Ittefaq (Hindi Language) (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Outstanding
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	Excellent direction and a gripping storyline
Disadvantages:	none

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Iteefaq(Unexpected) is a film directed by Yash Chopra.It is a suspense thriller with no songs and the entire story happens in the course of one night with some flash backs..
There are more than some uncanny similarities to the Hollywood film 'Signpost to Murder '(1964) starring Joanne Woodward. Nevertheless Ittefaq stands out as a well directed and interesting Indian noir.

The story of Ittefaq
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Dilip Roy (Rajesh Khanna) a painter is accused of murdering his wife Sushma(Alka). Al the evidences point to him as the suspect, He pleads about his innocence , but the police have made up their mind that he is guilty. He is put in an assylum when he tries to escape arrest and feigns insanity.However he is determined to find the real culprit so he escapes from the mental assylum and immediately there is an alert and a search begins, the police sealing off all the known places where he visits , and alerting all the known people including his sister in law Renu( Bindu) who he he always was at loggerheads with ..

While escaping from the police, he enters the house of a married woman Rekha (Nanda) and terrorizes her out of desperation to provide him with shelter for that night. Rekha is alone in the house as her husband, a business man is travelling on work.

He successfully evades the Doctor (Iftikar) and the Police officer(Sujit Kumar) who come looking for him ,and in the course of time discovers a body in the bath tub in the house and later the body disappears, and Rekha is not only unaware of the existence of the body, she begins to suspect and fear him all the more when he tells her about the body he found in the bath tub...when she gets a chance she tries to alert the police...

The film has a most unexpected ending.. a very interesting ending..

My own views on the film Ittefaq
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Ittefaq is a most interesting and a complete departure from director Yash Chopra's Normal kind of films which are always associated with heady romance, postcard pretty locations and memorable songs. Ittefaq has none of these elements and yet it makes for a gripping and extremely interesting film.

The suspense has been well kept, and i loved the long drawn out court room scenes which happens to be the best part of the film.It has been intelligently directed .

The entire story is centered around the characters of Rajesh Khanna as Dilip Roy the murder accused and Nanda as Rekha, the threatened housewife.The rest of the cast are mere props..

Rajesh Khanna has done a fantastic job in the film.I personally would rate this as one of his best performances.His frustrations and the manner in which he has portrayed the hopeless situation he is caught in is very convincing..This film came right at the beginning of his career and thankfully he had yet to develop his famous mannerisms which became repetetive in his later films and to a great extent became his trade mark..

Nanda too is good as Rekha, the woman who is forced to spend time with a supposed psychopath all alone in her house.Ittefaq is unthinkable without Nanda who makes the role her own and gives perhaps the finest performance of her career. She gives an extremely controlled performance that stands out.

Though in most thrillers of the 1950s and 1960s, there were certain aspects of the film like the background music score but on the directorial side even today one notices that Chopra manageed to keep things going smoothly even though most of the film is in a single location with essentially just 2 characters and a few flashbacks added in between, that shows the past ....

Ittefaq proved to be a hit at the box office proving that a good film always succeeds, even if it treads away from the formulaic path.It also won a Filmfare award for Yash Chopra as Best Director for that year.it also paved the way for Rajesh Khanna's superstardom in the Hindi film industry.

Film Details
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Starring: Nanda, Rajesh Khanna, Sujit Kumar, Gajanan Jagirdar, Madan Puri, Iftikhar, Shammi, Alka, Bindu

Directed by : Yash Chopra

Produced by: BR Chopra

Background Score: Salil Choudhury

DVD Details
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Running Time: 105 mins

Main Language: Hindi

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

Subtitles: English

Movie Label: YASH RAJ FILMS

Production Years: 1969