उम्मीद

A Ranjit Movietone family drama with a light comic touch, directed by Manibhai Vyas and built around the studio's stock company of players led by Ishwarlal and Prabha Devi. Like most Ranjit productions of the period, its commercial appeal rested heavily on its music — a tuneful score by the studio's salaried composer Khemchand Prakash set to lyrics by D.N. Madhok.

The score by Khemchand Prakash carries eight documented songs set to D.N. Madhok's lyrics, performed by the Ranjit ensemble of singer-actors — Ishwarlal, Kantilal, Miss Gulab, Prabha, Brijmala, Kesari, Iqbal, Mukund and Noor Jehan. The songs span playful duets ('Gend Samajh Ke Uchalo Na Sajaniya'), seasonal melodies ('Haan Ambva Pe Bole Koyaliya') and a topical comic number about a motor car ('Motor Dhire Dhire Hank Re Driver').

Ranjit Movietone, run by Chandulal Shah and the actress-producer Gohar, was one of Bombay's busiest studios in the late 1930s and early 1940s, prolific in family socials and mythologicals. Khemchand Prakash served as its in-house music director from 1937 to 1941, and Ummeed was among the final films of that association before he moved on to Bombay Talkies.

Ummeed belongs to Khemchand Prakash's formative Ranjit Movietone years (1937–1941), the apprenticeship period before his celebrated Bombay Talkies work and the landmark Mahal (1949). The film documents the studio-era system at work: a salaried composer, a house lyricist in D.N. Madhok, and a repertory cast of singer-actors including Ishwarlal, Kantilal and the young Noor Jehan (then billed in supporting roles).

The film survives today chiefly as a footnote in two larger careers — Khemchand Prakash's, on his road to Mahal, and Noor Jehan's, in her early Bombay years before Partition took her to Pakistan. Its soundtrack is preserved through gramophone-era song listings and archival enthusiast documentation rather than the film itself, which like most Ranjit titles of the era is presumed lost.