Jeevan Mrityu

For anyone who has read the classic novel The Count of Monte Cristo, this film is an example of how your most beautiful memories and dreams can be transformed into some mindless rubbish: while Hindi cinema specializes in such terrible adaptations, this one is one of the worst even among them. The film has no moments of stillness: everyone and everything breezes through, and while Dharmendra plays Edmond Dantes, Ramesh Deo is completely miscast as Danglars. Dantes' father is here replaced by Dharmendra's mother: more tear-inducing for an Indian context, though tears are not easy to sprout, anyway.

The film has one famous song: maybe its only saving grace. There is too much noise, and the plot adaptation is set in a bank, not a ship. So the romance of the sea - Mercedes waiting by the sea and Dantes' Herculean skill and woman's fickleness like the sea's and the miraculous arrival of the Pharaon - that romance is completely lopped off, already dooming the adaptation to the bins of poorly executed ambitions.