Rent Pyaasa (1957)
4.1 of 5 from 58 ratings
2h 20min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
Struggling poet Vijay (Guru Dutt) is ridiculed by his brothers and scorned by publishers. Vijay finds encouragement in a sweet prostitute Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman). One day he meets his exgirlfriend Meena (Mala Sinha) and gets hired as servant by her husband Mr.Ghosh (Rehman) who is a publisher. In a train mishap, the beggar clad in Vijay's coat dies while Vijay gets injured. Gulabo convinces Ghosh to print Vijay's poems, believing him to be dead. After recovering from injuries, Vijay's close friends and brothers refuse to recognize him for their ulterior motives and he is confined to mental asylum for claiming to be someone who is dead. He escapes from the mental asylum and arrives at the function held to honour him. There he denounces this corrupt and hypocrite world and declares that he is not Vijay. - Actors:
- Mala Sinha, Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman, Rehman, Johnny Walker, Kumkum, Leela Mishra, Shyam, Mehmood, Radheshyam, Tun Tun, Maya Dass, Moni Chatterjee, Ashita, Neel Kamal, Mohan Sandow, Rajendra, Tulsi Chakraborty
- Directors:
- Guru Dutt
- Producers:
- Guru Dutt
- Writers:
- Abrar Alvi, François-Xavier Durandy
- Aka:
- Thirsty
- Studio:
- Shemaroo Entertainment
- Genres:
- Bollywood
- Collections:
- Cinema Paradiso's 2025 Centenary Club: July - September, A Brief History of Film...
- Countries:
- India
More like Pyaasa
Found in these customers lists
Reviews (1) of Pyaasa
Broke, Beautiful, and Singing About It - Pyaasa review by griggs
Pyaasa feels a bit like Frank Capra turning up in Calcutta, ditching Jimmy Stewart for a melancholy poet and deciding, quite sensibly, that songs were staying. It is a lovely place to spend a couple of hours.
Guru Dutt directs and stars as a gifted writer nobody much values, in a world more interested in money than art and status than decency. V.K. Murthy shoots it beautifully, all shadow and light and faces that seem to carry whole arguments on them. Best of all, the songs actually belong there. They come out of character, longing and fantasy, rather than barging in from another film entirely.
What really got me, though, is the tenderness at the centre of it. This is basically a love story between two decent people with no money and no real protection from the world. Waheeda Rehman is wonderful as Gulabo, giving the film warmth without ever making it soft. It knows the world is cruel. It also knows kindness still turns up, which saves it from despair.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.