If crime thrillers have taught us anything, it is that an ‘all-expenses-paid’ trip is mostly a red flag. In India, Raja Nawathe decided to adapt Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None into a movie in the 1960s. Due credits were not given, but minutes into Gumnaam, and any Agatha Christie fan would make out that it’s based on her book.
While Christie’s novel was deeply psychological, playing with the psyche of its characters, Nawathe turned his film into a masala Bollywood movie — with songs, dances and melodrama.
Gumnaam starts with the murder of a wealthy businessman, Sohanlal. The perpetrator is Khanna (Hiralal), who pays a few people to cover up the crime. As Khanna tells Sohanlal’s niece Asha (Nanda) about his death over a call, he is shot dead by a mysterious person.
The film then moves to a nightclub where seven people win a lucky draw, and board a flight to an undisclosed location abroad for an all-expenses-paid trip. Dharamdas (Dhumal), Dr Acharya (Madan Puri), Kishan (Manmohan), Kitty Kelly (Helen), Madhusudan Sharma (Tarun Bose), Barrister Rakesh (Pran), and Asha are the lucky winners.
But before their much-anticipated trip can begin, the private airplane is forced to make an emergency landing on a remote island. The seven, along with flight attendant Anand (Manoj Kumar), wander about the woods, and finally reach a mansion in the dead of the night, where they meet Mahesh (Mehmood), a butler.
As one person is stabbed to death, the group realises that everyone is the target of a sinister murderer.
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The tracks
Unlike Christie’s book, which explores the lives and thoughts of each of the characters stranded on the island, Gumnaam puts the spotlight on Mahesh’s antics and Anand and Asha’s chemistry, with a romantic track featuring the actress in a wet salwar-kameez. Mahesh and Kitty also get a song together — the famous Hum Kale Hai To Kya Hua — which is meant to counter the latter’s racist attitude toward the butler who is blackfaced.
There is even a ‘warning’ song, which plays right after the visitors are left stranded on the island. A woman is heard singing Gumnaam Hai Koi in the forest, but no one really bothers to pay attention to what she seems to be cautioning about. Sung by Lata Mangeshkar, the song gives a spooky start to the film, and over the years, it has become the go-to track for horror narratives.
Shankar-Jaikishan, the music director behind the album, offers variety, including Jaan Pehchan Ho, which featured in the opening credits of Terry Zwigoff’s 2001 cult comedy Ghost World.
Pee Ke Hum Tum Jo Chale features a drunk Helen and Nanda dancing inside the mansion, even as danger lurks in its corners. Helen, dressed in a satin dress and Nanda in a salwar kameez of the same fabric, have fun, even as people drop dead in the house. The song was sung by sisters Asha Bhonsle and Lata Mangeshkar.
An entertaining thriller
The thriller is held together by Mehmood’s performance, because it manages to strike a balance between funny and suspicious — despite the blackface. Helen, in yet another stereotypical role, portrays an Anglo-Indian woman, who wears dresses and other western outfits, setting up a contrast with the saree- and salwar-kameez-wearing Nanda.
Manoj Kumar has the most number of scenes, and while there is nothing spectacular about his performance, he does his bit to also raise suspicion when people are killed one after another and one of his clothes is discovered near Kitty’s body. He is portrayed as the quintessential Bollywood hero–the one who gets the girl, falls from grace, and still manages to save the day.
Gumnaam would not match up to modern adaptations of Christie’s works, like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) or even the Indian film Neeyat (2023), based on Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, but it managed to be entertaining and a commercial success. It defined how to frame a Bollywood-style thriller, and even a horror.
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(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)