Helen, Queen of the Nautch Girls

A documentary on the Anglo-Indian Helen, best remembered by Western audiences, perhaps, as the Heroine in Gold dancing on the giant typewriter in Merchant Ivory's Bombay Talkie. The star of more than 500 Hindi films turns out to be straightforward, unaffected professional, modestly concerned that her film's have a consistent point of view and that, above all, her eyes hold the spectator's attention. Her ambition, when she finally retires? To open a modest boutique in Bombay's still to be completed Sheraton Hotel.