Fabulous foot scenes in older Indian movie

[Feeture Feature]

Just saw "Jal Bin Machhli Nritya Bin Bijli" from 1971 on DVD (available from Netflix). A wonderful movie even though no subtitles. Unfortunately the overexposed nature of the film and the length of foot sequences made it unpractical to cap, as well as the encoding protection of the DVD (most do not wreck the picture as much as this one did when I tried to use my capture card). Even before the starting credits, there is a close-up of a bare foot with anklets on and a heavier anklet being put on. Then a guy reaches down and grabs the anklet and throws it through a closed window, smashing the glass. Then the opening credits, followed by a long scene of bare feet running outside until the woman sneaks into a palace where a dance school is located, when she peeks at a class you get the first view other than her bare feet.

There are 4 bizarre dance scenes in which the star Sandhya is barefoot. Long dance performances, from 4 to 12 minutes each. 1. She is in a skintight cobra outfit, her feet (including the soles) painted green. Very dramatic and emotional. 2. Includes long, long bit where she stands on a brass plate barefoot, gripping it between her toes (between the big toe and the next toe of each, not by the toes) and rocks along and slides along in it as she battles some kind of devils. She ends by working her way on the plate up an incline (on which a villain has loosened the bolts holding it together) and at the end as she shakes her ankles to make her anklets vibrate, the incline collapses and she is seriously injured. 3. In the hospital she hallucinates herself into a dance where all the characters are playing cards. 4. After she runs away from the hospital and is dramatically rescued hanging from a cliff in what appears to be an area with Russian Cossacks(!), her teacher takes her back to the school and she appears hopping on one foot, with crutches, for a long dance performance. Some really bizarre characters carry her off and she comes back healed, which overcomes her teacher and I guess they live happily ever after.

Highly recommended if you like bare feet at all and are not put off by having no English. I even liked the music which is not always the case. It was not traditional Indian music and dance but almost like opera or a Broadway show.