- Pakeezah has been restored after a two-year process led by the Film Heritage Foundation.
- The Meena Kumari classic will premiere in Lyon in October.
- The 153-minute film was restored using rare surviving film materia
Nearly five decades after its release, Meena Kumari's Pakeezah is getting a new lease of life. The restored version of the 1972 classic will have its world premiere at the Festival Lumière in Lyon, France, in October. It will later be screened at the BFI London Film Festival.
The restoration took two years and was led by the Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), in association with the Amrohi family. The 153-minute film has been restored using some of the surviving film elements, including material that was found in poor condition after decades of storage.
FHF director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur recalled the state of the original camera negative when the restoration work began. “When I went to inspect the original camera negative, I saw that it had almost melted. The other film elements we had to work with were not in good condition, with faded colours, scratches and mould … During our research, we discovered original film stills which helped a great deal,” he said, as per a press release.
The team also tracked down an interpositive and a CinemaScope print at Ramnord Lab. It also got access to a colour reversal internegative preserved by the NFDC-National Film Archive of India. These materials were used to bring the classic back as close as possible to its original form.
The restoration comes at an important time for Pakeezah, which remains one of the best-known films of Meena Kumari's career. She played Sahibjaan, a courtesan caught in a difficult world, in the film directed by Kamal Amrohi.
The film had a long and complicated journey to the big screen. Work began in 1956, initially in black-and-white, before the production moved to Eastmancolor in 1958. Changes in the cast, script revisions, rising costs and Kamal Amrohi's attention to detail stretched the shoot over 15 years.
Production came to a halt in 1964 after Kamal Amrohi and Meena Kumari separated. Meena Kumari was later diagnosed with liver cirrhosis in 1968, putting the future of the film in doubt. However, Sunil Dutt and Nargis watched the existing footage and encouraged the ailing actor to return and finish the project.
The film also lost cinematographer Josef Wirsching in 1967 and composer Ghulam Mohammed in 1968. Other cinematographers completed the visuals, while Naushad worked on the final background score.
Pakeezah eventually released on February 4, 1972. It received strong reviews and became a box office hit. Meena Kumari died less than two months later, on March 31.
Interestingly, the film's first premiere had its own touch of old-world glamour. Its film cans arrived at Mumbai's Maratha Mandir in a palanquin, with Kamal Amrohi, Meena Kumari and several leading film personalities attending the screening.