Chandni

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Chandni
Directed by Yash Chopra
Starring Sridevi
Rishi Kapoor
Vinod Khanna
Release date(s) 1989
Language Hindi
IMDb profile

Chandni (Hindi: चांदनी, Urdu: چاندنی, Translation: "Moonlight") is a 1989 Bollywood movie. The film stars Sridevi, Rishi Kapoor and Vinod Khanna. The film is directed by Yash Chopra

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Rohit Gupta belongs to a wealthy family. He meets with middle-classed Chandni and both fall in love with each other. Rohit and Chandni would like to get married, but Rohit's mom is dead-set against the marriage at all costs. But Rohit and Chandni are determined to get married, if necessary live separately. Before this could happen, Rohit meets with an accident, is hospitalized, and loses control of both his legs. Under these new circumstances, he decides he cannot marry Chandni and be a burden on her, and so he refuses to marry her.

Years later, Rohit gets better and returns home, and cannot wait to meet Chandni and re-kindle their love-life. When he does meet Chandni, he is shocked to find that she is engaged to another young man by the name of Lalit Khanna, and her marriage is to take place soon. Now Chandni must decide whether to go ahead with marriage to Lalit, or break it off and marry Rohit.

In the end, Lalit Khanna, who is in love with Chandni, lets her go back to Rohit.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Awards

[edit] 1990 Filmfare Awards

[edit] Trivia

  • Initially Rekha was offered the role of Chandni. When she turned it down she suggested Sridevi for the role.
  • A tune from the film was used as a song called kabhi main kahon in Yash Chopra's Later film Lamhe.
  • The storyline of this movie is similar to that of the movie Taal; in Taal, however, the heroine's- Aishwariya Rai- lover is not handicapped but merely lets her go out of anger.

[edit] Story

Chandni (Sridevi) meets Rohit (Rishi Kapoor) at a wedding in Delhi and they fall in love instantly. They romance during her stay in Delhi and correspond after her return to Uttar Pradesh. Rohit’s family disapproves of Chandni as she is not from a wealthy background but Rohit is adamant he loves her, covering his wall with her photographs. While Rohit showers roses from a helicopter onto Chandni’s roof terrace, he falls from the helicopter and is paralysed. Although Chandni is keen to continue her relationship with him as before, he tells her he no longer loves her and his family abuses her.

Chandni stays with friend in Mumbai where she works as a secretary to Lalit (Vinod Khanna). Lalit lives alone with his mother (Waheeda Rehman) since his partner (Juhi Chawla) died. With his mother’s encouragement Lalit proposes marriage to Chandni before going on a business trip to Switzerland.

Rohit has been cured in a Swiss sanatorium and meets Lalit. He tells him that he is going to try to marry his former lover. Lalit tells him about his life; they do not realise they are talking about the same woman. Although Rohit tells Chandni he wants to marry her, she agrees to marry Lalit. At their wedding, Rohit arrives drunk and falls down the stairs. Lalit realises that Chandni loves Rohit and he helps them to get married.

The premier was at Metro cinema, September 1989, one of Mumbai’s premier theatres, where the film ran for 15 weeks, until Yash had to give it over for the release of Maine Pyar Kiya. The film was a huge success.

Chandni was unusual for its time in that it was heroine-centred. Yash feels that this was helped by talking a big female star. When he first thought of the film, he had originally planned to cast Rekha but took Sridevi instead:

“I like working with Sridevi. She says, ‘You do what you want.’ We gave her a totally new look, jewellery, hairdo and costume. Bhanu Athaiya, who won an Oscar [For Gandhi], did all the dresses for the first schedule in Delhi but we had ego clashes and took Leena Daru. We had a lot of white, very simple clothes. We designed her saris and colours, middle-class salwars and churidars, which changed when she was working but could wear different clothes in the dream sequences, such as modern dresses. She’s a damn good actress. She puts something extra in her work. I could notice this the first day I started working with her in Chandni. She comes a step further. Never knew what she was doing. She didn’t know language, assistants told her dialogues. But she contributes so much to each dance, scene, emotion. All have something extra.”

Manmohan Singh [cinematographer of Chandni] confirms:

“For Chandni we knew from the title and the idea of a beautiful girl that we wanted to give the effect of a moonlit night and her beauty. It’s much easier with a good actress like Sridevi.”

Sridevi was proud to be cast by Yash and of her role in the film:

“I liked the role of Chandni. It was a very different role, where any other girl, a very ordinary girl can identify with that character, she can imagine herself as a Chandni, a very simple and very down-to-earth character. I liked it, because always I played a larger than life person, snakes this and that. This was the first film where I played a very simple girl. It was Mr Yash Chopra’s idea to give me light colours, pastels, very simple, I used to feel as if I wasn’t shooting. People started calling them Chandni dresses… even today, people call me Chandni. They really see me in that character. It’s very difficult to get that kind of popularity. Credit goes to Yashji for portraying that kind of a character.”

[edit] External links

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