55 Years of Sangam (18/06/1964)

55 Years of Sangam (18/06/1964)

Sangam is a 1964 romance film, directed by Raj Kapoor, written by Inder Raj Anand, and produced by Kapoor with Mehboob Studio and Filmistan. The film stars Vyjayanthimala, Raj Kapoor and Rajendra Kumar in the lead roles, with Iftekhar, Raj Mehra, Nana Palsikar, Lalita Pawar, Achala Sachdev, and Hari Shivdasani appearing in supporting roles. The plotline and characterization was loosely inspired by the 1939 Hollywood movie Gone with the wind.

Sangam was Raj Kapoor’s first color film, distinguished by its technicolor and epic length (even by Bollywood standards). It is also sometimes considered to be a magnum opus of Raj Kapoor, as one of his best works.

It became a hit in India and is considered a classic today. One of the features of the film that became widely used later on in Bollywood is the use of foreign locales for on-location shooting, such as Venice, Paris, and Switzerland. This started the Bollywood trend of shooting songs sequences abroad (primarily in Switzerland), against the background of “exotic” landscapes.

Overseas, the film released in the Soviet Union in 1964 and Turkey in 1968, as well as Bulgaria, Greece and Hungary. Director Dasari Narayana Rao remade the film in Telugu and Kannada languages as Swapna (1981).