Movies / Hindi
1960 · Historical · Romance
Prince Salim and Anarkali, and an emperor who will not allow the match. K. Asif spent years building it. The Madhubala–Dilip Kumar scenes are still the standard for a doomed Hindi romance.
Prince Salim loves Anarkali, a court dancer. His father, the emperor Akbar, decides the empire cannot allow it. K. Asif directed. It opened in 1960 after a production that had already become a legend. Dilip Kumar plays Salim. Madhubala plays Anarkali. Prithviraj Kapoor plays Akbar.
All-time blockbusters
Released on 5 August 1960, it broke box-office records in India and became the highest-grossing Indian film, a distinction it held for 15 years.
K. Asif produced and directed it, with Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Madhubala and Durga Khote, telling the love story of Prince Salim and the court dancer Anarkali. Work began in 1944, when Asif read Imtiaz Ali Taj's 1922 play Anarkali, and the project lost a financier and its whole original cast before shooting began. It cost more than any Indian film before it; a single song sequence cost more than a typical film of the era. It had the widest release of any Indian film up to then, and people often queued all day for tickets. About 30 minutes were filmed in colour, and in 2004 it became the first black-and-white Hindi film to be fully digitally coloured and re-released in cinemas, where the colour version was also a commercial success. Its 12 songs, sung by Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Shamshad Begum and the classical singer Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, are often cited among the finest in Hindi cinema, and Madhubala's performance earned a Filmfare nomination for Best Actress.
Last checked 15 October 2026.