Color comes to Bollywood

Made in 1960, over the course of ten years, with one song requiring a chorus of several hundred singers, MUGHAL-E-AZAM was the most opulent, most expensive, and most sense-shattering Bollywood film made at that time. It's a pretty simple story: prince meets girl, girl is a commoner, prince can't have girl, prince gets angry. But it's also pretty eternal, and while it's shot in beautiful black-and-white on some stunning sets, there are two musical numbers shot in Technicolor (at the time it was insanely expensive to do so).

Well some Bollywood brainiacs recently had the idea of colorizing MUGHAL-E-AZAM and they released it to theaters where it did great business. Now, producers are digging around under their beds for the next film they can colorize and turn into a hit.

I think I'll always prefer the b&w MUGHAL, so thank goodness it's still on DVD in its original format. Watch for a colorized version of B.R. Chopra's NAYA DAUR next.