Neecha Nagar
Poster
Directed byChetan Anand
Written byKhwaja Ahmad Abbas
Story byHayatullah Ansari
Produced byRashid Anwar
A. Halim
StarringRafiq Anwar
Uma Anand
Kamini Kaushal
Rafi Peer
Hamid Butt
Zohra Sehgal
CinematographyBidyapati Ghosh
Music byRavi Shankar
Production
company
India Pictures
Release date
  • 29 September 1946 (1946-09-29)
(Cannes Film Festival)[1]
Running time
122 minutes
CountryIndia
LanguageHindi

Neecha Nagar (transl. Lowly City) is a 1946 Indian Hindi-language film, directed by Chetan Anand, written by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and Hayatullah Ansari, and produced by Rashid Anwar and A. Halim. It was a pioneering effort in social realism in Indian cinema and paved the way for many such parallel cinema films by other directors, many of them also written by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas. It starred Chetan Anand's wife Uma Anand, with Rafiq Anwar, Kamini Kaushal, Murad, Rafi Peer, Hamid Butt, and Zohra Sehgal. Neecha Nagar (Lowly City) was a Hindi film adaptation in an Indian setting of Russian writer Maxim Gorky's 1902 play The Lower Depths.

Neecha Nagar became the first Indian film to gain recognition at the Cannes Film Festival, after it shared the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film (Best Film) award at the first Cannes Film Festival in 1946 with eleven of the eighteen entered feature films.[2] It is the only Indian film to be ever awarded a Palme d'Or.[3] Ironically, the film was never released in India.[4]

Overview

It was based on a Hindi story, Neecha Nagar, written by Hayatullah Ansari, which in turn was inspired by Gorky's The Lower Depths. It took an expressionist look at the gulf between the rich and poor in society.[5][6]

Neecha Nagar was the debut film of actress Kamini Kaushal and for Ravi Shankar as a music director.

Cast

Soundtrack

The music of the film was composed by Ravi Shankar with lyrics by Mammohan Anand and Vishwamitra Adil.

  1. "Utho Ke Hame Waqt Ki Gardish" - chorus
  2. "Kab Tak Gahri Raat Rahegi" - Lakshmi Shankar
  3. "Birha Ki Aag" - Geeta Dutt
  4. "Dil Mein Samaake" - N/A
  5. "Ek Nirali Jyot Bujhi Hai" - N/A
  6. "Haiya Ho Haiya" - N/A
  7. "Hum Rukenge Bhi Nahi" - N/A
  8. "So Na O Nanhi" - Lakshmi Shankar

Awards

1946 Cannes Film Festival

Citations

  1. ↑ "Celebrating Zohra Segal". Google.com. 29 September 2020. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  2. ↑ Grand Prix du Festival International du Film (1939–54)
  3. ↑ "Revisiting Neecha Nagar, The Only Indian Film to Win Palme D'Or at Cannes". The Quint. 16 July 2021. Retrieved 16 March 2022.
  4. ↑ "Everything You Need to Know About Neecha Nagar - 1st Indian Movie to Make It to Cannes in 1946". India Times. 17 May 2016.
  5. ↑ History will never forget Chetan Anand Archived 20 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine 13 June 2007.
  6. ↑ Maker of innovative, meaningful movies The Hindu, 15 June 2007.

References

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