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Mother India Photos

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Movie Info

The wedding of Radha (Nargis) and Shamu (Rajendra Kumar) is at hand, but the loan they take out to pay for the ceremony ends up leading to their ruin. Unable to pay the mounting interest rates, the couple is forced to give up three quarters of their crop to the moneylenders. Shamu works the fields in an attempt to alleviate their poverty, but a loose boulder crushes his arm, rendering him incapable of work and humiliated at his sudden inability to provide for his family.

Genre:

musical, drama
Original Language:

Hindi
Director:

Mehboob Khan
Producer:

Mehboob Khan
Writer:

Mehboob Khan, Wajahat Mirza, S. Ali Raza
Release Date (Streaming):

Jan 28, 2015
Runtime:

3h

Cast & Crew

Nargis
Radha

Sunil Dutt
Birju

Rajendra Kumar
Ramu

Mukri
Shambu

Raaj Kumar
Shamu, Radha's husband

Kanhaiyalal Chaturvedi
Sukhilala Lala, a cunning money-lender

Show all Cast & Crew

Critic Reviews for Mother India

All Critics (13) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (11) | Rotten (2)

Put it this way, it's the birth of the Bollywood blockbuster. It should be on every cineaste's must-see list.

March 18, 2013 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…

David Parkinson
Empire Magazine
As the mother, Nargis is as resolute as a force of nature, and Mehboob Khan creates tableaux of the family that evoke its fragile unity.

March 18, 2013 | Full Review…

Fred Camper
Chicago Reader
True, there are dull spots and the overripe supporting cast pale beside Nargis' 'force of nature' central performance, but overall it's a wallowy treat.

February 9, 2006 | Full Review…

Trevor Johnston
Time Out
Often said to have helped set the pattern for the nearly 50 years of Indian film that has followed it.

August 22, 2002 | Full Review…

Dave Kehr
New York Times
An outrageous masala of apparently discordant elements.

August 20, 2002

J. Hoberman
Village Voice
This looks a bit creaky now, but it's a big, entertaining work, with echoes of The Good Earth and Gone With the Wind.

August 15, 2002 | Full Review…

Peter Bradshaw
Guardian
The acting is broad and rhetorical, and the movie resembles those relentlessly upbeat tractor-musicals of the Soviet cinema that Stalin so much admired.

May 6, 2021 | Full Review…

Philip French
Observer (UK)
Mother India is quintessential popular Hindi cinema.

March 18, 2013 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…

Total Film
The first great Bollywood blockbuster, Mother India (Bharat Mata) a purposefully melodramatic musical, liberally laced with action, wit, humour and also a strongly socialist strain.

May 24, 2003 | Full Review…

Film4
The most popular film in Indian history -- it's said to have been playing somewhere in the country every day since its release.

August 22, 2002 | Rating: 3.5/5 | Full Review…

TV Guide
Throughout Mother India, [Mehboob] presents the landscape, the crops, the herds of livestock practically as characters in themselves.

August 16, 2002 | Full Review…

George Wu
culturevulture.net
The only thing this ponderous Bollywood epic could inspire is matricide.

August 14, 2002 | Rating: 1/5

Phil Hall
Film Threat