Filmi Geek

Mother India (1957)

The exquisite sacrifice that is the life of an Indian woman is a common and moving theme upon which many great Hindi films are based, from Amar Prem to Lajja.  And the mother of all these films may be Mother India, in which an Indian woman survives an almost unimaginable series of hardships and rejuvenates an entire village with her own backbreaking work, only to face the ultimate sacrifice - one she must make not only for her family, but for the good of the entire community.  

Radha (Nargis) marries the handsome Shamu (Raaj Kumar) and settles well into life with his solid agrarian family.  She soon learns, though, that her mother-in-law mortgaged the farm to pay for her and Shamu's lavish wedding celebrations.   The moneylender Sukhi Lala (Kanhaiyalal) claims three-fourths of the farm's produce, having tricked Radha's illiterate mother-in-law into signing a usurious contract.  As the family grows - Radha has three children - it becomes more and more difficult to subsist on their meager share.  The hardships multiply, leaving Radha and her children alone, homeless, and starving.  They survive through Radha's own tireless hard work, and her sons grow into strong young men, though each is scarred in his own way by the traumatic experiences of his childhood.  The spirited Birju (Sunil Dutt) is mischievous and temperamental; he is hungry to seek revenge from Lala, who still claims the lion's share of their produce.  The solemn Ramu (Rajendra Kumar) is protective of his mother and reflects her values, relying on hard work to make his way.  The tension between the two philosophies sets the stage for the film's ultimate conflict, as Birju's rash, violent nature clashes head-on with his mother's stern, grounded integrity. 

Mother India is a beautiful film, shot in beautiful brown and orange tones that both highlight the majesty of the rural Indian landscape and bring to life the grit and heat of working the soil.  The themes lend themselves to an abundance of iconic and symbolic images - Radha hauling a plow that is meant to be hauled by an ox; Radha standing neck-deep in flood waters, hefting her young children over her head on a pallet.  And Nargis, as Radha - really as the titular Mother India - is in absolute top form.  She is the epitome of badass filmi womanhood; she is simply fierce.  Nargis has crafted a performance that is melodrama at its finest, focused and heightened emotions that magnify the viewer's sense of Radha's experience.  Indeed, the multiplying calamities that befall poor Radha can be hard to watch - there are times when the story is so bleak it seems hard to carry on. 

Still, there is a current of hopefulness as well.  Radha's story is told in flashback; the film opens with the villagers asking Radha, now an old woman, to bless the inauguration of the village's new canal.  "You are the mother of us all," the villagers plead with the recalcitrant old woman.  And so the viewer knows, from the outset, that Radha not only will survive her trials, but will come to hold a revered place as the savior of the village.  Radha shoulders the burden of rearing her family and restoring a village upheaved, in what is surely a metaphor for the construction of modern India and healing the fresh wounds of Partition.  And so the film's message is, as it must be, that once Mother India has made the difficult decisions and painful sacrifices, those of her children that remain will be squarely on the road to prosperity. 

The film's second half is as much about Radha's sons as it is about Radha; much time is devoted to developing their contrasting approaches to reconciling with the past and preparing for the future.  The hot-headed Birju thirsts for revenge and lives in the moment; Ramu is practical, methodical, and hardworking.  The film is abundantly clear in its endorsement of the latter philosophy.  And yet as much as Birju frustrates her, Radha adores him; as in Deewaar, Mother India favors her miscreant son over her honest one.  The only limit Radha sets for her indulgence of Birju is one that reflects the film's girl power subtext:  "You may do as you like and I will always love you," she tells him, "but don't you dare ever disrespect a woman."

These comments are quite long enough, but I have to add a few words about Mother India's beautiful music.  The songs encapsulate the agrarian beauty of the film and present delightful tableaux of idealized life in a farming village.  While they don't stand alone - there are no singular dances or set pieces that stand out in my memory (except perhaps the Holi song) - they add texture, and in the film's darker moments, respite, to an already lovely movie. 

Awara (1951)

आवारा

When I saw Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Shree 420 I was astonished in equal parts by the magnetism of the stars and by Raj Kapoor's mastery of the art of entertainment.  So I had high expectations for Awara ("vagabond") - perhaps too high, because while Awara was certainly an excellent film, it left me somewhat unengaged and disappointed.

Raghunath (Prithviraj Kapoor) considers himself a forward-thinking man, and bucks tradition and his family by marrying a widow.  When his wife Leela (Leela Chitnis) is kidnapped and then mysteriously returned, though, Raghunath is overwhelmed by the wagging tongues of his community.  He concludes, in shades of the Ramayana, that her honor is sullied, and casts her out of his household; she bears his son in squalor. 

Raghunath continues to rise in esteem and eventually becomes a judge who deals harshly with criminals, believing them born of bad blood and incapable of rehabilitation.  His son Raj (Raj Kapoor), meanwhile, under the influence of the same thug Jagga (K.N. Singh) who kidnapped his mother, grows up to be a crook and a bank robber.  When he is reunited with his childhood friend Rita (Nargis) - who happens to be Judge Raghunath's ward - sparks fly, and Raj is torn between his desire to be good enough for her and his belief, fostered by Jagga, that he is no good for anything other than crime.

Like Shree 420, Awara explores a wide range of social themes.  Dominated by ruminations on the question of nature versus nurture, it also addresses classism, injustice toward women, and other weighty issues.  But where Shree 420 clothes its missive to post-partition India in a truly entertaining package, watching Awara it is difficult to shake the feeling of being educated.  Everything, and everyone, is deadly serious.  The tone is set by Prithviraj's clenched jaw and furrowed brow and carried through Raj's dour sarcasm, a bitterness that sours even the film's tender moments.  The result is a movie that, despite the excellence of its craft, feels like work to watch. 

There are unquestionable strengths to Awara.  Raj Kapoor and Nargis turn in subtle and emotional performances.  And Nargis's character Rita is a rare treat - a young woman who also happens to be a lawyer.  She is cautioned against allowing her emotions (presumably a feminine weakness) to interfere with her rationality, but her introduction of compassion into the cold calculus of criminal justice is presented by the film as an unambiguous asset and the key to both Raj's and Raghunath's redemption.  This is possibly Awara's most radical idea, the notion that criminals should be treated as redeemable individuals with the potential to rehabilitate, rather than as the mechanical sum of their breeding and past bad actions. 

Awara also features a beautiful evergreen soundtrack, whose highlights include the title song, a creepy and gorgeous dream sequence in "Tere bina aag yeh chandni," and - especially - the cheeky "Dum bhar jo udhar munh phere,"in which Rita implores the bright full moon to give her and Raj some privacy for an amorous moment.  But the film's sweet, engaging, or moving moments just aren't enough to overcome the general tone of gloom and preachiness.  I realize that Shree 420 is an impossible standard to hold any film against (and that it was made after Awara), but Awara just misses striking that balance of offering its substantial message in a package that would make me want to watch the film again.  It's a great film in many ways, but just a little ponderous, a little off. 

Shree 420 (1955)

श्री ४२०

This is the second time in a couple of months that I've watched a movie and loved it so much that I had to wonder why I didn't get to it sooner.  While the other one, Parvarish, was only a silly, fun piece of masala candy that tickled me for personal reasons, Shree 420 is one of the all-time classics of Hindi cinema, one that helped me understand why Raj Kapoor is Raj Kapoor, and why Nargis is Nargis.  And I can't believe I waited this long.

Raj (Raj Kapoor) is a guileless, carefree vagabond, wandering the streets of Bombay in search of work.  He has a college degree - he carries his diploma in his pocket, along with a medal for honesty that he earned as a child.  In his wanderings Raj meets a merry band of beggars and working folk, the den mother of whom (Lalita Pawar) is charmed by his innocence and takes him under her wing.  They live on the footpath in front of the home of the blustery tycoon Seth Dharmanand (Nemo), who is kept awake nights by the vagrants' cheery singing.  Raj also encounters the beautiful Vidya (Nargis), a down-to-earth schoolteacher who has fallen on hard times, selling her books and her trinkets to the local pawn dealer to make ends meet.  Sparks fly between Raj and Vidya, but Raj frets that he cannot offer her a financially stable future. Opportunity knocks when Raj meets the vampish, scheming Maya (Nadira), a greedy socialite who recognizes in Raj a talent that she can exploit to separate others from their money.  From Maya's small-time cons Raj graduates into full-scale employment as a master of fraud with Seth Dharmanand, selling bogus shares in bogus companies and running other big-time schemes.   (The film's title, "Mr. 420," refers to section 420 of the Indian penal code; "420" is vernacular shorthand for a crook or a con.)  Raj is making real money, but it may cost him Vidya, who doesn't fit into his high-rolling world - and who anyway wants nothing to do with Raj as long as he is a con-artist and a fraud.

Shree 420 is rich with symbols of the promise and pitfalls of post-partition India.  Raj's emergence at the beginning of the film from his rural ramblings into the hard bustle of Bombay represents the country's transition from its traditional grounding to modern government and economics - and it is no coincidence that Raj is immediately taken advantage of upon his arrival in the city.  There is a running semiotic pun based around Raj's honesty medal as he pawns it and redeems it; Raj's honesty itself is for sale.  For most of the film, Raj is caught between a traditional simplicity, represented by Vidya (whose name means "knowledge") and the glitter and spangle of high-tone, high-stakes capitalism, represented by Maya (whose name means "illusion, trick, deceit").   The film pits pure, hardworking, homegrown virtue directly against the exotic, westernized world of greed and fraud.   Ultimately the film weaves a complex and powerful social message, exhorting the everyday people - who in the film literally sleep on the doorstep of the fat-cat's opulent home - to work together to build an India that is modern and yet free of exploitation by that greedy element. 

The richness of the narrative and its symbolic arsenal is matched - even exceeded - by Shree 420's pure entertainment value.  Raj Kapoor is a masterfully physical performer, moving fluidly between Chaplinesque antics and Cary Grantish suavity as quickly as changing a mask (another of the film's recurring symbols).  He is a delight to watch.  Nargis, one of the greatest stars of the era, has an ineffable grace that transcends beauty, a riveting poise and a presence.  She ranges from firmly proud in her early meetings with Raj, to bashfully passionate as their romance develops, to heartbreakingly wounded when she is insulted by Maya.  In either of the stars' performances it is clear why this film is a revered classic.  Nadira is car-wreck compelling (and maddeningly sexy) in her career-defining vampish turn as the bitter, manipulative Maya (screencap below).  Finally, there are the film's timeless songs, from Raj Kapoor's iconic "Mera joota hai japani," to the tender declaration of love in "Pyaar hua ikraar hua," to the exuberant peasant dance of the vagrants in "Ramaya vastavaya," to Nadira's seductive call to the dark side, "Mud mud ke na dekh".   I haven't named them all and I don't doubt that someone will chime in with another favorite - they are all that special.   My friend Sanket at Bollywood Music Club has more about the delicious music of Shree 420

There are volumes more that could be said and have been said about this film, its place in Hindi cinema, and the significance of its social commentary.  But if you haven't seen Shree 420, don't spend any more time reading about it - just go and watch it. 

Kaagaz ke phool (1959)

काग़ज़ के फूल

This bleak but often lovely film is the gloomy story of a depressed filmmaker who spends his life lonely, unappreciated, and plagued by demons - not unlike the tragic biography of its  tortured auteur, Guru Dutt. 

Director Suresh Sinha (Guru Dutt) is making an adaptation of the classic Indian tragedy Devdas. His heroine doesn't share his artistic vision - she wants her character glammed up, with luscious sarees and a sophisticated hairdo.  After she walks off the set, Suresh stumbles across the heroine he has been looking for in Shanti (Waheeda Rehman), a young working woman without a family.  Suresh becomes Shanti's mentor and father figure, and a tenderness grows between them as well.  Just when that tenderness appears poised to blossom into real love, though, Suresh's young daughter Pammi (Kumari Naaz), who is kept from Suresh by his estranged wife (Veena) and who harbors a fantasy that her parents will reconcile and reunite, prevails on Shanti to leave Suresh.  The film covers a span of years as Shanti and Suresh, who seem destined for one another, nevertheless attempt to navigate their lives apart.    

Kaagaz ke phool ("Paper flowers") is in many ways an exceedingly beautiful film.  It is poetically written, touchingly acted, and shot with gorgeous and evocative black and white cinematography that I do not even feel qualified to describe.  Its tortured artist theme, however, is somewhat grating - films about how hard it is to be a filmmaker always tend toward the self-indulgent, and even an excellently-crafted film like Kaagaz ke phool cannot entirely escape the gravity of that sort of navel-gazing.  It is frustrating to watch the tragic evolution of people who are done in by their own stubbornness; Suresh in particular, but Shanti too, have plenty of opportunities to improve the course of their lives, and their persistent refusal to take advantage of them shifts the mood away from the tragic and toward the pathetic.  At one point, after Suresh - without Shanti as his muse - makes a bad film and loses his job, there is some musing about how unforgiving the film industry is, how once one has begun to fall there is no regaining one's footing.  But this is not shown to be an inevitability  for Suresh - rather, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, in both the professional and personal domains of his life.  It is not for nothing that the film opens with Suresh molding Devdas to his vision; that story chronicles an even more annoyingly self-indulgent character who refuses to take responsibility for his own happiness.

None of this is to say that I did not like Kaagaz ke phool or that I think it is a bad film - it is, for the most part, engaging and compelling, save for a few draggy portions in the second half when we are shown Suresh's descent and degradation from a few too many different angles.    But Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman are beautiful and charismatic, and even though the actions of their characters frustrated me, I genuinely cared about them and wanted better for them.  (In this aspect the film stands in stark contrast to the only adaptation of Devdas that I have seen, in which the miserable protagonist's death could not come quickly enough to satisfy me.)  And there were moments at which my breath caught at the sheer beauty, like the picturization of the majestic and unutterably lovely "Waqt ne kiya", the film's iconic song, which I am sad to report cannot be seen on YouTube.  I feel I need to see the film again, perhaps on a day when I am better prepared to be battered by a story that starts out bleak and gets bleaker, in order to fully appreciate its art. 

Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959)

Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy films are considered by many to be the crowning achievement not just of Satyajit Ray himself, but of all of Indian film.  Apur Sansar (The world of Apu) is the final installment of the story, and I saw it without having seen the first two chapters, which recount events in Apu's childhood and adolescence.   

Apur Sansar picks up at Apu's graduation from school.  Living in a grungy Calcutta tenement beside the railroad tracks and barely scraping his rent together, Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) aspires to be a great novelist, and we learn early on that he has had some success at it, selling a short story to a local periodical.  On a vacation with his practical and grounded friend Kulu - ostensibly for Kulu's cousin's wedding - Apu makes a rash and heroic decision that changes his life forever.  The bridegroom succumbs to mental illness, and Kulu prevails on Apu to take his place and marry Kulu's cousin Aparna (Sharmila Tagore, here only about fourteen years old).  Apu and Aparna settle into a spare life in Apu's dingy flat, and for a while they enjoy a delicious period of newlywed bliss.  Then tragedy strikes, though, and Apu, unmoored and confused, struggles to recover his bearings. 

Apur Sansar's story covers a period of six or seven years in Apu's life, and is therefore necessarily episodic in nature.  Indeed, the film may fairly be characterized as a series of beautifully shot, poignant moments.  The dialogue is sparse and one is left to fill in the blanks, to guess at what the characters are thinking and feeling.  But the direction and performances are both subtle and expressive, so the emotional content is very real, even if the viewer must supply it.   In one early scene, Apu visits a pharmaceutical factory looking for work.  His face droops in self-doubt as he realizes that he lacks the constitution for monotonous physical labor.  Later, a series of warm, tender scenes conveys the quiet happiness of Apu and Aparna's married life.  In every scene, emotions play subtly across the actors' faces and evocative symbols - a wounded animal, a torn curtain, an inkblot - do much of the film's heavy lifting. 

I feel somewhat out of my league reviewing Apur Sansar, which, despite the many ways in which it is fundamentally an Indian story, reads more like a European art film than an Indian film.  I don't know a thing about European art films, and while I enjoyed Apur Sansar and was moved by it, I don't know that I fully understood or appreciated it.  Each shot is loaded with complex symbolism that is rich and even apparently contradictory at times.  At the movie's conclusion I immediately wished I could watch it again to give more thought to those symbols.  Instead, here I am with my rather impressionistic and incoherent commentary.  For something more, please visit my friend Amit and read his thoughts.

Chalti ka naam gaadi (1958)

चलती का नाम गाड़ी

The masala film was not an invention of the 1970s. Chalti ka naam gaadi is delightful proof of that, a raucous blend of farce, romance, and intrigue with a flavor reminiscent of the Marx Brothers.  Top it off with a lead pair who sparkles together on screen and a catchy, toe-tapping SD Burman soundtrack and Chalti ka naam gaadi ("the moving thing is called a car") is the perfect entertainer that stands up brilliantly nearly 50 years after its birth.

Brijmohan, Jagmohan, and Manmohan are a trio  of brothers (real-life brothers Ashok Kumar, Anup Kumar, and Kishore Kumar, respectively) who run an auto garage.  They seem competent enough as mechanics, but in relationships they are poorly socialized and hapless.  The eldest, Brijmohan, a retired prizefighter, having been once bitten by love, is far more than twice shy, harboring superstitions about women so extreme that he won't allow them in his garage even if they are paying customers.  His phobia is affirmed late one rainy night when beautiful young Renu (Madhubala) turns up with a flooded engine.  The youngest brother Manmohan fixes her car, but she leaves without paying, and as Manmohan tries to track her down to collect his "paanch rupaiyya barah anna" (Rs.5.75, a total immortalized in of the film's most delightful songs), his adventures really begin.  He and Renu find themselves rather sweet on each other, but Renu is about to become engaged to a Prince.  Meanwhile, we learn more about Brijmohan's sad romantic past; Renu's friend sets her sights on the middle brother Jagmohan, and Manmohan witnesses a murder.  Eventually all these threads come together in grand masala style in the film's silly and satisfying climax. 

My friend Sanni said about Chalti ka naam gaadi that she loved it so much that she despaired of finding enough positive adjectives to praise it.  I know what she means.  I smiled from the opening scene straight through to the end.  The most delightful aspect of the film is the effervescent romantic and comic chemistry between Madhubala and Kishore Kumar.  Madhubala teases him mercilessly throughout the film and her adorable giggles are a pure delight.  The gorgeous Madhubala knocked my socks off the first time I saw her, depressed and defiant in the epic Mughal-e-azam; here, she plays a very different character in a very different kind of film, but she is every bit as stunning.  Kishore, for his part, is a masterful comic performer.  He has long been my favorite playback singer; here, in addition to singing his own playback, he dances with seemingly limitless energy.  As the romantic hero of the film, he alternates between suave confidence and flustered sputtering, and is equally engaging in both modes.

Finally, Chalti ka naam gaadi sports one of the finest upbeat, silly soundtracks I have encountered, distinguished by the playful style of Kishore and the very young Asha Bhosle.  Their musical dialogue in "Haal kaisa hai janab ka" is a delicious confection, picturized with adorable winking sweetness on Kishore and Madhubala.  Kishore is teasing and sensuous in "Ek ladki bheegi-bhaagi si," and "Main sitaaron ka tarana," the song I mentioned above, highlights to perfection both Kishore's boundless comic energy and Madhubala's gift for teasing mischief.    Chalti ka naam gaadi includes a wonderful musical surprise as well, a very early performance by Helen, Bollywood's top dancing girl for several decades.  Here she delivers a mesmerizing mujra together with her mentor, a dancer called Cuckoo, whom she thoroughly outshines.  I had no idea Helen could dance kathak!

Below:  gorgeous Madhubala and proto-Helen.  Thanks to Sanni for all the screenies.

Pyaasa (1957)

प्यासा

This 1957 film, which I selected on the recommendation of some of my friends at the BollyWHAT? discussion forums, has a very unusual hero – a starving, unrecognized poet Vijay (Guru Dutt).

Early in the film, Vijay is driven out of his mother’s home by his brothers, who think he’s a good-for-nothing layabout; they sell his life’s work, all of his poems, to a junk dealer as scrap paper.  Left with nothing, Vijay wanders the streets, encountering a prostitute, Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman, stunningly gorgeous and probably not more than 19 years old) and his old college flame Meena (Mala Sinha), now married to a big-time publisher. As (through a twisting series of events) Vijay’s poems become known to the world, he is disillusioned by the constant jockeying of everyone around him to benefit from the success of his work.

Pyaasa ("Thirst") is a beautiful film, shot with breathtaking cinematography, and the songs – whch are meant to be Vijay’s poems – are uniquely lovely.  (Unfortunately not all DVD editions subtitle the songs.)   Among my favorites is "Jaane kya tune kahin," which shows how breathtaking the young Waheeda was.  And "Ham aap ki aankhon mein" is one of the classic genre of ballroom fantasy sequences parodied in Dil chahta hai's "Woh ladki hai kahaan."

In one of its most interesting aspects, Pyaasa was sensitive to the plight of prostitutes and nautch-girls, while at the same treating society women (represented by Meena) much less kindly. The downtrodden women were shown just trying to make a living and care for their children, all the while demeaned and abused by the very men they serviced.   The society woman, in contrast, was exposed as a manipulative, selfish fraud. This is the kind of message I expect in a Deepa Mehta or Shyam Benegal film - but I was (perhaps naively) surprised and pleased to see it in a mainstream film from 1957.