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Although the film constructs a distinct vision that would characterize Dutt's
remaining films -- especially the explicitly autobiographical Kaagaz ke
Phool (1959), about a failed film director -- it's interesting to speculate on
Dutt's possible influences when making Pyaasa: at least one song
sequence (Hum aapke aankhon men), set in a cloud-covered dreamworld
and hinting at Guru Dutt's origins as a dancer, appears to pay a modest
homage to the famous dream sequence of Raj Kapoor's Awara (1951).
More often the film -- especially its final rally for a constructed hero that
escalates into a riot -- suggests Frank Capra's similarly bleak Meet John
Doe (1941), and a late scene between the unscrupulous publisher Mr.
Ghosh and Meena at their breakfast table surely alludes to Citizen
Kane (1941). (In Welles' film, the famous "breakfast montage" ends as the
first Mrs. Kane silently reads a copy of her husband's rival newspaper;
in Pyaasa, Meena holds up an issue of Life magazine with a crucified
Christ on the cover.) The film's consistently rich black and white
photography suggests not so much American film noir of the 1950s, but its
gloomy precedents in French poetic realist works like Carne's Le Jour Se
Leve (1939) or Quai des Brumes (1938), which paved the way not only for
dark American crime films, but for the existential artist-outsiders who would
be Vijay's European soulmates following World War II.