Indian movies love twins

Indian movies love twins and movies made on them have always made the box office jingle and have never disappointed the producers or directors or the heroes and heroines. The storylines have usually been ‘lost and found’ cases where the twins get separated in childhood in places like the village fair, grow up in diametrically opposite surroundings and come together at the climax. In between, 18 reels would have unwound over at least three hours.
Indian movies with these of twins show one of them as meek, submissive, fear prone, and weak while the other character is just the opposite.

One of the earliest Bollywood movie with twins was in 1967 – it was Ram aur Shyam in which Dilip Kumar played the double role. Later there were other such movies like Seeta aur Geeta (Hema Malini 1972), Gora aur Kaala (Rajendra Kumar 1972), Chaalbaaz (Sridevi 1989), Kishen Kanhaiya (Anil Kapoor 1990) and Judwaa (Salman Khan 1997).
These movies draw crowds even when shown today – the storylines are tweaked for variety but, the end result is always the same. These provide a chance for the actors and actresses to show off their capabilities and talent.
In Seeta and Geeta, the heroine Hema Malini was superb as she portrayed two totally different roles in the 1972 film.
When Sridevi did her double role in Chaalbaaz, her fans swooned at her abilities to portray the role of a girl who loved her drinks.
Of course, supporting actors are also important to keep the interest of the audience alive.
In Seeta aur Geeta, the male leads were of Dharmendra and Sanjeev Kumar – both were admirably suited to their roles. In Chaalbaaz, the male leads were played by Rajnikant and Sunny Deol.
In all these ‘twin’ movies, the leading ladies and the men get ample scope to display their abilities to adapt to different needs of the story.
There have been Bollywood movies where the actor has done more than two roles in a single film – Sanjeev Kumar performed in nine roles in the 1974 movie Naya Din Nayee Raat. However, Priyanka Chopra went one better – she did 12 roles in the 2009 movie What’s Your Rashee? (to be continued …)

(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)
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