By Mansi M.
Toronto
The World premiere screening of 4K restoration AWARA at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) commemorates the 100th anniversary of director Raj Kapoor’s birth in 1924. The film saw its birth in 1951 and Raj Kapoor directs and stars in this recently restored Bollywood classic, which threads messages of socialist reform among its musical numbers and Charlie Chaplin homages, and is often considered to be the greatest film by “The Greatest Showman of Indian Cinema.”
As star and director of the crime drama, Kapoor drew inspiration from the Little Tramp persona of Charlie Chaplin in creating this tale about a privileged judge played by his father Prithviraj Kapoor. His father’s presumptions that morality is hereditary and that “criminals are born to criminals” leads him to wrongly convict a man of rape. This sets off a chain of tragic events and leads the judge to cast his pregnant wife out of the house for adultery.
Years later, her son Raj (Raj Kapoor) has reluctantly turned to crime to support his impoverished mother. He seeks to marry a childhood sweetheart, who unfortunately — for Raj — is studying law under the very same judge. Many melodramatic twists and turns of fortune ensue, alongside rousing musical numbers, including the popular song “Awāra Hoon,” with passionate but palatable messages of socialist reform threaded throughout the plot.
A highly influential classic of Bollywood cinema, Awara was nominated for the Grand Prize at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival.
The film was screened free to the public on Friday, September 13 at TIFF Lightbox at 5:30 pm.
