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As star and director of the 1951 crime drama, Kapoor drew inspiration from the Little Tramp persona of Charlie Chaplin in creating this tale about a privileged judge — played by his father, Prithviraj Kapoor — whose presumptions that morality is hereditary and that “criminals are born to criminals” leads him to wrongly convict a man of rape. This sets off a chain of tragic events and leads the judge to cast his pregnant wife out of his house for adultery. Years later, her son Raj (Raj Kapoor) has reluctantly turned to crime to support his impoverished mother. He seeks to marry a childhood sweetheart, who unfortunately — for Raj — is studying law under the very same judge. Many melodramatic twists and turns of fortune ensue, alongside rousing musical numbers, including the popular song “Awāra Hoon,” with passionate but palatable messages of socialist reform threaded throughout the plot. A highly influential classic of Bollywood cinema, Awāra has enjoyed international popularity (it was nominated for the Grand Prize at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival) and critical praise, this is a vibrant, sensuous, and casually progressive must-see. (Toronto International Film Festival)