Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959)

Original title

कागज़ के फूल

Directed by

Guru Dutt

Genre

drama film, romance film

Country

India

Runtime

2h 33m

Rated

U

Rating

6.9 of 10 from 38 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A famous film director falls in love with an actress he casts in his movie. Their romance is complicated by his troubled marriage and the pressures of the film industry.

melancholicdreamlikeself-reflectivevisually lushslow-burnpoignantatmosphericbittersweet

What happens

Kaagaz Ke Phool (transl. Paper Flowers) is a 1959 Indian Hindi-language romantic drama film produced and directed by Guru Dutt, who also played the lead role in the film along with Waheeda Rehman. It is the first Indian film in CinemaScope and the last film officially directed by Dutt. It marked a technical revolution in Indian cinematography and is widely considered to be ahead of its time. The film was a box office bomb in its time owing to its theme which the masses could not identify with, but was later resurrected as a cult classic in the 1980s. Its failure, both critically and commercially, severely impacted Guru Dutt and brought his studio on the verge of ruins. Dutt never officially directed a film after this. The film's music was composed by S. D. Burman and the lyrics were written by Kaifi Azmi and Shailendra (for one song "Hum Tum Jise Kehta Hai"). Today Kaagaz ke Phool is a part of syllabi in many film schools. It is considered to be the finest self-reflexive film to have ever been made in India. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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