Roti Kapda Aur Makaan (1974) starring Manoj Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, and Zeenat Aman

The struggle to remain good and maintain high morals when facing adverse situations in life can be a hard struggle; after all, there are a number of movies depicting how a criminal rose up in life because of poverty are a large number. Manoj Kumar has made a number of movies on the concept of patriotism, or on the struggle in life between the good and the bad, with this movie being an integral part of his collection. The name 'Roti Kapda aur Makaan' delineates this struggle, with the words literally translating into the following - Food, Clothes and House (Shelter), depicting the necessities of life.
The movie was a very successful movie, having struck a chord in the audience about the struggle to make ends meet and the moral problems that get associated with such struggles, becoming the most successful movie of 1974. The movie was made (produced and directed) by Manoj Kumar, and like many of his other movies, was a multi-starrer, starring Shashi Kapoor, Zeenat Aman, Amitabh Bachchan, Moushmi Chatterjee, besides Manoj Kumar in the lead role.
Some of the songs of the movie were very successful, such as "Hay Hay Yeh Majboori", "Main Na Bhoolunga", etc. The music for the movie was by Laxmikant-Pyarelal (earning him a Filmfare Award Nomination, and winning the Best Lyrics award for Santosh Anand).



The movie is about the head of a family, Bharat (Manoj Kumar) who takes on the responsibility for his family after the retirement of his father. He has 2 younger brothers Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) and Deepak (Dheeraj Kumar), as well as a sister Champa, who is eligible to get married. However, he is not so successful, not able to find work despite having a good education. The only earning he has is through a job as a singer, but it does not pay that much; this makes his girlfriend Sheetal (Zeenat Aman) extremely frustrated, and she starts working as a secretary to a rich businessman Mohan Babu (Shashi Kapoor), who starts falling in love with her; she is seemingly more interested in his wealth.
Bharat in the meantime is going through more struggles; his efforts to become a builder end in failure when the Government takes over his building site and leaves him with grave financial problems. Sheetal also gets engaged to her boss, and then Bharat's father dies. Even when a suitor is found for his sister Champa, Bharat is unable to get the required amount of money for the marriage. What does Bharat do ? How does he resist the temptation to get into crime ?

Bombay to Goa (1972) - starring Amitabh Bachchan, Shatrughan Sinha, Aruna Irani and Mehmood, with some good music

Bombay to Goa is one of the earlier movies of Amitabh Bachchan, and hence, at those times, there were roles that were not written solely for him, but since he was a young and upcoming actor, the movie did showcase him; with the movie "Bombay to Goa" being meant to launch the brother of Mehmood, Anwar Ali, and also showcase the talent of Amitabh Bachchan.
The movie is mostly about a bus journey, taken by a young girl where she is seeking to escape the clutches of a man looking to kill her (he has already taken money from her and also killed his own partner for the same money). The bus journey provides her (and the viewers) with a lot of adventure, and also makes her more mature.
The movie was produced by NC Sippy and directed by S. Ramanathan; and stars Amitabh Bachchan, Shatrughan Sinha, Aruna Irani and Mehmood. The music for the movie was given by R.D.Burman.



Mala's picture appears in a magazine, submitted by 2 friends of Mala (Sharma (Shatrughan Sinha), and Verma (Manmohan)); however her parents are very surprised and astonished to see these photos, and plan to marry her off to the son of their friend. However, Mala is certainly not ready to marry somebody whom she does not know and dreams of a film career. She does not understand the attitude of her parents, takes a lot of money from her parents without their knowing, and runs away from home.
She hands the money over to Sharma and Verma; and seeing this much money, their intention changes and they fight among themselves for the money, with Sharma killing Verma. Mala sees this, and is now running for her life from Sharma and tries to escape on a bus that is on the way to Goa. However, Sharma soon finds her and then enters Ravikumar (Amitabh Bachchan) who wants to save Mala. Eventually Mala starts to trust Ravikumar. The movie becomes very interesting due to the various assorted passengers on the bus, representing a cross section of people from all over India, with Mehmood playing the role of the conductor of the bus, and his brother, Anwar Ali, playing the driver Rajesh.

Guddi (1971) - the movie that made Jaya Bachchan famous and known as an accomplished actor

Guddi was a movie released in 1971, produced and directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee (who made a number of famous movies during the 70's) and was written by Gulzar. However, the movie is best famous for giving Jaya Bachchan, then a young and upcoming actress, a canvas for her to show her acting skills and fortunately for her, the movie did well and was praised (thus leading to a lot of praise for Jaya Bachchan). The movie also starred Dharmendra, Utpal Dutt, and had a number of other starts such as Amitabh Bachchan, Om Prakash and Pran making guest appearances in the movie; this was also because the movie was also about a big star and his work in Bollywood, so a lot of details about Bollywood were shown in the movie. In fact, some other stars such as Biswajeet, Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Khanna, Ashok Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Naveen Nischol, Om Prakash, Pran, Shashikala and Mala Sinha played cameo roles in the movie.
The movie also had some good music with songs such as "Bole Re Papihara" and "Humko Man Ki Shakti Dena" (sung by Vani Jairam) becoming very famous for their classical background. The music for the film was given by Vasant Desai.



The movie is about the concept of being attracted by the on-screen personality of a star, based on what the star plays as characters, instead of knowing the real life of the star (and where the character of the star could be very different from the characters played). In this case, Kusum (Jaya Bachchan) is a schoolgirl who develops an incredible crush for the movie star Dharmendra; she lives with her family; but when she visits Mumbai, that is when the crush that she has for Dharmendra really reveals itself.
At that time, her sister-in-law's brother, Navin (Bengali film actor Samit Bhanja) falls in love with her, but when she is so much after Dharmendra, it is impossible that she could even listen to anybody else. Navin takes help from his own uncle, Utpal Dutt, who also knows Dharmendra, and they resolve to show Kusum the difference between the reel life and real life (taking help from Dharmendra for this).