Kala Bazaar (1960)

Hero Raghuvir (D. Anand) becomes Bombay’s top black marketeer in film tickets and falls in love with Alka (Rehman) who shuns ‘black’ money. The hero reforms and starts a ‘white market’ [Safed Bazar] with his now legitimate gang of touts. Vijay Anand’s characteristic use of realism as a counterweight to the release of fantasy is exemplified in the visual and sound montage that opens the film and in the remarkably picturised Suraj ke jaisi golayi, chanda se thandak bhi payi set in top-angle camera among sleeping pavement-dwellers. Dev Anand may have had this strategy in mind when he declared that films should be ‘brought as close as possible to the reading of a newspaper’. The film includes several classic songs, e.g. Na main dhan chahun (sung by Geeta Dutt and Sudha Malhotra) and Khoya khoya chand (sung by Mohammed Rafi).