Stay Alert
- IMDb link: 0049378
- IMDb rating: 8.2 (1,172 votes)
- Genres: Comedy, Drama
- Director: Amit Mitra, Sombhu Mitra
- Cast: Pradeep Kumar, Pradeep Kumar, Sumitra Devi, Smriti Biswas, Pahadi Sanyal and others
- Release date: 14 Dec 1956
- Release year: 1956
- Runtime: 153 minutes
- Country: India
- Keywords: apartment building, night watchman, dysfunctional marriage, middle class, drinking water, hypocrisy, manhunt, apathy, social realism, fish out of water
Plot:
In hopes of improving his lifestyle, a poor peasant re-locates to Kolkata virtually penniless. It is late at night and he is thirsty, and he is unable to find water anywhere. A singing drunk offers him money to buy some alcohol, but the money is snatched away by a taxi-driver. In desperation, the peasant attempts to drink from a fire hydrant, but is stopped by a Police Constable. Then he sneaks into a multi-storied apartment complex, and is mistaken for a thief. The entire building, which consists of over 200 units, housing nearly a 1000 people, set out to hunt him down. He first stumbles into the house of Kailash - who makes illicit alcohol, while his daughter is secretly romancing another tenant, Pradeep; the peasant then runs into another apartment - just in time to see the husband attempting to steal his wife, Meenu's valuables, so that he can get enough money to gamble on a race-horse; he hides in a drum and makes his way around the huge building and ends up as a corpse at the apartment of Ramnarayan Malik, who prints counterfeit rupee notes. Watch what happens when he earns the wrath of Ramnarayan and his men, ends up on a drain pipe several stories high - with scores of residents hurling stones at him - and Ramnarayan's men waiting on the terrace with weapons to kill him.