Mother India

Mehboob Khan took Nargis and turned her into Bharat Mata, and all "mothers" in popular Indian cinema have since had to be strong and sacrificial.

Put it this way, it's the birth of the Bollywood blockbuster. It should be on every cineaste's must-see list.

As the mother, Nargis is as resolute as a force of nature, and Mehboob Khan creates tableaux of the family that evoke its fragile unity.

The acting is broad and rhetorical, and the movie resembles those relentlessly upbeat tractor-musicals of the Soviet cinema that Stalin so much admired.