दौड़ती है हिमालय तट से सागर, हमसफ़र हर राह पर, हवाई जहाज़ों को त्याग कर, करो अक्सर, भारतीय रेल में सफर. - Arpit P

A FLASHBACK TO THE RAIL-REEL CONNECTION
THE TOP TEN
(Courtesy: May 2013 issue of the RAILBANDHU)
1. 11 O" Clock (1948)
A heroine who can swing between chandeliers and jump seamlessly from coach to...
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coach, 11 O" Clock was one of the earliest movies featuring a train in India. It was an adventure film that featured the fearless Nadia who performed her own stunts in one of the most spectacular fight sequences atop a moving train. Nadia went on to become one of the earliest female stars in the Indian film industry.
2. Bandini (1963)
Towards the climax of the movie when the notes of Mere Sajan Hai Uspaar (rendered by the by legendary Sachin Dev Burman) waft through the screen, it beautifully sums up the feeling of bereavement among the suffering protagonists - Ashok Kumar and Nutan. The folklore beats along with the sound of the train and the ship are combined to make the song immortal.
3. Pakeezah (1972)
A courtesan (Meena Kumari) is asleep inside a train couch when the hero (Raaj Kumar) enters it and is immediately smitten by her beauty.He scribbles an apology on a piece of paper and places it near her so it is the first thing she reads when she wakes up. The apology turns out to be one of the most famous lines in Bollywood: Aapka pao dekha bahut haseen hai, inhau zameem par mat utariyga, maila ho jayega.... It is from this brief train encounter that the intense romance picks up.
4. Sholay (1975)
Who can forget the opening sequence of Sholay in which Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar) captures a gang of tobbers on a moving train ? JUmping from coach to coach, escaping a rain of bullets flying at him, the sequence sets the tone for the rest of the film. It brought home the Bollywood western.
According to movie trivia related to the film, the train robbery sequence was shot on the Mumbai-Pune track near Panvel. It was inspired the 1939 Hollywood movie, Stagecoach, and it took the director, Ramesh Sippy, seven days to shoot it. Though there were a number of films made on train shootouts earlier, Sholay was a different genre altogether.
(To be contd.........)