This latest piece on Aan is part of an on going series of tentative writings and research on the films of Mehboob Khan – earlier posts have focused on Roti and Aurat. Directed and produced by Mehboob Khan, Aan is recognised as a classic of Hindi cinema. I have fond memories of Aan from my […]
Category: Mehboob Khan
AURAT / WOMAN (Dir. Mehboob Khan, 1940, India) – Lost & Found
Aurat, a social melodrama, forms part of Mehboob’s period of filmmaking that saw him shift between the studio system of the 1930s and early 1940s before he went independent. He made a number of key films for National Studios including Roti. Mehboob was a studio bound filmmaker, working in many genres and often collaborating with […]
ROTI / BREAD (Dir. Mehboob Khan, 1942, India) – Iconoclastic Origins
Mehboob’s most political work? Released in 1942, Roti was director Mehboob Khan’s last film before he established his own production company. Given the film’s daring and at times iconoclastic critique of capitalism, it seems almost as if Mehboob sought to make a statement on the potential of subverting studio limitations by smuggling counter-hegemonic ideologies into […]
AMAR (Dir. Mehboob Khan, India, 1954) – Expressionist Idiosyncrasies
Film maker Mehboob Khan reached his artistic zenith with Mother India in 1957 whilst his body of work in the 1940s produced such classics as Aurat (Woman, 1940), Roti (The Bread, 1942), Humayun (1945), Anmol Ghadi (1946) and Andaz (1949). The considerable achievements of Mother India […]
