Aradhana (1969)

The musical romance about non-family- sanctioned sex that established Khanna as a major star backed by the singing voice of Kishore Kumar and Burman’s music. The film helped set the pattern for 70s entertainment cinema. Arun (Khanna), an Air Force officer, secretly marries Vandana (Tagore) who bears him a son. Arun dies in an air crash. Vandana is rejected by Arun’s family as his legal wife. To safeguard her son’s honour, she decides to let him be adopted by a childless couple while making sure she is responsible for raising the child by becoming his nanny. She devotes the rest of her life to raising her son to become an air force pilot like his father. Khanna plays both father and son. Remembered mainly for its music with e.g. Mere sapnon ki rani and Kora Kaagaz. The film’s best-known song, Roop tera mastana (sung by Kishore Kumar), was picturised in a single 4’ take deploying the conventional cloudburst as a metaphor for sex as the drenched heroine, clad only in a blanket, succumbs to the hero’s advances after a sexual encounter in the next room has been shown in silhouette. This sequence was for years presented to students of Indian film schools as the definitive example of mise en scene.