Kudrat

Plot synopsis:
Chandramukhi (Hema Malini), accompanied by her parents, visits the hill resort of Shimla for the first time in her life. She senses some familiarity with the place and gets strange feelings for which she does not know the reason. Chandramukhi and her family meet Dr. Naresh Gupta (Vinod Khanna). Naresh is attracted towards Chandramukhi and their families talk about getting them married to each other. Mohan Kapur (Rajesh Khanna), an upcoming lawyer, comes to Shimla to meet his patron and godfather, Janak Singh (Raaj Kumar). Mohan owes his education and career to Janak Singh's generosity. Janak Singh wants his daughter Karuna, also a lawyer, to marry Mohan. Mohan agrees out of gratitude to his patron and gets engaged to Karuna.
Once, Chandramukhi dashes into Mohan and feels some strange connection with him. Mohan also meets an elderly singer named Saraswati Devi. She is shocked to see him but does not say anything. Whenever Chandramukhi meets Mohan, she acts strangely. She has the nightmares of a man named Madhav, who is Mohan's doppelganger, plummeting to death from a cliff. Naresh senses that something is amiss and coerces Mohan to help him find the truth. On an excursion, Chandramukhi remembers everything: She was Paro in previous life and Madhav was her lover. A zamindar's son raped her and accidentally murdered her.
Here, Naresh too realizes that he should step out of their life, as their romance soon gets rekindled. Here, with help of Chandramukhi, Mohan soon finds out that Saraswati Devi is Satto, Madhav's sister. Satto tells them that the villain is none other than Janak. Mohan is in a dilemma: he has broken off his engagement with Karuna for Chandramukhi and now he has to drag Janak to court. Realizing that he has no other option, Mohan decides to take matters to the court. Karuna, who doesn't have an idea of the truth, steps in to defend her father against this "conspiracy".
Here, it is revealed that Janak is indeed guilty of death of both Paro and Madhav. He raped Paro and after listening this Madhav commits suicide. Paro had cursed him that just as he took away something precious to her, Mother Nature will take something important from him too. Meanwhile, Mohan seems to be losing the case, until he finds the mansion where Paro was purportedly murdered. He also traces Billi Ram, a senile old mason, who may hold a clue to Paro's disappearance. Billi Ram remembers that Janak had called him that day to patch up a wall in the mansion.
Mohan comes to the mansion with police, who tear the wall down. A skeleton tumbles out in front of Karuna. Shocked by this revelation, Karuna goes to her home and sets it on fire. She sits inside, playing a piano and succumbs to the fire. After learning of his daughter's death and the new discovery, Janak realizes that Paro's curse has done its work. Later, Janak pleads guilty for his crime in the court and is sentenced accordingly. As he is escorted out, he and Chandramukhi see each other for a last time. After Chandramukhi and Mohan get united, Naresh heads to America.

Tags: romantic

Review:
This movie is an interesting past life chilling drama.
Hema malini and Rajesh Khana play the part of lovers in their past life only to be reawaked by the Reincarnated Hema malini who unearths a dark secret.
This film is not a full on horror flim its more of as supense murder mystery that will leave you really spooked.
Hema Malini's performance is really very good.Raj kumar plays the evil protagonist whose actions form the basis for the drama Though this wasn't the scarriest film I have ever seen it sure did spook me out for the rest of the evening.
Excellent suspense-mystery-reincarnation-drama movie that boasts of some remarkable sequences and some memorable songs.
The finest film-makers have, at times, taken the most mundane of stories and have presented them in such a novel manner that they have left the audiences spellbound.
And this is what essentially Chetan Anand did in his 1981 feature Kudrat starring Rajesh Khanna, Hema Malini, Vinod Khanna, Raajkumar, and Priya Rajvansh in principal roles.Kudrat is Chetan Anand's intricate version of Madhumati set entirely in the serene locales of Shimla.
It begins with Chandramukhi (Hema Malini) and her family returning to the place of her birth, Shimla, after twenty years.
Even though the twenty years haven't seen the twenty something Chandramukhi return to Shimla, she starts finding a lot of things about the city very familiar.
Just two days into their stay, she meets Dr. Naresh Gupta (Vinod Khanna), a family friend, and they start dating all over the city.
Just when things look like they couldn't go any better, Chandramukhi runs into Mohan Kapoor, a city advocate who has the city's richest man Choudhary Janak Singh (Rajkumar) for his guardian.
Although Mohan Kapoor is a stranger to her, she feels a quaint pull towards him, as if they had been romantically involved at some point in their lives.
For his part, even Mohan seems a bit perturbed when Chandramukhi is around him, despite having Choudhary Janak Singh's daughter and his fiancée Karuna (Priya Rajvansh) with him.Over the next few days, Chandramukhi starts getting flashes of her past life triggered by her visiting the places she used to visit with Madho (Rajesh Khanna) in her previous birth.
Not only this, she starts getting nightmares that leave her feeling utterly depressed and scared.
To help her, Naresh, also a psychiatrist, decides to do a past life regression on her and through it he discovers that what Chandramukhi was claiming was absolutely the truth.
She and Mohan Kapoor had been lovers in their past lives and had lived in the very city in which they were present at that point of time.
He relays all this to Mohan Kapoor who refuses to believe the story.
But soon, even he starts getting convinced about Chandramukhi's claim.
He and Paro (Chandramukhi in her previous birth) had been separated in their past lives because of a terrible crime.
Paro had been raped and killed by an otherwise honorable man who turns out to be none other than Choudhary Janak Singh.
What follows next is a riveting courtroom drama in which Mohan Kapoor accuses the most reputable man in Shimla (and also his beloved guardian) of a crime that he had committed twenty years ago.
What adds more drama to the proceedings is that the man is defended by none other than his own daughter Karuna, who refuses to believe that her father could commit such a ghastly act.Chetan Anand laces the screenplay with some brilliant sequences that are truly one of their kinds in Hindi cinema.
The past life of the two actors is set in the pre-independence era when Shimla was the summer capital for the Britishers.
The past-life regression is done very authentically and the way it has been shot is way ahead of its times.
The entire court-room battle and the superb culmination are captivating, and in fact haunt you till much later after finishing the movie.
Also, the scene of the crime and the subsequent few minutes, are shot in a style that is not usual for the Hindi cinema.
Hema Malini has the most complex role of all and she does well while looking absolutely gorgeous throughout the movie.
Vinod Khanna and Rajesh Khanna are able, while Rajkumar is his usual flair and glory.
Priya Rajvansh looks a misfit in the cast as despite the tons of make-up she looks far from the young lady she plays (But then she and Chetan Anand were romantically linked and he used to cast her in all his movies).
Even Aruna Irani has a critical role which she performs well.The entire feel of the movie is of melancholy and suspense.
The setting is akin to an old English mystery drama- and rightly so for Shimla is indeed a Victorian town in many ways.
What adds to the whole atmospherics is a wonderful tune by RD Burman, who is at his best in the movie.
The tune which forms the song 'Humein Tumse Pyaar Kitna' comes more than once in the film and complements the soul of the story wonderfully well.
The other memorable song in the enterprise is 'Tune O Rangeele' which is like a beautiful show-reel of both Shimla's beauty and Paro and Madho's romance.
The other songs too are good, though not as fondly recalled.Parting Note: Kudrat is an excellent suspense-mystery-reincarnation-drama movie that boasts of some remarkable sequences and some memorable songs.
Although its story seems to be a homage to Madhumati, it has its own uniqueness and own charm which is a result of the brilliant screenplay and direction by Chetan Anand.For more such write-ups on lesser talked about Hindi movies, visit moviesandnomore.blogspot.in.
Kudrat (nature) starts with the arrival of Chandramukhi (Hema Malini) with her parents to Shimla and to the pleasant surprise of her parents, an old friend of her mother has also come over there with her young son, Dr. Naresh (Vinod Khanna) who is a psychiatrist.
Naresh and Chandramukhi become friends and Naresh silently starts feeling love for Chandramukhi in his heart.
However a trouble starts taking place with Chandramukhi.
Further, she finds many places and people as quite familiar to her though she has never been to Shimla before (except when she was just an infant as told by her parents).
Besides, she gets fascinated to the public prosecutor in the city court - Mohan (Rajesh Khanna) and in a state of something like seizure, she starts calling Mohan as Maadho and herself as Paaro.
As she is undergoing fits time and again, it's a challenge for her friend, Naresh to correctly diagnose her problem and then cure it.Naresh uses hypnotism and makes Chandramukhi to revisit the bygone phase of her life.
However by default, in that hypnotic state of hers, Chandramukhi reaches back to her previous birth when she was Paaro and was in love with Maadho (now Mohan in this incarnation).
Maadho's sister, Satto (Aruna Irani) was her best friend and she was living happily with her father (Satyen Kappu) in a nearby village.
Through this experiment and talking to Satto who is still alive, Naresh comes to know that she was raped and killed by someone.
Knowing that Mohan is none else but Maadho of the previous incarnation, Naresh seeks his help to cure Chandramukhi (who was Maadho's sweetheart Paaro in that birth).
By meeting Chandramukhi frequently, Mohan feels himself as in love with her despite the fact that he is supposed to marry Karuna (Priya Raajwansh) who is a lawyer and the daughter of Mohan's godfather, Chaudhary Janak Singh (Raaj Kumar).
When Mohan invites Chandramukhi and Naresh to a party thrown by Chaudhary Janak Singh (Raaj Kumar), she gets frightened like anything to see him and runs away with a terrible shriek.Now Mohan and Naresh alongwith Satto who is still alive, starts digging the buried past related to Maadho's death and Paaro's going missing.
By hypnotizing Chandramukhi again, they now know a lot about the crime and the culprit.
There's a dismissed (and drunkard) police constable (Keshto Mukherjee) still alive who knows something significant about Paaro's death because her aggrieved father had lodged an FIR in the local police station for her disappearance and her dead body was never found.
Satto, Mohan and Naresh also seek the help of a holy man (Raj Mehra) who tells some relevant things to them with the help of Bhrigu Samhita (the holy code supposed to have been written by the great sage, Bhrigu Maharaaj).Mohan gets the case of Paaro's disappearance reopened and files a criminal suit in the local court against the supposed culprit on the basis of the evidences and the witnesses available with him.
After a gripping court-room drama and many twists in the story, justice finally prevails and the love-birds of the previous birth get united in this birth.This brilliant and intriguing story would have got messed up in the hands of an inefficient director.
However fortunately, it was directed by one of the most proficient and respected directors of Indian cinema, Chetan Anand (the elder brother of Dev Anand and Vijay Anand) who has handled very well not only the intricate script but also the high profile star cast.
He has done justice to the roles of all the actors including Raaj Kumar, Hema Malini, Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Khanna and Priya Raajwansh and presented the story on the screen in the most interesting manner.Alongwith suspense, there is a good dose of romance also in the movie which gets enhanced by the melodious songs composed by R.D. Burman and penned by seasoned lyricists like Anand Bakshi, Majrooh Sultaanpuri and Qateel Shifaai.
Sajti Hai Yun Hi Mehfil Rang Yun Hi Dhalne Do (sung by Asha Bhonsle) which is a soulful song and should be listened to peacefully.The cinematographer has ably captured the beauty of Shimla and the picturesque scenes are a treat for the eyes.
Besides, since the flash back (pertaining to the previous birth of the lead characters) belongs to the British rule in India, the milieu of that period has been very impressively brought alive on the screen for which the art director deserves a pat.Chetan Anand has given all the principal actors ample opportunity to show their talent.
Hema Malini and Vinod Khanna have emerged as the best performers.
Rajesh Khanna and Priya Rajwansh have disappointed.
The court-room scenes have gone unnecessarily over the top due to Priya's unnatural performance.
have impressed in their supporting roles.Summing up, this reincarnation based drama is a spellbinding musical suspense-thriller with a good dose of romance..
I loved the movie as it held my attention and interest till the end while offering a visual feast of sorts, replete with the ethereal beauty of Hema and the very handsome Khanna (in a supporting yet powerful role), the picturesque locales and overall colourful ambiance, be it in costumes or surroundings.
Performance wise, Hema Malini proves herself worthy of being the centre of attraction and action of the movie, vinod khanna has lived his character to perfection, Priya rajvansh though seems lacklustre initially, transforms into a beautiful substantial portrayal of a proud indefatigable daughter.
Raj kumar is....well, raj kumar again!Aruna Irani is wasted in a half baked character but the real let down is the hero himself.
Yes, Rajesh Khanna disappoints on all counts.
The music is excellent(the name of the music director guarantees that!) although the songs could be better choreographed.
The story clichéd but told with a difference.
The courtroom drama is the highlight of the movie and takes it to another level altogether.
Crowned in the end with a perfect climax,overall, the movie is a must watch for film buffs..
the lead actors and the composer redeem themselves with a superb script and camera work as well as a chilling climax , with great performances from an ensemble cast and a hauntingly melodious soundtrack which will linger in your mind forever as will the powerful dialiogues and the moral ambiguity of this period epic.this is enhanced by some brilliant acting in the court room sequences ,the British raj and the period details of forties are painstakingly captured in the reincarnation drama .the director was a master storyteller and this is a marvel he has lovingly created , the lead actress looks and acts like a truly beautiful reincarnation and the locales are equally eye-catching in the eternal Himalayas , encore.
Reincarnation story but with a difference.
The story of Kudrat is based in the city of Shimla where two lovers are born again.
SuperStar Rajesh Khanna and Hema Malini.
How the story unfolds is told very differently.
It has the stamp of the master director Chetan Anand who has used his talented cast very well.
RaajKumar and Rajesh Khanna play their roles to their best and are ably supported by Vinod Khanna, Priya Rajwansh and Hema Malini.
The music by R D Burman is excellent and few songs are immortal.
A true classic movie with a lot of British Era period buildings, atmosphere of the era goneby.
It has suspense which chills you and holds you till the end.
The court scenes are good.
Over all a must see as to how Super Star Rajesh Khanna takes on the stylish RaajKumar..
Finely crafted murder mystery from Chetan Anand.
I have to admit I do have a soft spot for Bollywood reincarnation tales like this, on top of that I am also a fan of murder mysteries, needless to say I have seen Chetan Anand's Kudrat many times after being exposed to it in the late 90's.When released it was considered a disappointment or an average success at the box office, maybe it was released too soon after Subhash Ghai's reincarnation thriller Karz, deservedly so I might add as it is the more superior movie but Kudrat is a damn fine movie in it's own right.From the first reel we are exposed to the reincarnation element of the movie as Chandramukhi (Hema Malini) says she has been to Simla before, when she left Simla when she was only a few months old and wouldn't have any recollection of it.There she meets psychiatrist Naresh (played by Vinod Khanna) and he is attracted to her.
On meeting lawyer Rajesh Khanna she is drawn to him and can't shake off the feeling that he is her reincarnated lover Manav.Then there is the characters of Janak Singh (played by Raaj Kumar) and his daughter Karuna (Priya Rajvansh) Janak Singh has raised Mohan as his own and has high hopes of him marrying his daughter.Circumstances however keep bringing Mohan and Chandramukhi together.The first half chugs along quite nicely as a reincarnation love story but however that all changes when Chandramukhi keeps Janak Singh for the first time and becomes inconsolable.When calm she alleges that Janak Singh raped and murdered her in her previous life as Paro.
Naresh desperately tries to convince Mohan into filing a case against Janak Singh, putting Mohan into a quandary as it would mean going against the very person who brought him up.Watch Kudrat to see how the movie unfolds as Naresh and Mohan try to build a case against Janak Singh leading to some very filmy but gripping courtroom scenes.Some people might be disappointed by the final scene in which the killer confesses the truth without the prosecution giving any evidence but the finale speech they make is so powerful I can personally overlook that.What I like so much about this movie is how skilfully Anand reveals the twists and keeps the suspense throughout.Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Khanna, Hema Malini all deliver fine performances.
Raaj Kumar is his usual self and doesn't experiment.
I suppose it was what the audience expected of him and he didn't want to disappoint them by not giving them what they wanted.Chetan Anand discovery Priya Rajvansh is also pretty decent.
Sadly she didn't find much other work outside of Chetan Anand movies.
Maybe it was her distinctive voice that held her back.A sad fact about her is that she was murdered in 2000 by Chetan Anand's own sons in a dispute over property.They are joined by a whole host of recognisable faces in Bollywood including Satyen Kapoo, A.K. Hangal, Pinchoo Kapoor, Aruna Irani and many more.The best thing about Kudrat however is the truly exceptional music by lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri and R.D. Burman.
Tune O Rangeele by Lata and the very catchy disco song Chodo sanam being the best of the bunch.To sum up my thoughts Kudrat is a criminally overlooked movie and deserves to be seen by fans of Bollywood suspense thriller..
This Bollywood movie holds all the elements a good movie is supposed to have.
Romance, thriller, suspense.
The story - POSSIBLE SPOILERS - is about a young woman (Hema Malini) remembering events from her past life as Paro who was madly in love with Madho, and who one day just disappeared.
Dharmendra plays the role of the reincarnated Madho, but unlike Chandramukhi he does not remember his past life and believes Chandramukhi to be mentally ill.
With the help of a friend psychiatrist (Vinod Khanna) Chandramukhi tries to solve the mystery that haunts her.
In flashbacks we see the story unfold which makes for a very suspenseful ride.
One can't help but hope that justice will be served for the two lost souls of Paro and Madho.
The story is beautiful as is the scenery of Simla.
I strongly recommend this movie.****/5 stars.
This film is a waste.
Priya Rajvnash should have long given up acting.
Its a wonder how she was given to continue, maybe there could have been a special low banning her entry to any film studio.
They are a laugh riot.Raj Kumar too lives up to his Jaani image.
He proves for the nth time that people can keep on acting in Hindi films as long as they have a stupid bunch of people to watch them perform.There is nothing, absolutely nothing to recommend in this film except the beautiful music of R D Burman and the dignified singing of Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar.