Jaali Note

Nicely done, with good acting all around. The biggest challenge for the modern viewer is that JAALI NOTE is only available in fairly poor transfer -- clearly taken from a rather worn videotape, with artifacts from that transfer throughout. Sound is muffled and fuzzy, as is the picture. Additionally, the subtitling runs rather minimal, and omits anything spoken in English. Normally this might not be a problem, but it can be when it's hard to clearly hear what people are saying.

Now: these issues do not quite prevent us following the story, nor appreciating the qualities brought to screen by the various actors. The story is very efficiently told -- in fact, the title is very very first line of dialog. The songs are very good and don't seem to interrupt the movie as much as you might expect. Both Dev Anand and Madhubala are charming, to the extent the so-so transfer lets us see, and are quite convincing in their roles. If only the transfer were a little better ....