Many Bollywood films were inspired by Hollywood films even in the past. One such film was ‘Majboor’ produced by Premji and directed by Ravi Tandon, starring Amitabh Bachchan, Praveeb Babi, Farida Jalal, Pran, Sulochana, Satyen kapoo, Madan Puri, Iftekhar, Master Alankar in important roles. This film was inspired by 1970 Hollywood movie ‘Zig Zag’ a thriller drama directed by Richard A Colla and starring George Kennedy in lead role.
Pran and Parveen Babi in ‘Majboor’
‘Majboor’ which was released on 6th December 1974 i.e. 46 years ago became a hit film because of the involvement of Salim Javed the writer duo who were in great form those days and gave a perfect Indian version involving emotions besides suspense filled action drama. As a director Ravi Tandon handled the film very well and the performances by the artistes gave a realistic look to this film.
Watching the success of this film, it was later remade in four Indian languages. In Telugu by director K. Raghavendra Rao as ‘Raja’ (1976), In Tamil as ‘Naan Vazhavaippen’ (1979), in Gujarati as ‘Naseeb No Khel’ (1982) and also in Malayalam as ‘Ee Kaikalil’ (1986). Above all, the story of this film was also used in 2008 film ‘Jimmy’ directed by Raj Sippy to introduce Mithun Chakraborty’s son Mimoh Chakraborty. But, this experiment didn’t work well.
If you haven’t seen this film, do watch it on youtube.com . The film also has four good songs ‘Dekh Sakta hoon..’, ‘Roothe rab Ko …( a duet) ’, ‘Aadmi Jo Kehta Hai ..’ and ‘Phir na Kehna Michael…’ which is picturised on Pran, who plays a very important role in this film.