Itihaas (1997 film)

Itihaas (transl. History) is a 1997 Indian Hindi language romantic action thriller film produced and directed by Raj Kanwar. The film stars Ajay Devgn and Twinkle Khanna as the lead protagonists, and Raj Babbar as the antagonist. Amrish Puri, Shakti Kapoor and Mohnish Bahl played supporting roles in the film. The film opened to negative reviews and failed to do well at the box office^{[citation needed]}.

Itihaas
Poster
Directed by	Raj Kanwar
Written by	Kamlesh Pandey (dialogues)
Screenplay by	Robin Bhatt Akash Khurana
Story by	Raj Kanwar
Produced by	Raj Kanwar
Starring	Ajay Devgn Twinkle Khanna
Cinematography	Harmeet Singh
Edited by	A. Muthu
Music by	Dilip Sen-Sameer Sen
Release date	20 June 1997 (1997-06-20)
Country	India
Language	Hindi
Budget	₹5 crore (US$590,000)[1]
Box office	₹10.88 crore (US$1.3 million)[1]

Plot

Wealthy, powerful, and influential Thakur Digvijay Singh (Raj Babbar) visits a village and falls in love with beautiful Naina (Twinkle Khanna). They are betrothed and are to be married soon. But Naina has fallen in love with the son, Karan (Ajay Devgn), of Thakur's employee, Balwant (Amrish Puri). When Thakur finds out about this, he instructs his men to bring in Naina alive, and Karan dead. Karan and Naina run from this community all the way to Bombay. The Thakur announces a hefty reward, and soon bounty hunters are all over Bombay looking for the hapless couple. When Balwant hears about this, he too goes to Bombay and does locate Karan and Naina. Karan is relieved to see his dad, but his relief soon turns to disbelief, as Balwant instructs him to let go of Naina, as he himself has come as an agent of the Thakur, not as his father.

Cast

• Ajay Devgan as Karan Bakshi
• Twinkle Khanna as Naina Singh
• Mohnish Behl as Inspector Ujagar Pandey
• Amrish Puri as Balwant
• Raj Babbar as Thakur Digvijay Singh
• Shakti Kapoor as Navlakhi / Dholu
• Sapna Bedi as Anjali Sharma
• Aruna Irani as Rukmani
• Neelima Azeem as Naveli
• Kanchan (actress) as Ganga

Production

Itihaas was the first attempt of Kanwar at producing a film and was highly publicised. He repeated the pairing of Devgn and Khanna who had previously starred in his 1996 film Jaan.^[2] Outlook noted that the film had been "lavishly produced".^[3] Xavier Marquis also helped in the film's finances.^[4]

Soundtrack

Lyrics by Sameer Anjaan, Music by Dilip Sen-Sameer Sen.

#	Title	Singer(s)
1	"Chori Chori Dil Diya"	Kumar Sanu, Alka Yagnik
2	"Dil Ke Qalam Se"	Hariharan, Anuradha Paudwal
3	"Dil Ke Qalam Se" (film version)	Hariharan, Alka Yagnik
4	"Achko Machko"	Alka Yagnik
5	"Bol Bol Bol Raja"	Vinod Rathod, Shankar Mahadevan, Alka Yagnik
6	"Ja Re Ja Ud Ja Panchhi"	Shankar Mahadevan, Alka Yagnik
8	"Yeh Ishq Bada"	Pappu A K, Anuradha Paudwal
9	"Saathi Mere Tere Bina"	Kumar Sanu, Anuradha Paudwal
10	"Yeh Ishq Bada" (version 2)	Pappu A K, Alka Yagnik
11	"Juda Apne Dilbar Se"	Alka Yagnik, Shankar Mahadevan, Sukhwinder Singh

The audio cassette of the film was released at the Sun & Sand Hotel in Juhu.^[5]

Reception

Supran Verma of Rediff.com wrote that the film had "turned to be just a rehash of [Jaan] and other Kanwar films" which was why maybe it didn’t catch the audience’s attention.^[2]

The film performed poorly at the box office, becoming the first flop of Raj Kanwar. Devgn took the Bombay territory as fees.^[2][3]

However the film was the 21st highest grossing Bollywood film of 1997.

Also the songs such as ‘Chori Chori’ and ‘Achko Machko’ were popular.