Dillagi (’78) : Don’t miss this precious comedy
Comedy King Dharmendra and Basu Chatterjee joined hands only once and their combination gave a wonderful comedy Dillagi. During those years of 70s, Hema Malini worked mostly with Dharmendra and this working partnership ultimately converted in to their marriage.
Dharmendra plays role of a Sanskrit teacher and joins a GIRLs college where he sees Chemistry teacher, i.e. Hema Malini and it is as usual first sight love from his side. There can not be any doubt about chemistry between Hema Malini and Dharmendra. By seeing Hema Malini in this film people will forget hyped chemistry teacher of Mein Hoon Na i.e. Sushmita Sen.
Unlike forced glam looks of Sushmita Sen, Hema Malini wears simple clothes but even then she looks utterly beautiful and plays her role very well.
If one has any doubt about Dharmendra playing Sanskrit teacher then his command over the character, his body language, his get up, his thick frame glasses on eyes and his dialogue delivery will vanish any such doubt. Earlier in Chupke Chupke (Hrikesh Mukherjee) he had shown his skill in saying dialogues in extensively pure hindi and here too he impresses a lot. Here you can enjoy Sanskrit humour.
Though Dharmendra likes and loves Phhool Renu (Hema Malini) since the moment he has seen her but she does not like this Sanskrit teacher. She is too occupied in her personal life and spends most of her time with her mother and brother and mere thought of Love is waste of time for her. But Dharmendra has strong self confidence and he repeats, Hum hamesha wah pate hain jo hum chahte hain. He does not loose hope when she shows disliking towards him and he tries to attract her like a mouse, slowly but in a persistent way. He knows one day he will be able to make it possible that flowers of love will be blooming in the heart of Hema Malini also.
Its hilarious to see Phhool Renu becoming angry when Dharmendra explains erotic meanings of old Sanskrit poetry and plays. More she becomes angry, more Dharmendra teases her through his activities. He keeps Kalidas’s book in her books and when next day when she asks angrily why Sanskrit book was in her books, he replies meekly, as if it was by mistake.
Film has enough dose of comedy and Dharmendra does not leave lose thread of comedy from his hands and maintains continuously a standard level of pure comedy. Dillagi provides extensive comedy. Anytime one can watch this film and can repeat it many times. Though this is Dharmendra?s show but Hema Malini too supports him very well. She plays her role in very controlled manner as her character also does in reel life. Deven Verma as a Bangali teacher who wishes to marry Hema Malini, performs the role in his typical underplay manner.
Most hilarious scene which children always like a lot is a fighting scene where Dharmendra fights when his specs are broken and he picks up piece of his broken glasses and fights. His body language is fantastic. He brings alive on screen a cartoon character. After seeing this film one feels where is this Dharmendra- the comedy king. He was lost in violent films which he did in later years. Comedy for him is like a skilled person doing skating on ice. He twists scenes as he likes in his way. He effortlessly plays the funny role of Sanskrit teacher. A funny person who enjoys laughing all the time but he is not joker, he has determination and can get what he wishes.
Words will be less to praise Basu Chaterrjee for directing this film in this manner. Song picturisation is very good and specifically funny in the holi song ? Rang dee Rangee preet ne rang,. Yogesh has written most funny lines for this holi song, Jiji ne Jija ji ko dhokha diya are jara bhee na rangne ka mauka diya?.
If Basu Chaterjee had done a nice job in direction and Dharmendra has given him equal response by his wonderful performance then Rajesh Roshan also keeps pace with the quality of the film and brings out a wonderful collection of songs.
Most melodius one is in Lata Mangeshkar’s voice Badal to aye lehra ke chhaye, O! Aane wal par tum to na aye?. One feels to listen this song again and again.
Lata delivers one more nice song, Main kaun sa Geet Gaon, Jab Piya bas jaye mere tan man mein.
If anyone doubts genius of Lata Mangeshkar, then one can see video of this song where a single singer Lata gives two different kind of voices for a single song picturised on two actresses on screen. Lata has this amazing quality that may sing song in different manner for different actresses.
Another sweet song is a duet Prem hai, Prem hai sung by Lata and Nitin Mukesh.
Kishor Kumar gets a good duet Kar gayee mast and song goes in to the masti of Holi festival also.
Rajesh Roshan did his best work in later years of 70s. and one may confuse his songs with RD Burman. In Julie, Chalte Chalte, Dillagi, Priyatama, Khatta Meetha etc he composed music at par with RDB.
This movie is able to change depressive mood of a person in to cheerful one. This film is a standard comedy film where right from the beginning audience does not feel he can leave the film in between.
Tags: Acting, Cinematography, Dialogues, Direction, Teaching Film-making
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
“This movie is able to change depressive mood of a person in to cheerful one”
These Hrishikesh Mukherji/Basu Chatterji of movies can be really cheering. When they’ll start making these kind of movies again ? Khosla ka Ghosla have raised hopes, maybe others will follow.
Bishu:
few are trying to make light movies like directors used to make in 70s.
Sochan na tha was one such effort.
This is masterpiece from Basu Chatterjee. A Timeless film. Recomemded to watch with special one…..
i want to download this movie, pls can u say me how i can.
@Mohammed sajid,
You may try Rajshri.com. if they have this movie then you can see it online or you can download it from there after paying some 5 USD.