Rajshri’s ANKHIYON KE JHAROKHON SE released in 1978, was a tragic love saga directed by Hiren Nag, featuring Sachin and Ranjeeta in the lead. The film won appreciation from the audience but was actually an inspired version of a Hollywood flick, LOVE STORY (1970), based on Eric Segal’s famous novel with the same title. Having an emotionally moving plot revolving around terminal illness, the film worked because of its young relatable performances and a highly melodious soundtrack (by Ravindra Jain), despite having a tragic sad climax defying the Hindi films norm.
After three decades Rajshri thought of remaking a sequel to the 1978 hit (following their routine practice) and came up with a pretty weak film in comparison as JAANA PEHCHANA (released in 2011), featuring the same lead pair of Sachin and Ranjeeta, directed by Sachin himself. The film didn’t work, but as a sequel, it had some rare, unheard of features as mentioned below.
1. Made after an unusual gap of 33 years, its titles stated “In the wake of ANKHIYON KE JHAROKHON SE” and “Special thanks to the unit of ANKHIYON KE JHAROKHON SE” in two separate slides.
2. Introducing a different Ranjeeta as an author, it had the same character of Sachin, who is now an industrialist, philanthropist and a known social figure of the city. Plus we also get to see two more characters of the original film, namely Junior Mehmood (as Sachin’s associate) and Birbal (working as a Librarian in the same college the three friends studied together).
3. As Sachin meets Ranjeeta, he gets a shock of his life and agrees to her offer of writing his official biography. Now as he tells her about his past, the narration repeatedly keeps going back to his college days and the makers go on adding the digitally restored footage of the original 1978 film (representing his memories) with a newly added background score giving it a fresh feel.
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4. Surprisingly the old footage insertion goes on and on for more than 12-15 minutes at times, adding a long re-edited chunk at a stretch. And this keeps repeating several times in the film throughout its less than two hours of duration, especially in the first half. Adding further, the sequel also includes all the cult songs of the 1978 hit too (using the original footage) as
“Ek Din Tum”, “Kayi Din Se Mujhe”, “Dohavali (Competiton in College)” and
“Ankhiyon Ke Jharokhon Se” forming about 50-60% of the film to be precise.
In other words, here is a so called sequel which has more than 50% footage and all the hit songs of its original film inserted as flashback and thus can easily be called an unusually rare and interesting project, saving a lot of money and effort of the entire team.
On the other hand, it can also be called a cunningly intelligent or clever way of tricking the unaware audience, entirely banking upon on a cult soundtrack superbly composed & written by the immensely gifted Ravindra Jain.
Cheers!
(The article was first published on UC-News Mobile Portal in February 2018)
