aussiemalwayi This is one of the best Hindi movie from 1960s. Good direction and story, wonderful acting by Guru Dutt & Waheeda Rehman.

ravikumar-mandadi saw pyaasa first which sorta disappointed me but then i watched this one just for the song 'waqt ne kiya'. for a modern day movie goer there is no sanctity attached to this stalwart of yester years, it follows that no offense whatsoever is intended in my casual language. about the movie, it is difficult to realise that so many scenes seem 'old' because these have been excessively used/copied/parodied/improvised/destroyed in the past 50 years in various languages. but there are so many scenes where the intensity of the passion of Guru Dutt as a film maker is unmatched. Waheeda Rehman was blissful in pyaasa and is even more so in this one..one word 'love her' !! if you were to watch this movie as a critic, you will appreciate it well but if you were to watch it as a casual man, it is heart wrenching. yet, i prefer the latter.

indigshai-1 This is really a milestone in world cinema - not just Indian cinema. The story, the lyrics, songs, music, photography, editing and above all class act. Everyone has poured their heart in this film. This indeed is a poetry in form of a film. Though the topic is very depressing it but reflects reality from eyes of a defeatist, maybe the only flaw I see in the picture, and perhaps the reason why the film never saw a good box office record. However, it may have a lot to do with personal struggles of Guru Dutt at the time of making of this film. Only if the film had been about triumph of human struggle to overcome all odds, outcomes could have been different. A lot of credit is given to Guru Dutt alone, however I feel the classic nature of this film has a lot to do with contribution of everyone - the music is touching today as I suppose it might have been then. One who has never seen Wahida Rehman in younger days is dazed at her beauty and innocence. Guru Dutt himself looks rather handsome. Kaifi Azmi's lyrics are just inimitable. Photography is great - considering it was done in 50a. I came up with the DVD by chance and I'm now going to see more of Guru Dutt's work. I not for a moment want to deny Guru Dutt his share of glory, however one must also acknowledge other geniuses who made this movie a classic!

zetes A huge disappointment! Dutt's Pyaasa is one of my all-time favorite films; few have moved me so greatly. I didn't think he could top that one, but I also didn't think that his next film would fall so low. I mean, it's a fairly good film, but it really failed to resonate with me. Where Pyaasa was an archetypical plot that aspired to myth, Kaagaz Ke Phool is more along the lines of melodrama. Completely lost is the previous film's visual and aural poetry. The story of Paper Flowers concerns a film director, played by Dutt, who discovers a poor woman, Waheeda Rehman, to star in his new film. The two of them develop a special relationship that approaches love, but is not quite there. Then the director's daughter, Baby Naaz, enters the picture. The director's wife separated (not divorced) from him because her upper class family did not approve of a man involved in the film industry. But the daughter cannot stand to see her father fall for another woman, so she convinces Rehman to quit after the film is done. Disaster ensues for everyone. For this film to work better, I think the characters really needed to be better developed. They are mostly pretty generic. The daughter especially needed a more fully written role, because she basically ruins two lives and we only hastily see how she is affected by this. The movie pulls together a bit by its end, and its last couple of sequences are good, but nothing comes close to the cinematic magic of Pyaasa. Even the songs are far below Bollywood standards; they're too few and far between, and they tend to sound alike. Sometimes I wasn't sure if one song was a reprise of another. I liked a few of them, especially those sung by the actress character (sung, that is, by Geeta Dutt, as the actors tend not to sing in Bollywood). 7/10.