Synopsis
Dilip Roy (Rajesh Khanna) is accused of
murdering his wife Sushma (Alka). With mounting
circumstantial evidence against him, he
feigns insanity to avoid being convicted.
However finding life unbearable in the mental
asylum, he escapes and seeks shelter in
the house of a married woman, Rekha (Nanda)
who is alone as her husband is away. Caught
in the clutches of this madman or so she
thinks who is terrorizing her, she tries
to get him caught but is unsuccessful. And
while hiding from a visiting Doctor and
a Police Inspector (Sujit Kumar) whom he
thinks is searching for him, Dilip discovers
Rekha’s husband’s corpse in
the bathtub…
The film
Ittefaq is a most interesting
departure from director Yash
Chopra. Normally his films are always
associated with heady romance, postcard
pretty locations and memorable songs but
Ittefaq has none of these elements.
Yet what emergences is a taut engrossing
thriller that audaciously breaks all the
conventions of Hindi commercial cinema prevalent
then and what’s more successfully
gets away with it. The film is under 2 hours
(104 minutes to be precise), is essentially
a one night story, has no songs, has the
hero and heroine not conventionally paired
with each other and a heroine who is an
adulteress and has murdered her husband
with the help of her lover!
 Though
said to be based on a Marathi play that
Chopra had seen, there are more than uncanny
similarities to the Hollywood film Signpost
to Murder (1964) starring Joanne Woodward.
Nevertheless Ittefaq stands quite
well on its own as an Indian noir. Though
like most thrillers of the 1950s and 1960s,
there are aspects of the film that have
dated like the background music score but
on the directorial side even today one notices
that Chopra manages to keep things going
smoothly even though most of the film is
in a single location with essentially just
2 characters. The pace seldom flags, the
whodunit story keeps you engrossed and the
suspense and cat and mouse games between
the two central characters hold up extremely
well as the film builds up to a reasonable
climax.
In keeping with experimenting with this
film, there are several sequences that stand
out – the extremely stylized court
room sequence for one. The scene with its
shadow play has a bizarre Kafkaesque feel
to it.
The film is a fine vehicle for its two
leads and they more than adequately hold
the film together. Rajesh Khanna in his
pre-Aradhana days and devoid of his typical
romantic mannerisms responds with one his
career’s more nuanced and edgy performance.
However the scene stealer is undoubtedly
Nanda. Since the role was negative, Chopra
had a lot of difficulty convincing actresses
to take on the challenging role. It is said
that among those, both Mala Sinha and Mumtaz
turned it down when Chopra approached Nanda,
clearly an inspired piece of casting. Today
Ittefaq is unthinkable without
Nanda who makes the role her own and gives
perhaps the finest performance of her career.
She gives an extremely controlled and reined
in performance and since she was known for
her goody-goody roles, the twist when she
is revealed to be a cold blooded murderess
trying to create an alibi for herself and
pin her husband’s murder on Dilip
works extremely well for both her and the
film. The supporting cast is adequate a
best but then they are not really called
on to do much as the story is essentially
centered on these two characters.
Incidentally Rajesh Khanna had to be unshaven
for Ittefaq and since he was shooting
for Raj
Khosla’s Do Raaste (1969)
simultaneously, he had to appear unshaven
in that film as well! And director Ravi
Chopra began his career by assisting his
uncle on Ittefaq.
Ittefaq proved to be a hit at
the box office proving that a good film
always succeeds, even if it treads away
from the formulaic path. The film also won
the Filmfare Award for Yash Chopra as Best
Director and for Sound Recordist (MA Shaik).
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