1920/Mahal

Mahal

This week’s release, Vikram Bhatt’s 1920, a horror film about a haunted palace, brings to mind Kamal Amrohi’s 1949 film Mahal, one of the earliest Hindi thrillers dealing with the supernatural and reincarnation.

Starring Ashok Kumar and a very young Madhubala, the film was a big hit. It is about Shankar (Ashok Kumar) who moves into an abandoned mansion with an eerie atmosphere. He sees a portrait of the mansion’s former owner, and is startled with the resemblance to him. He also spots the ghost of the owner’s mistress Kamini (Madhubala), who tells him that they are lovers from the past birth and to be united, he must either die himself, or kill the gardener’s daughter so that she (Kamini) can come back to life.

Shankar gets morbidly obsessed with the woman, and to snap him out of it, his friend Shrinath (Kanu Roy) tries to get him married to Ranjana (Vijayalakhsmi). One day Ranjana follows Shankar and sees him with Kamini. She commits suicide and accuses him in her dying statement to the police.

In court, it is revealed that Kamini is none other than the gardener’s daughter Asha, who had been pretending to be a ghost. Shankar is sentenced to death but still in love with Asha/ Kamini, so he asks Shrinath to marry her, so that they are separated in this birth, but can be united in the next.

As he is about to be hanged, a letter from Ranjana confessing that she had committed suicide is found and Shankar is released, it is too late, Shrinath is already married to Asha.

The suspense in the film was terrific and a really scary milieu set up in the ‘haunted’ palace. Mahal was Kamaal Amrohi's first film as director and it was a remarkable, trend-setting debut. Cameraman Josef Wirsching shot the and pushed the magic of black and white to its greatest potential, expertly using light and shadow to create the dark, ghostly look for the film.

Ashok Kumar was also producer of the film; it was one of Madhubala’s first films as an adult, and it made her a star. With her luminous beauty, it was not hard to see why a man might lose his mind over her, like the hero does.

Some of the credit for the film’s success should go to Khenchand Prakash’s haunting music score—the song Ayega aaanewala is an all-time classic and the one that helped turn a young Lata Mangeshkar into a singing sensation.

Mahal had two other memorable Lata solos, Dil ne phir yaad kiya and Mushkil hai bahut mushkil. The other singer for the film was Rajkumari, who sang for Vijayalakhsmi -- Ghabra ke jo hum sar ko takraayen, Yeh raat phir na aayegi, Ek teer chala dil pe and Main woh hansi hoon-- but the film is still identified with Aayega aanewala and Madhubala.