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).