Guru Dutt’s 1957 classic Pyaasa , about a struggling poet and his friendship with a prostitute, is included in Time magazine’s Valentine’s Day list of Top 5 romantic films of all time.
Time magazine’s website has composed a list of Top 10 romantic films on Valentine’s Day for “lovers” and “for people with broken, bitter hearts who hate all those lovers”.
The magazine, which had rated the film as one of the 100 best films of all time in 2005, said that classic Hollywood died but popular Indian cinema “still attends to antique conventions of family fealty, personal integrity and, of course, all-conquering love.”
“In this achingly lush tale of a poet whose one true friend is a prostitute, director-star Guru Dutt creates a musical drama as shimmering and ethereal as the poet’s verses, as sultry and earthy as Waheeda Rehman,” Time said listing the film on number five along with other romantic films.
The movie, starring Guru Dutt as Vijay and Waheeda Rehman as Gulabo, is considered one of the great films in India cinema. A commentary on the post-independent India, the film also depicts the tender love story between two characters marginalised by society.
Silent film Son of the Sheik (1926), starring Rudolph Valentino as a Moroccan prince, was rated the most romantic film followed by Dodsworth (1936), Camille (1936) and Cary Grant-Deborah Kerr starrer 1957 film An Affair to Remember.
French film Jules and Jim (1962) was rated at six followed by Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express , Nicole Kidman-Ewan McGregor starrer Moulin Rouge (2001), Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar’s Talk to Her (2002) and Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005).
