Howrah Bridge

Howrah Bridge (1958)

हावड़ा ब्रिज

Rakesh lives with his brother, Madan, and his dad in Rangoon. Madan has fallen into bad company and steals the family heirloom, in the shape of a dragon, some cash and runs away to India. Shortly thereafter, his dead body is found under Calcutta's Howrah Bridge. Rakesh travels to Calcutta in order to find out the mystery behind Madan's death, and also try to recover the family heirloom.

Date of release
1958-06-15
TMDB
6.4 / 10 (5)
Runtime
2h 33m
Genres
Crime, Mystery
Director
Shakti Samanta

Casting

Interesting facts

Howrah Bridge is a 1958 Indian Hindi-language crime thriller film directed by Shakti Samanta. The music for the film was composed by O. P. Nayyar. The plot focuses on Prem Kumar, a businessman from Rangoon, who travels to Calcutta to try to track down his brother's murderers. Madhubala stars as Edna, a cabaret dancer, in one of her most popular roles.

Production

In 1957, Samanta had a car accident in which he was severely injured. He spent many days in the hospital, and eventually developed the story of Howrah Bridge lying on the hospital bed. Soon after being discharged, Samanta contacted his friend and actor Ashok Kumar and narrated the story to him; Kumar liked it and agreed to the film.

A problem came up when Samanta told Kumar that he wants to cast a "top-notch" actress in the role of Edna. He had previously considered Nargis and Nimmi, but found them unfit for the character. He also had Madhubala's name in his mind, but her price was too high for the financially unstable Samanta. It was then when Kumar came in to help him.

Except the climax, all other scenes of the film in which Howrah Bridge is shown were actually shot somewhere else, according to Madhubala's biographer Mohan Deep.

One of the scenes from the original film—Ashok Kumar kissing Madhubala on her cheek—was deleted by the censors, who found it "too sexy". Howrah Bridge was Samanta's first release under his banner Shakti Films, which he had set up in 1957.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended