Retro Reel by Sreepathy, Volume 13

Retro Reel is a column about movies, but deliberately not about the latest box-office releases. Sreepathy's long-running series is part recommendation, part retrospective: good films of different genres, remembered and re-examined. Volume 13 looks at three titles from a different era of Hindi cinema — the kind that reward a second viewing decades later.

Namak Haram (1973). Hrishikesh Mukherjee's drama pairs Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan as Somu, a union leader at a Bombay mill, and Vicky, the mill owner's son who befriends Somu to sabotage the workers from within. The friendship that grows between the two men undoes the plan — and the film ends, famously, in grief and confession. Khanna and Bachchan, at the height of their powers, give it everything; Kishore Kumar's "Diye Jalte Hain" and Mohammed Rafi's "Main Shayar Badnaam" are the songs people still hum. It remains one of the finest explorations of class guilt in Hindi cinema.

Reshma Aur Shera (1971). Sunil Dutt directed and starred in this stark Rajasthan-set feud drama opposite Waheeda Rehman — two clans, a forbidden love, and a cycle of violence that consumes both families. Waheeda won the National Film Award for Best Actress for her performance, Jaidev's music ("Tu Chanda Main Chandni," "Ek Meethi Si Chubhan") gave it an immortal soundtrack, and the film was India's official entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. A commercial failure on release, it has only grown in stature.

Saat Hindustani (1969). Khwaja Ahmad Abbas's film about seven Indians from different backgrounds who attempt to liberate Goa from Portuguese rule is remembered today for one reason above all: it is the film debut of Amitabh Bachchan, playing the Muslim poet Anwar Ali. The film won the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration. Seen today, it's a window into both a young Bachchan and an India still romantic about its own pluralism.

The column's premise is simple and still worth repeating: the best movie you haven't seen is often one that came out decades ago.