Yasmin

Nicely filmed if rather standard desert melodrama of abduction and romance.

Without giving details about the plot, I'll just point out that practically everything about "Yasmin" -- plot, sets, style, costumes, character appearances etc -- is lifted directly from the 1926 Rudolf Valentino film "Son of the Sheik". Even the main actor looks like he was chosen based on resemblance to Valentino. To his credit, Suresh is every bit as handsome), but the strong point of "Son of the Sheik" was that Valentino played two roles -- father and son -- and did both excellently.

On the other hand, "Son of the Sheik" didn't have songs, and "Yasmin" has about ten -- all very good too. Vijayanthimala is an expert dancer, and if this isn't her most impressive footwork, she's still a great classic beauty (something the 50s - 60s really excelled at).

The real star of "Yasmin" is the beautiful black-and white look -- despite the occasionally stagebound scenes, the viewer can lose themselves in the romanticized high desert feel this film is striving for. I expect it played much better on the big screen. On DVD, just worth seeing

I was recommended to see this movie by a movie buff, who besides owning a DVD store also has encyclopedic knowledge about Bollywood films especially old movies. Although I had to pay exorbitant money to buy this DVD, as it is a rare film, but it just met my expectation and didn't feel the pinch to pay the cost, as it had a hero unknown to me named Suresh, who has acted in a number of films one of them being Dulari in 1949. He also acted in two films in Pakistan in 1950s which could have been uncompleted projects before the partition, but came back and acted in films till 1971. He paired excellently with Vyjayantimala, in this movie. This movie had three immortal songs, the best being 'Mujpe ilzam bewafai hai' sung by Lata, tuned by C. Ramchander and lyrics by Jan Nisar Akhtar, others being 'Bechaiin nazar betaab jigar' by Talat Mehmood and a duet by Lata-Talat 'Tum apni yaad bhi dil'. The background of the story is Arabian as it happened in 1950-60, when there were number of films made in middle eastern landscape like Dilip Kumar featured 'Yahudi, but was not boring, as it got lifted by good music and actors. Those passionate about old songs, can watch this film.