Hamlet

<p>After seeing his father’s ghost the film follows the play focusing on Hamlet’s revenge on his Uncle Claudius, who has married his mother Gertrude after murdering Hamlet’s father. He pretends to be insane and is in the process of staging a play where he plans to denounce his mother and Uncle. There were several plot changes, with Ophelia telling her part in flashback and singing songs with friends, while the gravediggers were “used for comic effect”, thus giving in to Indian film-goers sensibilities. The film took its inspiration from the days, with Sahu’s monologue inculcating couplets from famous Indian poets and using parts of dialogues from Ahsan’s (1928). Ophelia sang ‘s “Na Kisi Ki Ankh Ka Noor Hoon” and a dying Hamlet quoted ‘s “Layee Hayaat Aaye, Qaza Le Chali Chale”. The “Parsi theatre tradition”, which gave rise to several freely adapted Hindi films from Shakespeare including Modi’s (1935), Akhtar Hussain’s (1947) and (1950), came to an end with . The film did “reasonably well” at the box office. Acclaimed by the critic, it was panned harshly by , which called it a “slander” to Shakespeare. According to Manju Jain, , who was present at the premiere of the film in Bombay, thought that Gertrude was “magnificent”. was the debutant music director. He went on to score music for films in the 1970s, the most popular being (1983), for which he won the . The lyrics were written by , while the playback singing was provided by , and Jagmohan Bakshi.</p>