He was more than the primal star of Indian cinema. To most of the planet, Raj Kapoor was India in all its vitality, humanity and poignancy. Awara (1951) and the other ’50s films Kapoor directed, produced and starred in with Nargis, his muse and mistress, were sensations not only in India and throughout the Arab world but in the Soviet Union (where the movies’ songs became top hits) and Communist China (Mao once named Awara his favorite film). A Ronald Colman lookalike, Kapoor wanted to be India’s Charlie Chaplin; Awara translates as “The Tramp.” He plays Raju, son of a stern judge (Kapoor’s own father Prithviraj) who had banished his wife after she was abducted, perhaps ravaged, by a brigand. Raju, not knowing his prominent, blighted parentage, grows up a vagabond, falls in love with the judge’s adopted daughter (Nargis) and is charged with a crime that must be decided by … his father. With a wild dream sequence, enough passions and plot anomalies for a dozen Hollywood soapers, and a luminous, startling seaside seduction, Awara serves as a superb primer for Indian cinema and its actor-auteur, forever revered as The Great Showman.
All-TIME 100 Movies
TIME's Richard Corliss updates our All-TIME 100 list of the greatest films made since 1923 — the beginning of TIME — with 20 new entries
Raj Kapoor, Awara
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Behind the List
A - C
- Aguirre: The Wrath of God
- The Apu Trilogy
- The Awful Truth
- Baby Face
- Bande à part
- Barry Lyndon
- Berlin Alexanderplatz
- Blade Runner
- Bonnie and Clyde
- Brazil
- Bride of Frankenstein
- Camille
- Casablanca
- Charade
- Children of Paradise
- Chinatown
- Chungking Express
- Citizen Kane
- City Lights
- City of God
- Closely Watched Trains
- The Crime of Monsieur Lange
- The Crowd
D - F
G - J
K - M
N - P
Q - S
T - Z
Great Performances
Guilty Pleasures
- Gone With the Wind, 1939, Victor Fleming, U.S.
- Tenth Avenue Angel, 1949, Roy Rowland, U.S.
- Sailor Beware, 1951, Hal Walker, U.S.
- Diabolique (Les Diaboliques), 1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot, France
- School Girl, 1971, David Reberg, U.S
- There’s Something About Mary,1998, Bobby and Peter Farrelly, U.S.
- Anatomy of a Murder, 1959, Otto Preminger, U.S.
- Gun Crazy, 1949, Joseph H. Lewis, U.S.
- The Incredible Shrinking Man, 1957, Jack Arnold, U.S.
- Joe Versus the Volcano, 1990, John Patrick Shanley, U.S.
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