Nausherwan-e-Adil (1957)

Persian King Nausherwan-e-Adil (Modi) passes judgement sentencing all males who seduce maidens to death. His son and heir Naushazad (Kumar) rescues and courts Marcia (Sinha), the daughter of a Christian doctor, David (Gupta), and transgresses the law. The dramatic pivot is provided by the Malka-e-Iran, the Queen (Banu), herself a Christian, when she forbids her son to convert to Christianity. In the end, Naushazad and Marcia die in each other’s arms while the Queen is imprisoned by her husband. The plot rehearses many of Modi’s favourite motifs (cf. Pukar, 1939) as the patriarch victimised by his own law, but the film comes alive mainly in its delirious song picturisations, esp. the hit Taron ki jawan par hai mohabbat ki kahani (sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi), picturised on a boat on a moonlit studio river.