Good movies like good books can enrich and teach. Songs and Indian Kathak dances (minus one by Nawab Sultan) are mostly in context. The dialogs are in lyrical, delicate and local Urdu, difficult to be appreciated in translation. Urdu poetry (ghazal) is shown to be pervasive in the lives of tawaifs and all around her. There is a thin line (if any) between a tawaif and a prostitute/hooker - Umrao sleeps with Nawab Sultan as a matter of routine, and then with the robber Faiz Ali. Nawab Sultan, one of the first clients of Umrao, sees Umarao what she is - a tawaif and abandons her with no compunctions to marry into the wealthy family of her cousin others hurl insults at Umrao. Owner of house of tawaifs, Madam Khanum, is selfish and exploitative.
There are no brave heroes (all flee 1857 Sepoy Mutiny against the English), the robber Faiz Ali dies in an unheroic escape. The film is very restrained, and therefore, a believable story of a Lucknow tawa-if (courtesan, geisha).
UMRAO JAAN 1981 POSTER MOVIE
The problem is that it is so good that Muzaffar Ali (the producer from Lucknow where most of the movie unfolds) perhaps cannot make a better movie all his life. It should NOT be even compared with the new Umrao Jaan. rAjOo saw it again, after 25 years! I think it is one of the best movies (Indian or otherwise), at par with any famed-Satyajit Ray. Watch what Umrao does to escape from being married against her will, and her attempts to try and find her way back to her parents. Umrao re-locates to Kanpur where she establishes herself as a Poet and dancer, but is hunted down by brothel-keepers, Gohar Mirza and Husseini and brought back, where she is told that she must marry Gohar. The young Nawab is smitten by Umrao's beauty and her poems, but is finally forced to marry a girl of his mother's choice, leaving behind a heart-broken and devastated Umrao, who seeks solace in the arms of Faiz Ali and finally elopes with him, only to find out that he is a wanted bandit, and is shot down and killed by guards. She has many patrons, chief amongst them are Nawab Sultan and his father. Years later, Umrao has grown up and is an accomplished poetess as well as dancer extraordinary. It is here Amiran will be re-named Umrao Jaan. After his discharge around 1840, he extracts his vengeance by abducting Amiran and selling to a brothel madam. In Faizabad, British India, Dilawar is sentenced to several years in prison after Amiran's Daroga dad testifies against him.
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