It is a dark,
rain-splattered night. A car comes to a screeching halt on
deserted road as a strikingly beautiful woman dressed in white ,
appears. She
sports wet tresses, vacant eyes and an enigmatic
half-smile.
Motorist: 'Kaun ho tum (Who are you)?'
She (deadpan): 'Koi
nahin (Nobody).'
Motorist: 'Kahan
jaana hai (Where do you want to go)?'
She: 'Kahin
nahin (Nowhere).'
She accepts a
lift but seems to possess an extraordinary
electromagnetic field -- the windshield wipers stop working as soon
as she sits in
the car. The motorist can't see the foggy road ahead;
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she can, clearly.
Her finger begins to bleed. 'Mujhe khoon
pasand hai
(I like blood),' she admits.
She asks him to stop the car at a crematorium. A gate swings open to
let her in. Mist envelopes this polymorphous
presence even as
the haunting song Naina barse rimjhim rimjhim, mingled with
the squawking of bats, fills the soundtrack.
The title Woh Kaun Thi rolls.
With well-honed skill, Raj Khosla deploys every spooky genre staple
and more to kick start Woh Kaun Thi. The film then
hurriedly establishes that the befuddled, befogged motorist in the
opening frame is Dr Anand (Manoj Kumar). Anand loves
Seema (Helen), much to the chagrin of fellow doctor Lata (Praveen
Choudhury).
Though director Khosla lavishes two songs too many (Tikiri
and Chhodkar tere) on the Anand-Seema romance, he keeps
the suspense element ticking by introducing red herrings (a mute,
bouquet-holding, curly-haired shadow presumably
spying on Seema) and portentous lyrics (Hum khushi se na aaj mar
jaaye) in the song preceding Seema's murder.
Subsequently, a harried Anand is summoned by an emergency midnight
caller to a gothic, bat-infested, cobweb-ridden
haveli. Armed with a candle, Anand climbs a flight of rickety
stairs to reach the room. When he throws open the door, a
banshee-like wail warns: 'Chale jao, chale jao [Go away, go
away]'. Next to a seated, ashen-faced woman lies the
apparition in white Anand met on the rainy night. He leaves, shaken.
But, at an inspector's insistence, retraces his steps to
the haveli. He returns within minutes, but the
haveli has no inmates.
A Few Still From The Film
Anand desultorily
complies with his mother's desire and marries a girl of her choice. On
the wedding night, when he raises
his
wife's
ghunghat, he is flabbergasted -- it is the woman in white. But
she claims to be Sandhya (Sadhana), an orphan.
Yet, each time
her husband confronts her with their eerie encounters, she gives a
mysterious half-smile.
In a nail
bitingly tense scene, Anand forcibly takes Sandhya to the haunted
haveli.
Khosla frames the
opening of the sequence in the haveli's room with Anand and
Sandhya. As Anand proceeds towards
the
bed, the
camera accompanies him and Sandhya is edged out of the frame. When
Anand turns, the camera pulls back
there is no
Sandhya! Yet, when Anand returns home, Sandhya opens the door --
dressed exactly as he had last seen her
(pearl string,
printed sari, et al). Moreover, Anand's mother confirms that Sandhya
was at home all evening!
Sandhya's
ice-in-the-veins demeanor alienates her mother-in-law. Her refusal to
face an exorcist only exacerbates
matters.
Claiming that her marriage is
on he rocks, Sandhya says she is returning home. But her train has an
accident and
she is
presumed
dead. Bordering on insanity now, Anand is advised to take a holiday in
Shimla But
the apparition in white
(Sandhya?)
trudges through the snow-clad mountains of Shimla too and beckons,
Chala aa mere
parwane wafa ki shama jalti hain.
Four decades
later, I would still rather not give away the denouement. Suffice to
say that the resolution of the mystery,
taken with a
pinch of salt, is imaginative and involving. Don't expect all the
loose ends to be neatly tied up. If you ask:
How did the car's
wipers stop, automatically? scriptwriter Dhruv Chatterjee teasingly
offers no explanations.
Manoj Kumar looks
handsome and effectively strikes pensive poses, many of which became
part of his acting arsenal
in latter-day
suspense thrillers (Anita, Gumnaam, Saajan).
The show-stopper
is Sadhana. She is enchanting as the wife, choosing to invest the role
with an intriguing Mona Lisa-like
smile.
Simultaneously, she infuses an air of disenchantment and overt
sensuality (inviting Manoj with open arms in Lag jaa
gale) to
the 'nether-world' woman.
To Khosla's
credit, though he repeated Sadhana in a similar double role in
Mera Saaya, he clearly delineated her two
performances.
Unlike Mera Saaya, where the wife yearns for her husband's
acceptance and vociferously fights for his
Love,
the
self-respecting Sandhya of Woh Kaun Thi is a study in pent-up
emotion and restraint.
With the aid of
Sadhana, his ear for music and perceptive eye for song picturisation,
Khosla cooks up an atmospheric
thriller
that ensures an
audio-visual treat.
Songs In The Film
Play Back Singers
Lyrics
Naina Barse
Lata
Mangeshkar
Jo Humne Dastan
Lata
Mangeshkar
Lag Ja Gale
Lata
Mangeshkar
Sidelights
Sadhana says she
didn't turn a hair while shooting the eerie bits alongside a huge unit but
was scared out of her wits when she
saw the final print of Woh Kaun Thi with R K Nayyar (her
husband-to-be).
After the success
of the black-and-white Woh Kaun Thi, Sadhana and Raj Khosla went
on to work in a series of suspense
thrillers in colour
like Mera Saaya and Anita. In all three, Sadhana played
double or multiple roles.
Woh Kaun Thi was remade in Tamil as Yar Nee.
Nimmi
was once considered for the title role opposite Manoj Kumar.
Manoj Kumar designed the film's posters and even offered valuable tips on
the writing
