Umrao Jaan vs Umrao Jaan
Last November the biggest filmindustry on the planet released a remake of Umrao Jaan. Directed by J.P. Dutta and featuring an all-star cast, noteably Aishwarya Rai (of course in the leading role), this glamorous superproduction comes exactly quarter of a century after Muzaffar Ali’s intelligent, poetic and simply magnificent cinematic interpretation of the 1905 Urdu novel.
Isola Cinema opened its very first edition with Ali’s 1981 Indian contemporary classic. His Umrao Jaan featured the legendary Rekha (whose song-lyrics were sung by –the no less glorious– Asha Bhosle). During the Izola public talk the director underlined that although it has been labelled a “Bollywood classic”, he has always kept a safe distance from Bollywood. As characteristically expressed on the artist’s homepage (http://www.muzaffarali.com/): ” Muzaffar Ali enriched by the emotional harvest of the response of Gaman and Umrao Jaan has conserved himself from being consumed by Bollywood genre of filmmaking, and is now a symbol of aesthetics and humanity. ”
