Manmohan Desai's MARD (1985) takes a scene straight from KOHINOOR (1960)

The entertaining combo of Manmohan Desai and Amitabh Bachchan gave us many memorable movies such as “MARD” released in 1985 which revolved around the era of British Raj. The film had many comic scenes of Amitabh Bachchan making fun of the Ruling people along with his horse and dog. And one of those funny scenes was the mirror scene of his with Prem Chopra in which Amitabh poses to be the image inside the mirror in front of a drunken Prem.

But recently, I found that this particular scene was taken straight from a Dilip Kumar starrer Black & White film called “KOHINOOR” which was released in 1960 and was directed by S. U. Sunny. The scene is where Amitabh is playing around with Prem Chopra as his image in the mirror. The same sequence is also there in KOHINOOR where Dilip Kumar is fooling Jeevan as his image in the mirror. May be it was the love of one Legend for another which might have been the reason for this inspired scene in the film.

However, after I posted this, a comment of a friend disclosed more secrets about this scene, which as usual has its origin in the west. In reality all the above mentioned scenes have been actually inspired from Marx Brother’s “DUCK SOUP” which came way back in 1930 and which is still famous for its cult comedy sequences.