Awara is the Raj Kapoor classic that made his name a household word across Asia, the Middle East and in Russia. The story is an eloquent if indirect attack on the hypocrisies of class prejudice and the caste system, couched in an elaborate, intricately plotted melodrama with original music, spectacular studio effects, and memorable production numbers--including a dream sequence worthy of Busby Berkeley, involving Hindu dieties and featuring performers from the Royal Indian Ballet. Raj Kapoor stars as the abandoned son of a wealthy Bombay magistrate (played by his father Prithviraj Kapoor). The boy grows up to be a low-life and a thief and only learns the circumstances of his birth when he falls in love with his father's ward (played by the beautiful and earthy actress Nargis, Kapoor's leading lady for many years). Elliott Stein writes, “This delirious melodrama--Raj Kapoor's first movie to deal directly with social issues--is brilliantly constructed in a convoluted flashback structure. The film originated with a screenplay by the left-wing writer and director, K. A. Abbas, who later wrote the script for Shree 420 (see November 18 and 21); these films consolidated Kapoor's screen persona as an Indian variant of Chaplin's underdog, an image to which he would return in film after film. The script is dominated by the notion of social determinism: i.e., criminals are formed by their environments, heredity is a mere happenstance in the creation of character.... The film is a masterpiece. The song sequences carried Indian film music to new heights.”