Ranked #2 of 100
Pyaasa
प्यासा · 1957
A poet nobody wants alive and everybody wants dead. Guru Dutt's indictment of a country that monetises art only after the artist is gone.
- Director
- Guru Dutt
- Year
- 1957
- Genre
- Drama · Musical
- Cast
- Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman, Mala Sinha, Johnny Walker
Why it's at number 2
The single most beautiful use of light and despair in Indian film. TIME's all-time 100.
A poet nobody wants alive and everybody wants dead. Guru Dutt's indictment of a country that monetises art only after the artist is gone.
Pyaasa sits in the 1950s alongside Mother India and Awaara — a decade this canon treats as foundational.
The Bollywood 100The essentials
- Directed by Guru Dutt — also responsible for Kaagaz Ke Phool.
- Released in 1957, in the 1950s — see everything else from that decade.
- Filed under Drama, Musical.
- Read more on Wikipedia, check the full crew on IMDb, or find a legal stream via JustWatch.
Film record Wikipedia — Pyaasa (1957) · data last revised 9 August 2026 · title, year, director and cast are read from that article; this site keeps no independent print record and does not claim one
Editorial The ranking and the case made for each placement — not a measurement · last revised 9 August 2026 · signed by Amit Sharma · the scoring is published in full so the machinery can be argued with, not just the result
No box-office figure, rating or audience score is printed on this page, because none has been independently verified for this film. The dated, sourced money figures the site does stand behind are on the box office page.
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