Teresa Reviews Dhund (1973)

Teresa reviews Dhund (1973), the Indian version of The Unexpected Guest (1958), and discovers the first of many adaptations there.

Source: Amazon Prime

(c)2023 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: 3 revolvers

Greatly fleshed-out characters, the butler gets a star turn, and Bollywood songs and dances!

Quality of film on its own: 4 revolvers

Involving and increasingly horrifying as Thakur’s cruelty is revealed. Singing and dancing scenes integrate surprisingly well into the plot.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

The Unexpected Guest (1958) is one of Agatha’s lesser-known plays. Its working title was Fog. It did well in its inaugural run but seems to have been ignored afterwards. Charles Osborne novelized it in 1999. He didn’t change much; only adding enough connective tissue to make a script read like a novel.

In India, however, The Unexpected Guest took on a life of its own. Starting with this version, it’s been filmed six times in various Indian languages and under different titles. Dhund is the version we found with subtitles and since it set the stage for subsequent efforts, we went with it.

The film made far more changes to the play than Osborne did. It greatly fleshed out the characters. We see a lot more of Rani’s misery (she’s Thakur’s unhappy wife), Thakur’s brutality and craziness, and how it affects the household. Thakur’s stepmother is miserable and trapped, but if he dies, her son, his half-brother, would inherit the estate. The son is about sixteen and has been driven insane by Thakur’s cruelty.

The two servants (I guarantee there are more drifting around offscreen including whoever takes care of dressing, bathing, and toileting a man crippled from the waist down) get time too. Radha is the housemaid. She’s afraid of Thakur, but dutiful, obedient, and happy to cooperate with the police. Banke Lal (Deven Verma) is the equivalent of a butler. He runs the household but he has a life of his own. He steals every scene from his first appearance watching a gyrating dancer in a “house of entertainment.” The subtitles said brothel, but it didn’t look like the dancer was a prostitute since she didn’t go upstairs with any of her avid audience. It was the most chaste movie brothel I’ve ever seen.

Nor did the avid audience or musicians scatter when the police arrived. Their licensing fees were up to date as Banke points out to the police inspector.

Next, we learn all about Suresh Saxena, a character added to the movie. He’s an up-and-coming, well-connected lawyer, running for political office. In a flashback, we see how he and Rani met, when he saved her from leaping to her death over a cliff. She was in despair over Thakur’s abuse and saw no way out. Suresh becomes a regular visitor to the household, playing chess with Thakur and exchanging longing glances with Rani.

This being an Indian production and not a Hollywood one, longing glances, conversations, and the occasional touch of hands is all that went on. Their affair is chaste. Similarly, there’s a shower scene involving Rani (proving to the audience she couldn’t have shot her husband) where you see the shower spray, her wet hair, and nothing below the top 1 inch of her shoulders. It was the most chaste shower I’ve ever seen.

Chandra Shekhar is the unexpected guest. He arrives at the house in the middle of a foggy night, the victim of a car accident. Since the front door’s unlocked, he walks in and discovers Thakur, asleep in his wheelchair. Except Thakur’s dead and Rani is revealed standing next to him, holding a revolver.

Chandra leaps to the conclusion that Rani, despite her protests, is innocent of shooting her husband or at the very least, deserves to get away with murder. It must be her loveliness, especially when she reveals her sad story.

They concoct a plot about a robbery gone wrong, set it up to fool the servants and police and immediately, things begin to go wrong. Inspector Joshi is no fool. When he questions the servants, they reveal that Rani had a suitor, lawyer Suresh. Evidence is found linking Suresh to the scene of the crime, including the fact he lied about his whereabouts at the time of the shooting.

To Rani’s horror, Suresh is arrested for murdering her husband. She’s willing to take the blame. Suresh is equally sure Rani shot Thakur and he is ready to take the fall as well.

The film adds a dramatic courtroom scene, where Suresh tests the theory that a lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client. He doesn’t do too badly. The courtroom scenes form an inadvertent documentary. The prosecutor and the judge say rather different things than you’d get in an American or a British courtroom.

At the high point of the trial, when it appears all hope for Suresh and Rani are lost, a surprise witness shows up. Chandra tells the real truth and you, dear reader, realize everything you saw was from the wrong point of view. In classic Agatha fashion, old sins have long, long shadows and the past is never dead. It’s been biding its time, waiting for revenge.

Why was Chandra so eager to cover up the murder, absolving Rani of blame? Because he murdered Thakur, but only by accident. When he saw his nemesis, crippled and wheelchair-bound, he wanted him to live. Live, I tell you! Nothing could be more hateful to Thakur to be trapped like an animal in a cage. Chandra didn’t know that Thakur took his fury out on his family, his servants, even the unlucky neighbors who had to listen to his abuse and dodge the bullets he sent flying.

Thakur is one of those murder victims who had it coming. No one actually feels sorry for him. They’re relieved he’s dead. The wheels of karmic justice ground slowly but they eventually ground him into powder.

This being a Bollywood suspense thriller — and it is suspenseful — there’s singing and dancing. Unlike Gunmaan, the musical interludes are much better integrated into the plot. There’s the song during the opening credits and again at the closing credits. As best as I could tell from the subtitles, it sets up the film’s theme of the power of fate on human lives.

Other performances reinforce the theme. Banke watches his lassie dance and sing in the “house of entertainment.” Suresh sits through a different, lengthy entertainment of dancers, one in blue and one in fuchsia, giving their all to the customers. In both cases, professional dancers, not the core characters, burst into song. Both song routines also — assuming the subtitles were accurate — danced around the film’s theme like a Greek chorus. For a Bollywood film, it was quite restrained.

There’s so much to like about Dhund. It was filmed as a contemporary, leading to interesting views into Indian culture at that time. It’s not just the mix of western and Indian dress or house decorations or even hearing English mixing with the Hindi. It’s throwaway lines like Chandra telling the police that he assumed that because the house he crashed nearby was large, they would have a telephone. That when Chandra’s out on the golf course, with its jungle rough and red dirt greens, he’s dressed to fit into the finest of English golf courses. And the hotel bar is in the open air, with charming tables and umbrellas sitting on dusty red clay instead of a paved terrace.

This is a very different, curry flavored take on Agatha. It’s still her, her plot, her motivations, and her characters. But it’s also a slice of India.