Most people know Manmohan Desai as the ace director who supported Bachchan’s rise to stardom.But the selfsame gent also made some great movies with Raj Kapoor(Chchaliya), Rajesh Khanna(Roti, Sacha Jhoota) and Shashi Kapoor(Aa Gale Lag Ja).Manmohanji was in a class of his own.Before him commercial films were made with any successful formula.But Manji was able to lay down certain basic rules which defined the potboiler for many years.
The lost and found angle could be just one aspect.The cult of the indian mother was another.So was national integration and communal harmony.Yet, by his own admission Manji carefully avoided self-indulgent filmmaking.As he often said his movies were collections of items.A typical MD film moved seamlessly from one item to another.Manji also understood the importance of good but popular music in making a film saleable.His creations were always made for the common man.His themes were those that the man on the street easily understood.His films in the later phase of his career are testimony to his uncanny ability to read the mind of the paying public-people who actually went to theatres to watch films and did not have the means to rent a home video.
Thus we have films like ’Coolie’, ’Mard’ and to a lesser extent ’Ganga Jamuna Saraswati’.His Bachchan films were of course super successes-’Amar Akbar Anthony’, ’Parvarish’ and ’Desh Premee’ come to mind.In conclusion one can say that he was truly the greatest maker of popular hindi films in India.