In case you missed them, here are my last few columns at Outlook.
Quirky Parsis and Drunk Christians - despite the title that my editor gave this piece, it is actually about movies that go beyond these stereotypes when depicting minority communities.
Enviably Evil - on the luscious and devilish roles of Nadira.
From Aurat to Mother India - how Mehboob Khan remade his own 1940 movie from a simple agrarian tale into an allegorical epic
Of all the dreary and pretentious Raj Kapoor movies I've watched, Barsaat has to be the worst – at least it's a solid tie with the unbearable Aag. It's hard to believe that this is the same filmmaker who made the buoyant, kinetic Shree 420, which I adore. Barsaat has none of the elements that make Shree 420 such a delight – a charming hero who undergoes real character growth, a heroine with some will and personality, an uplifting message about something larger than the scope of the auteur's own navel. Barsaat, put simply, is a drag.
Raj Kapoor's character Pran is a self-absorbed, self-important young man. He speaks in what must to him seem poetic proclamations; but they resound as smugly-delivered adolescent expressions of the Byronic ideal. This would be fine if the audience were meant to reject them as such, but these ideas of Pran's are apparently offered in earnest: that love is measured in longing and pain, that love without tears isn't love, that love reaches purity only when it is utterly joyless. Feh.
Barsaat fails because Pran's foil, Gopal (Premnath) is a more richly-drawn and interesting person than Pran. Sure, Gopal is a cad; he plays fast and loose with the love of a country girl (Nimmi), with tragic (if thoroughly predictable) results. But he also banters with Pran and is the only person who seems to see Pran's pompous hot air for what it is, at least until the end, by which time he has adopted Pran's tiresome philosophy. Gopal makes some mistakes in this movie (something Pran never does, of course), but given the choice I'd much rather have a drink with him than with Pran, so insufferably far up his own ass.
Premnath bantering with Raj Kapoor; Nimmi moony over Premnath. There is also a weird interlude featuring KN Singh as an oafish lout who kidnaps Nargis and tries to force her into marriage.
Barsaat fails too because Nargis's character, who loves Pran, is almost as vapid and agencyless as her character in Aag. (At least here, she gets her own name, and doesn't have an entire persona assigned to her by Raj Kapoor's character.) It's bad enough that she falls for Pran's overblown intensity and his grandiose philosophy, but the giggling ingenue is a waste of Nargis's gravity and presence. For the man who discovered her and made a star of her, it seems to have taken Raj Kapoor not a few years to figure out what to do with all Nargis had to offer on screen. Watching Barsaat and Aag, one has the feeling that young Raj Kapoor had never met or talked to an actual woman.
At least there is some impressive cinematography to enjoy.
The only highlights of Barsaat come in a few songs, especially those in the first half hour of the film, like the superb title song in which Cuckoo fronts a troupe of musicians and dancers dressed as Kashmiri villagers.
What makes most iterations on the Devdas story insufferable to me is not just the unkind, unpleasant, self-absorbed jerk that passes for its hero. What really seals the deal is that this awful man is loved by not just one, but two women who really should be sensible enough to know better. Anmol Ghadi ("priceless watch") sees these two women and raises the stakes. Its smug, indolent weenie of a hero can count not only on their love but also on the unwavering and entirely undeserved devotion of a tirelessly toiling mother and a sugar-daddy friend.
While his long-suffering mother (Leela Mishra) works her hands to the bone grinding flour to support him, Chander (Surendra) does not do much but laze about. Chander spends most of his time reading the poetry of an author known as Renuka Devi, the nom de plume of Lata (Noor Jehan), Chander's long-lost childhood love. A plot device named Prakash (Zahur Raja) - apparently another childhood friend of Chander's, dropped into the film with no explanation and no backstory - takes Chander and his mother to Bombay, and sets Chander up with his very own music shop. (His mother says that Chander was always more interested in sitars than anything else, but while we do see Chander make smug and demeaning comments about other people's playing, he is not shown playing the instrument at any point during the movie.) Once in Bombay, he begins a search for Lata, who has also been pining for him all these years. But Lata's willful, acidic friend Basanti (Suraiya) falls for Chander too. Melodramatic love triangle ensues.
I have wanted to watch Anmol Ghadi for some time to see the legendary Noor Jehan, who left Bombay at Partition and spent the rest of her life and career in Pakistan. And as dreary and grating as the film can be, it's not because Noor Jehan isn't lovely. Her moon-shaped face is of that quintessential midcentury type that you don't seem to see any more, with creamy skin just made for soft-focus close-ups. And her long eyelashes are the perfect perch for wayward melodramatic tears. She is the Platonic form of 1940s movie star. And although Lata's persistent love for the droning, obnoxious Chander is frustrating, it is nevertheless satisfying to see a female character who is a successful, famous author. Heroines with intellectual professions seem to have been more common in the middle of the 20th century than later.
Do they even make women who look like this anymore?
Even so, Noor Jehan is not the best thing about Anmol Ghadi - that honor goes to Suraiya, salty and fresh and fun as Basanti whether she's needling Lata or flirting with the unappreciative Chander. I really like this character, which makes her attachment to Chander that much more grating. She has so much wry energy, so much action in her, that you just want to shake her to her senses. And as much as I like the character, I also like the actor. I read that Suraiya was a very big star; one article compared her popularity to Nargis, though she does not seem to be remembered as well or with such reverence. She starred opposite Dev Anand in many of his early movies, and got top billing ahead of that rising superstar. So it goes for me with Hindi films; Anmol Ghadi has opened for me yet another interesting path to wander down; I can explore the films of this interesting actor.
Suraiya's look reminds me strongly of Shabana Azmi as a young woman.
And then there is the self-absorbed Chander, the leaden anchor dragging down this classic film. Had he been at all sympathetic or appealing, Anmol Ghadi would have been a lovely and engaging melodrama. Instead, it is a tiresome tale of the inexplicable sacrifice of four people whose love for the self-indulgent Chander is largely thankless. It doesn't help, either, that Surendra is a singularly unappealing actor. Doughy, droopy-lidded and mumbling through smug half-smiles, he gives me the impression that Rajesh Khanna studied his work carefully in crafting his own rubber-lipped persona.
Yuck.
Anmol Ghadi does have some lovely songs; there is a reason that Noor Jehan, one of the last Hindi film actors to sing her own playback, is remembered as one of Hindi film's greatest singers. It also features one of Rafi's earliest songs, the somewhat sarcastic "Tera khilona toota." So despite its warts - despite nearly everything about its hero, really - Anmol Ghadi is worth a watch if you, like me, are interested in the history of Hindi cinema and especially the movies that were tremendous hits in their time.
Raj Kapoor's Shree 420 is one of my all time favorite movies. It strikes a marvelous balance between entertainment and message, between substance and spectacle. It took Kapoor a few tries to master that mix, however. Awara, a few years before Shree 420, is too dire, plodding, serious. And his first film as auteur, Aag ("Fire"), misses the mark entirely. It is weak on substance and poor in entertainment, but loaded with pretension and dripping with self-importance.
Aag tells the story of Keval Khanna (Raj Kapoor), a man gripped by two obsessions that trace to his childhood: a passion for the theater, and an idealized love for his childhood sweetheart, Nimmi. Both these obsessions stem from the same formative event; the young boy version of Keval (played deliciously by Shashi Kapoor) stages a play with Nimmi, complete with elaborate sets and other accoutrements of a real theater. But on opening night, Nimmi never shows - her family has suddenly moved away from their village - and Keval is left heartbroken, without a heroine, laughed at by a packed house of mean, mocking children.
The grown Keval spends the rest of the movie trying to recreate this event and rectify his loss. He bucks his father's expectation that he will study law and follow a conventional path, instead forging a life in theater and searching for his Nimmi. Keval works his way through several Nimmi candidates, molding each one in his mind to match the fantasy he has constructed of the girl he hasn't seen since childhood. The first surrogate Nimmi, Keval's college classmate Nirmala (Kamini Kaushal) abandons him just as his childhood Nimmi did, this time to engagement. Later, Keval meets a dejected woman (Nargis) who has lost her home to Partition. Eager to put that trauma in the past, the woman insists that she does not even have a name. (In Aag's favor, it is noteworthy that the rifts of Partition are already appearing in the movies, at a time when the wounds are still bleeding and fresh.)
Keval is taken with this sad, nameless woman, whom he of course dubs Nimmi, and stages a play around her. Keval's business partner Rajan (Prem Nath), an artist, also sees in her the woman he has long dreamed of painting. This is the great art of Aag - two men each projecting their idealized fantasy onto this woman, so conveniently without identity of her own to get in their way. The audition sequence in which Keval rejects a parade of women, one after another, with nothing more than a superficial glance, is bad enough. What is over-the-top just revolting is that the idealization of Nargis's character by both men is presented as triumph of art, rather than the despicable objectification and usurpation of a vulnerable woman's independent existence.
Yecchh.
Kapoor attempts to lend the movie some depth with a disjoint pair of bookends in which Keval, disfigured by the titular fire (which he sets in a fit of lunatic rage at the very idea that Nargis's character might not be exactly the woman he has projected upon her), laments that he is hated for his ugliness as much as he used to be loved for his beauty. This Keval, incidentally, is not a modest man - his own supposed beauty is as much an obsession for him as his Nimmi. And what is with Kapoor's fascination with beauty disfigured by flame? Between Aag and Satyam shivam sundaram, it seems this notion had special resonance for Raj Kapoor. At any rate, the scenes do not relate much to Keval's twin passions that make up the rest of the film, and Aag is too far up its own ass for this tacked-on attempt at a message to be anything but flimsy.
If there are reasons to endure this festival of pretension, they are Nargis and little boy Shashi Kapoor. Nargis is simply wonderful with her wildly frizzy hair and wide-eyed beauty. It is such a long way from this unadorned natural gorgeousness to the meticulously styled and coiffed heroines one usually encounters in the movies. In one of Aag's rare charming details, Keval is often shown playing with an arrant lock of Nargis's hair, smoothing the curls with his palm or twirling one around a finger. As striking as she is, though, the almost feral rawness of Nargis's character leaves her that much more ripe for asborbing the indentities that the two men construct for her.
They just don't make them like this any more.
As for proto-Shashi, some 9 years old when the film was shot, he is just plain adorable. He gets so many scenes of substance, from delight to inspiration to anxiety. When he sasses his mother, the cheeky mannerisms that made him an explosive charmer 20 years later are already on full display. One sequence in which the young Keval tries to sneak out of the house to watch a play, evading discovery by his intimidating father (Kamal Kapoor), is especially delightful.
Cho chweet!
The unfortunate fact, though, is that Aag plummets rapidly downhill about half an hour in, as soon as Shashi's scenes are done. The movie might be worth sitting through for the cuteness of Shashi, the beauty of Nargis, some notable cinematography, and some lovely songs. But don't expect the sparkle and immersive charm of Raj Kapoor's best movies. His vision for Aag was clearly expansive, but his pretension even more so. It's enough to leave you growling "Aaaaaaargh!"
Gyan Mukherjee's taut, bold drama Kismet ("fate") was a mega-hit in its time, and held the crown of the longest-running movie for more than three decades before being deposed by Sholay. Even 70 years later, it's not hard to see why. Kismet is fascinating, influential, and even subversive. Ashok Kumar delivers an engaging performance as a morally ambiguous character. The songs are stirring - and, in one case, gutsy. And the film introduces Hindi-movie audiences to a number of devices and themes that resonate through the movies for decades to come.
Shekhar (Ashok Kumar) is an unrepentant thief. Released from his third stint in prison, he banters with the inspector (Shah Nawaz) that he'll be back soon enough, and heads right back to his pickpocketing life on the streets of Bombay. Soon Shekhar meets a sad theatrical performer named Rani (Mumtaz Shanti). Rani, a former lead dancer, suffers from a leg injury that relegates her to the side of the stage, as a backup singer. Shekhar is moved by Rani and her troubles, and gives her an extravagant necklace that he steals from the wife of the theater owner, Indrajit (Mubarak). When this thievery is discovered, Rani feels betrayed by the man she thought was an angel. But Shekhar is determined to care for her - he wants to steal enough to pay for a surgery that will restore Rani to her former glory as a dancer. Shekhar escapes from custody, intending to turn himself in after carrying off one last heist for Rani's sake.
Roshmila Bhattacharya's article on Kismet (captured and linked by Memsaaab) notes that Shekhar is not a hero but an anti-hero. A nearly remorseless criminal, Shekhar is nevertheless a charming gentleman with a heart readily moved by the suffering of others. Shekhar's sympathy for the sad plight of Rani's father (PF Pithawala), an alcoholic former music-master who holds himself responsible for Rani's injury, leads him to his initial acts of kindness. And Shekhar's love for Rani drives him both to donate the proceeds of his thievery and, eventually, to go straight. There are some genuinely touching scenes as Shekhar, the criminals he associates with, and even the police inspector realize that love for a woman has inspired him to mend his ways where even multiple imprisonments could not. Bhattacharya credits the fresh, bold, subversiveness of this character with the immense and unexpected popularity of the movie.
Much of what is moving about Shekhar emerges from the gentleness of Ashok Kumar's performance. Writing on Indian films tends to indelibly attach certain labels to certain actors; Ashok Kumar is often heralded as a "natural" actor, but nowhere more than in Kismet is the aptness of this label apparent. Kumar has crept up of late to become one of my favorite actors. Here, in the rising arc of his stardom, he is no less fascinating. His performance in Kismet has less gravitas than he shows later in his life; the performance is more tentative, and perhaps more deserving of the tag of "natural" acting. Despite the drama inherent to his profession and the melodrama that swirls around him, Shekhar moves through the story like an ordinary man. His young face is fresh, open, and honest - Kumar emotes, but does not play to the back of the house, does not amplify emotions in the classic melodramatic style.
The naturalness of Ashok Kumar's performance is even starker in contrast to Mumtaz Shanti, who as Rani gives a true midcentury melodramatic turn. Her performance is classic soft-focus tragic acting, gazing moist-eyed at an imaginary horizon while delivering words of hopelessness in slow, gauzy, breathy tones. This is not a style I normally find effective; it tends to feel anemic and mealy, and here it renders Mumtaz Shanti the weak link in an otherwise superb movie. But it is a matter of style; it is certainly of its time and place, and in the context it is not too terribly distracting. And on the rare occasions when she smiles, as in the movie's gorgeous lullaby "Dheere dheere aa re badal," Mumtaz Shanti is radiant.
Shekhar's heroic criminality is not the only boldly subversive element of Kismet. Rani's sister Leela (Chandraprabha) becomes pregnant by her lover Mohan (Kanu Roy), the son of Indrajit, who opposes their marriage because of Leela's poverty; he cruelly informs Rani that he can get a 10,000 rupee dowry from another girl. Not only is Leela not punished for this transgression, but her pure heart earns her a happy ending with Mohan. (It is both moving and fascinating that in confessing her pregnancy to Mohan, Leela cannot bring herself to say she is going to be a mother; instead, she scratches the word "maa" into a wall with her fingernail.)
Even more subversive is the magnificent patriotic song, "Door hato aye duniyawalo, Hindustan hamaara hai." Bhattacharya's article claims this aggressively nationalistic and anti-colonial song got past British censors because the only nations it identifies by name are Germany and Japan, Britain's enemies in the war which was then raging around the globe. This seems too facile to me; that one line doesn't erase the otherwise obvious pro-independence message of the song (whose set features an enormous map of pre-Partition India). Perhaps the censors were somewhat sympathetic to the cause of independence; or, perhaps they really were too complacently paternalistic to see the song as a rabble-rousing threat.
Finally, Bhattacharya credits Kismet with introducing Hindi cinema to a number of tropes and themes that resonated so with Indian audiences as to become a staple of Manmohan Desai and other filmmakers throughout the years. Principal among these is the backstory of Indrajit's wayward son, Madan (Mehmood in his first role!), who disappears as a young boy and is reunited with his family at the movie's end, identified through such devices as a tattoo and a locket, which are now masala clichés. (No points to the seasoned filmi fan for guessing which character Madan grows up to be.) It may be correct that Kismet marks the first time such a story was presented in an Indian movie. But given the strong cultural resonance and enduring popularity of such concepts, it's difficult to believe that they don't have their origins in older stories that are woven into the tapestry of India's many cultures. Isn't Karna of the Mahabharata raised apart from his brothers, only to learn of his true parentage as an adult?
Even if it does draw on earlier sources, though, Kismet clearly blazed a path that thrilled audiences and that filmmakers returned to for decades to come. Shekhar is a model for numerous filmi incarnations of the rogue with a heart of gold (surely also an ancient archetype). For instance, a scene in which he pleads with the inspector to release him - asking for 48 hours to save Rani with a promise to turn himself in - is nearly quoted in Tezaab with Anil Kapoor. There must be countless other references over the past 70 years, direct and indirect, to this fascinating and influential movie.
For information on how to watch Kismet with subtitles, see Memsaab's post about the movie.
Text (c) 2006-2016, Carla Miriam Levy.
The ideas and opinions expressed in this weblog are mine alone, and do not represent the views of my employer or of any other organization with which I may be associated.
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