A millennial watches Ramesh Sippy’s Seeta Aur Geeta: A story of identical twins which is laugh-out-loud funny
Filmmaker Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay is a revered classic. There had been books written on it and cinema’s leading stars dangle cited it because the film that impressed them against arc lights as formative years. Its all-celebrity solid and crew — Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Sanjeev Kumar, Amjad Khan, Rames Sippy and Salim-Javed — remain legends. On the opposite hand, other folks infrequently ever talk of Sippy’s film Seeta Aur Geeta, a appropriate-blue masala Bollywood entertainer that had me laughing at some stage in.
Seeta Aur Geeta (1972), with an ensemble solid — Hema Malini, Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, Manorama, Asrani (special look) — most of whom made it to Sholay, has your total ingredients of a conventional Bollywood film as it provides comedy, melodrama, stream, romance, music and dance in under 2.5 hours.
It begins with essentially the most smartly-liked trope of identical twins getting separated at beginning, with the coy one (Seeta) rising up in a smartly to set aside household but with cruel relatives. The feisty one (Geeta) grows up on the streets but under the care of a loving girl and a luxurious appropriate friend. Even if the first half of hour of the film made me scrutinize at it love a Hindi TV serial where the heroine (Seeta) is a damsel-in-ruin with a spoiled, abusive ‘Chachi’ treating her as a housemaid, Sippy didn’t disappoint when he introduces Geeta.
A active, motor-mouth girl in her vivid-gypsy dresses, she catches attend of the ceiling fan in the police advise, as she’s being chased by a paunchy ‘Chachi’, who mistakes her for Seeta, with the ‘Elephant March’ taking part in in the background. I don’t be acutely conscious laughing as grand as I did on the scene in any of the Bollywood comedies recently. In hindsight, I’m able to’t be acutely conscious staring at even mildly humorous, true-to-god Bollywood comedy in the final decade, but that’s for one other time.
Seeta Aur Geeta unfolds as a comedy of errors, where quite lots of the laughter is due to of misunderstanding prompted by a case of wrong identities. And, Sippy made it a degree that the confusion most attention-grabbing makes the characters scratch their collective heads and no longer the viewers. The film’s writers, Salim-Javed, had been impressed by Dilip Kumar’s 1967 film Ram Aur Shyam, but no longer having watched it, for me, Seeta Aur Geeta has change into my well-liked identical twins movie. It’s miles followed by Sridevi’s Chaalbaaz (1989) that drew carefully from Seeta Aur Geeta. Even if these movies led to an technology of such movies (Kishen Kanhaiya, Judwaa, Kuch Khatti Kuch Meethi), none might perchance well traipse away an affect love this.
Hema Malini and Manorama in a aloof from Seeta Aur Geeta. (Photo: Insist Archives)
Hema Malini, who I had most attention-grabbing known either as a talkative Basanti (Sholay) or the pleasant mom (Baghban), illustrated how she earned the title of ‘Dream Girl’ in the 70s. Her finesse as an actor is moderately viewed right here as she aces both the formula, that of tormented, orphaned Seeta and of the feisty Geeta. It was as soon as a deal with to behold her issue a lesson to her horrible ‘chachi’ (Manorma) and her brother Ranjeet (Roopesh Kumar).
Besides her, actors Dharmendra and Sanjeev Kumar, dangle completed a large job in supporting roles of Raaka and Ravi. While Raaka is a rugged man who wears leather jackets and an earring, Ravi is a sweet doctor who interacts basically thru his smile. Manorma as horrible ‘chachi’ Kaushalya held her act till the very pause and complemented Malini’s efficiency.
Hema Malini and Dharmendra in Seeta Aur Geeta. (Insist archive photograph)
Sippy adds a cherry on top with a chaotic but humorous climax. Our heroine Geeta gets to waste some fist-combating with the goons who kidnap Seeta. Accompanying her are the two most necessary men, Raaka and Ravi, who bring humorous reduction in the emotional 2nd of ‘bachpan mein bichdi hui behenon ka milan’.
The one ingredient that makes Seeta Aur Geeta ideal for me is its simplicity. In times when animated thrillers, movies with a social message, nationalistic dramas, biopics and darkish comedies are being thrown at me from Bollywood, I don’t suggestions staring at some silliness which brings some happiness and pleasure with it.
