Mere Apne

About the film

Mere Apne is a 1971 Indian Hindi-language film written and directed by Gulzar in his directorial debut and produced by Romu, Raj and N. C. Sippy. A remake of the 1968 Bengali film Apanjan, it was the first movie of Vinod Khanna as Hero. This was also debut movie of Danny. The film stars Meena Kumari, Vinod Khanna and Shatrughan Sinha in lead roles along with Deven Verma, Paintal, Asit Sen, Asrani, Danny Denzongpa, Keshto Mukherjee, A. K. Hangal, Dinesh Thakur, Mehmood and Yogeeta Bali. The music of the film is composed by Salil Choudhury.

Mere Apne was declared " Hit " at the box office.

Plot

Anandi Devi (Meena Kumari) is an old widow who lives in a village. One day, she is visited by a distant relative, Arun Gupta (Ramesh Deo), who persuades her to live in town with him, his wife Lata (Sumita Sanyal), and a small child. She later realizes that they were looking for a maid, which results in her expulsion from the house and befriending a child beggar who takes her to his dilapidated home. Being good-natured and caring, she slowly earns the title of "Nani Ma" (maternal grandmother) among groups of youths led by Shyam (Vinod Khanna) and Chhenu (Shatrughan Sinha), who were in a constant fight with each other. At one time in the movie, she asks them why don't they go to the "madarsa" to study, insinuating that a) colleges are not worth going since, as the movie-plot consistently points out, they witness strikes most of the time, and b) this killing of time could have been avoided. The movie ends with her death from accidental gunfire in one such response.

Production

After Apanjan, directed by Tapan Sinha, is based on a story of Inder Mitra, was both a commercial and critical success. Screenwriter Gulzar was called to Kolkata to translate the script for a Hindi remake. However, subsequently Sinha insisted on using the same cast, and dropped out of the film. Then, Gulzar, who till then was assisting Bimal Roy and Hrishikesh Mukherjee and penned screenplays of Khamoshi (1969) and Anand (1971), made his directorial debut with the film. Gulzar bought the rights of the story, and rewrote the screenplay removing the portions he felt were too formulaic and commercial.

Gulzar, in an interview revealed that N. C. Sippy, the producer of the film, wanted actress Nimmi in the grandmother's role. Gulzar however was keen on Chhaya Devi, who played that role in the original. It was Meena Kumari who was finally given the role of grandmother on Gulzar and Romu Sippy's insistence. Kumari who was ailing at the time, worked through her bad health in the film. The shooting was completed in 40 days.

Only the song, Chand Katora Liye Bhikaran... couldn't be picturised on Kumari as she was in no condition to come to the sets, being on the last stage of her illness. Mere Apne was the last film she shot for and would often joke with the young actors, 'This director is pushing you so hard, at least you can ask him to host you a beer party'. However, that party never happened as she died soon after the release of the film.

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