Boot Polish

Although his protégé Prakash Arora received credit for this tear-jerking realist drama about an orphaned brother and sister, most sources insist Raj Kapoor directed much of it himself — and it clearly bears his stamp. Often compared to Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine — and with interesting parallels to Slumdog Millionaire, which takes place on the same mean streets — Boot Polish concerns young siblings Bhola (Rattan Kumar) and Belu (Baby Naaz), who are forced by their horrid aunt to beg on the streets. A kindly smuggler (David) and a young shoeshine boy encourage them to join the boot-polish trade, but the coming of the monsoons tears the two siblings apart. Boot Polish is writer K.A. Abbas’s most explicit articulation of the beliefs underlying Nehru’s campaign for social reforms, especially the contention that the poor must be helped to find work in order to further their self-respect. “One of the great tear-jerkers … Kapoor squeezes every drop out of every scene — and then a few more for good measure … The monsoon song performed in jail by David with his fellow prisoners is a highlight — another is a rousing production number with a chorus line of slum kids — ‘A New Dawn Will Come’” (Elliott Stein). —Pacific Cinémathèque