and considers suicide, he gives his coat to a beggar at a train yard; when an accident kills the beggar and injures Vijay, he is mistakenly pronounced dead, and Gulab succeeds in having his work published. When his volume of Urdu poetry, Parchhaiyan (Shadows), becomes a runaway hit, those who once scorned Vijay attempt to cash in on his "posthumous" fame. When Vijay is "resurrected" -- in full Christ-like pose -- at a public ceremony honoring his memory, he denounces the hypocrisy of a world that scorns living artists and profits from lies. In a conclusion added to the original, more downbeat version of the film (the shot of manuscript pages swirling around Vijay and Meena), Vijay and Gulab are reunited and leave Calcutta for parts unknown.


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IMDB: tt0050870

Hindi audio, English subpack, English and Portuguese srt subtitles

Posted originally at Karagarga by ZenKoan