Jhansi Ki Rani (1953) User Reviews

The Jodhaa Akbar of the 1950s

[xpics · 7/10 · 27 September 2010]

Today we make huge hoopla if any Hollywood technician is associated with any Bollywood film. But more than half a century back Sohrab Modi made an epic costume drama employing some very prolific names from the West. His 1952 film Jhansi Ki Rani boasted of Hollywood technicians like Oscar winning cinematographer Ernest Haller (Gone with the Wind), Oscar winning writer Geza Herczeg (The Life of Emily Zola), Oscar nominated editor Russell Lloyd (The Man Who Would Be The King, Moby Dick) and some more on its credit list.

Sohrab Modi was known for his spectacular historical films like Pukar, Sikandar (Alexander – The Great) and Prithvi Vallabh. He continued his legacy of making epic historical biographies with Jhansi Ki Rani which was mounted on a lavish budget and had every element that would add to the magnificence of a costume drama from opulent sets, rich costumes, dramatic dialogues, theatrical performances, extravagant action with lifelike battlefield sequences involving hundreds of horses, elephants and soldiers. To give reference with a contemporary analogy, Jhansi Ki Rani was the Jodhaa Akbar of the 50s.

The film is based on the life history of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, who was one of the first Indians to rebel against the British Government. Rani Lakshmibai finds a prominent mention in history textbooks of India but Sohrab Modi's film takes an in-depth look on the entire biography of the queen from her childhood to her death. In Bollywood history, other than this film, Rani Lakshmibai had a faint one-scene reference in the Ketan Mehta directed Aamir Khan starrer Mangal Pandey towards the end in an epilogue where Varsha Usgaonkar posed as the Rani. (Incidentally Sohrab Modi's Jhansi Ki Rani had a one-scene reference to Mangal Pandey). The common link between Lakshmibai and Mangal Pandey is that both were associated with the First War of Indian Independence – the uprising against British that started in 1957.

Ketan Mehta had planned a biographical on Rani Lakshmibai as a follow-up film to Mangal Pandey and an extension on the 1957 Uprising. Unfortunately with the box-office failure of Mangal Pandey, his film never took off. Similarly actresses Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai had once contemplated playing Jhansi Ki Rani but none of the projects materialized. Thankfully that leaves Sohrab Modi's production as the only feature film on the life of Rani Lakshmibai and its authenticity remains un-tampered. A TV series on Rani Lakshmibai is currently on air but the literary manipulations to the biography to adapt to the long-drawn-out requirements of the small screen, completely spoils the essence of the legend.

Sohrab Modi took the effort to keep his film's screenplay (penned by half a dozen writers) historically accurate and comprehensive and yet entertaining. The film opens with the queen's childhood when she was known as Manu and had the courage to face an elephant. When the chief adviser of Jhansi, Rajguru (Sohrab Modi) sees her valour, he asks Manu's father Moropant to get her married to the much-elder King of Jhansi, Gangadhar Rao (Mubarak). So the 9-year-old Manu is married off to the 50-year-old Gangadhar. Trained under Rajguru, Manu grows up to be Lakshmibai (Mehtab), the Rani of Jhansi who is proficient at all physical and political challenges. (Ironically, in real life Mehtab was married to Sohrab Modi who was elder to her by 20 years).

Lakshmibai has a son from Gangadhar Rao who soon succumbs to illness after which the couple adopts a boy Damodar Rao to be the heir of Jhansi. But the British East India Company rejects the adopted Damodar Rao as the claimant to the throne of Jhansi and wants to seize the kingdom. That results into conflict between the Queen and British resulting into rebellion that led to the First War of Indian Independence in 1957.

Sohrab Modi came from the stage background which reflected pretty much in his film. The drama induced through the heavy-worded dialogues was intense and the performances were very theatrical. There was no compromise to get the period look of the film perfect (real foreign actors played the British characters) and the magnificence showed in every frame. As the film nearly perfected in getting the 'costume' era feel and dense 'drama' effect, Jhansi Ki Rani aptly justified its genre of 'costume drama'.

The film had a US release in 1956 and was titled 'The Tiger and the Flame' based on one elaborate dance piece that Gangadhar Rao organizes to welcome the grownup Lakshmibai to the court and take charge of the kingdom. This was India's first Technicolour film, though unfortunately the DVD I got had a Black and White print of the film and I kept wondering throughout on how the film would look in each frame had it been in colour. However despite all its visual brilliance and historical relevance, the film didn't perform as expected at the box-office and was reportedly a big loss to Sohrab Modi who was the producer as well.

Nevertheless Jhansi Ki Rani is a wonderful watch if you like well-made historical costume dramas.

• Gaurav Malani

A superb historical saga... deserves a remake

[SumanShakya · 7/10 · 7 November 2021]

"Jhansi Ki Rani" recreates the historical saga of 1857 mutiny, often considered the first freedom fight against the British Rule, led by the queen of Jhansi, Laxmi Bai. It chronicles the life history of the queen as a nine year old child married to the king to her fight for the freedom. The film superbly portrays the historical period, often untouched in movies, with superb sets and background yet avoiding oversentimentality or preachiness till the end. It vividly recreates the historical account of the British rule that spread under conspiracy, as the film points. Unlike the regular stereotypes, it portrays few benevolent characters among the British and few conspirators among the Indian as well.

Perhaps a bit unknown historical saga, it deserves an applause for the historical legacy it carries which very well depicts an important chapter of rebellion. Directed by a movie pioneer Sohrab Modi, he gives a hype through his impeccable performance as well. Perhaps his superb direction and performance are what make the film praise worthy. However there are certain flaws in it. It plays well in the first half with a lot of warmth and superb sets. But in the later part the role of Mehtab as the Jhansi Ki Rani lacks a zeal and so does the war scenes. Overall, it's a remarkable historical movie which needs to be seen and remade.

Rating: 3 stars out of 4.

India's first color epic should be more widely known

[BrianDanaCamp · 8 January 2008]

THE TIGER AND THE FLAME (aka JHANSI KI RANI, 1953) is quite an unusual film, a big-budget historical epic billed in the credits as "India's First Picture in Color by Technicolor," but made with some western help, including noted Hollywood cinematographer Ernest Haller and English film editor Russell Lloyd. It's not like any other Indian film I've ever seen, but not quite like any western historical drama either. Its heroes are Indians who participated in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which targeted the British East India Company, yet it's quite fair to the British themselves. It's not exactly a Bollywood movie, but it does have an Indian music score and several Indian songs on the soundtrack as well as a few scenes of dance performance. The version I saw is a shorter, English-dubbed version meant for western audiences and may have gotten scant release in the U.S. At 96 min., it's missing 52 minutes from the original cut, listed on IMDb as 148 min.

It tells the true story of Jhansi Ki Rani, known to her family and childhood friends as Manu, a spunky girl picked to be wife of the Maharajah of the sovereign state of Jhansi in northwest India. She's eight years old at the time, but Rajguru, the Maharajah's trusted adviser, trains her in all the arts of the court, including the warrior arts, and when she's 18 she marries the middle-aged Maharajah, who has maintained peaceful and cordial relations with the British officers stationed in Jhansi. A lot happens in the course of the film's 96 minutes and before too long, Queen Jhansi, as Manu is now called, is forced to take up arms to defend her state from the British, after she's been falsely accused of abetting a massacre of British officers and their wives by mutineers. Complicating things is the presence in the British officer corps of Lt. Henry Dowker, who'd been a childhood friend of Manu. The British launch an assault on the fortress walls of Jhansi but the queen rallies her troops and some heavy artillery and holds them off. However, the British are aided by a treacherous relative of the late Maharajah and Jhansi soon falls. The queen manages to flee and gather some troops in a neighboring state for one final battle...

The film covers 20 years in Manu's life, from 1838 to 1858, and plays more like an extended pageant instead of a drama, with selected scenes from the whole saga singled out for epic treatment. Everything takes place on a public stage, with few scenes of personal drama or human intimacy. It's all painted in broad strokes, which makes for some very pretty pictures indeed, but keeps viewers somewhat at a distance. We never get inside Manu's head or that of Rajguru, her wise and loyal mentor and adviser. Granted, there are huge gaps in the narrative and there may be more intimate scenes among the 52 minutes that have been removed, but my guess is that the cut material is just more of the same, historical incidents that fill in the bigger picture, not the smaller one.

Still, it's quite an impressive visual spectacle, with rich color in every shot and picturesque scenes that take advantage of dozens of age-old palaces, public buildings and fortress walls on location in India. The sets are lavish and the costumes beautiful in every scene. There are scenes of celebration with hundreds of extras in procession and a full-scale performance of a dance piece entitled "The Tiger and the Flame," commissioned by the Maharajah expressly to welcome his new wife to court.

And there are the battle scenes with hundreds of extras, many on horseback and all in uniform, lots of cannons and scenes of combat, including close-quarter fighting as two cavalries clash and horsemen hack and cleave at each other. There are two major battle scenes in the cut I viewed and they're both quite spectacular, on a par with Hollywood productions of the time and certainly grander than those in the similarly-themed Hollywood film made the same year, KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES, starring Tyrone Power (although I have to confess I find the Hollywood film a better work in most other respects).

The DVD I viewed (released by Geneon) offers a transfer from an original film print and not a restoration, so we get the rich colors of old Technicolor but also the occasional scratch, a slight softness of the image and choppiness in a few scenes where snippets of film have been damaged and removed. A digital restoration, however, would alter the color values, which, as seen in the current transfer, most likely reflect how this film must have looked in a theater when it was seen in its U.S. release, presumably in 1956.

The producer/director, Sohrab Modi, also co-stars as Rajguru. His company, Minerva Movietone, produced the film and made many similar epics in the course of its 20-year history. Modi was active in the Indian film industry from 1935 to 1983, just before he died in early 1984 at the age of 86. Modi was married to the star, Mehtab, who plays Queen Jhansi and displays quite a strong, stirring presence. The cinematographer, Ernest Haller, is best known for such Hollywood classics as GONE WITH THE WIND, MILDRED PIERCE and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and editor Russell Lloyd was the longtime editor for director John Huston on such films as MOBY DICK, THE UNFORGIVEN, and THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING.

While this film may not be a must-see for every fan of Indian cinema (particularly Bollywood addicts), it's an important footnote in Indian film history and should be seen by students of Indian cinema and fans of early color movies, as well as history buffs interested in seeing this subject dramatized through Indian eyes.