Sheesh Mahal (1950)

Modi’s big-budget commentary on decaying feudal aristocracy. Old patriarch Jaspal Singh (Modi) lives in the Sheesh Mahal (Palace of Mirrors) and believes only in aristocatic lineage, scorning capitalist enterprise. His contempt for money makes him an easy victim for a moneylender and he eventually has to sell his palace to a labourer turned millionaire, Durgaprasad (Mubarak) while himself turning into a worker to survive. The film contrasts Jaspal Singh’s feudal ambitions for his daughters, against what he sees as treacherous bourgeois values, but which are also the only values that come to his aid in the form of Durgaprasad.