[Did this review of Bollywood’s Top 20: Superstars of Indian Cinema (edited by Bhaichand Patel) for Business Standard. It’s another example of a book I would prefer not to have written about - and the exasperation and lack of interest probably comes through in the piece]
To begin with a small quibble, the “Indian” in this book’s sub-title is slightly misleading: this is a collection of essays – by different writers – on iconic Hindi-movie performers. But there are larger problems with this anthology. Given that its subjects are screen legends who have had an immeasurably complex influence (for better and for worse) on the lives of countless fans over decades, it would have been reasonable to expect some personal, passionate writing. Instead, much of it lacks warmth and has a mechanically journalistic tone.
Some of the pieces do begin in a way that suggests they will be firsthand accounts of a writer’s interest in a movie-star. (“When I was invited to write about Madhubala, I was delighted,” says Urmila Lanba, “Madhubala is one of my favourite actresses; my sister and I were only allowed to watch one movie a month and I recall we never missed her films...”) What usually follows, though, is a mix of gossip, second-hand reporting (with long quotes taken from various sources) and throwaway remarks on films that deserve to be written about with much more enthusiasm. Here, from S Theodore Baskaran’s essay on Nargis, is one example of what I mean:In the Middle East [Awaara] played to packed houses. T J S George, Nargis’s biographer, points out that the duet in the boat scene was one of the best love scenes of her career. Her appearance in a bathing costume was pointed out as one of the highlights of the film. Apart from Prithviraj Kapoor, other cast members included Leela Chitnis and Shashi Kapoor. Helen, then an unknown junior artiste, made an uncredited appearance.
The paragraph is stilted and dull in ways that are too obvious to mention, but as a reader I would also have been interested in knowing what Baskaran himself thought of Nargis in those two scenes rather than learn what other people have “pointed out”.
It’s possible that I’m falling into the old trap of reviewing the book I wish had been written instead of the one that actually was. But my main objection is unevenness of tone: many of these essays veer between being chatty and casual and also trying to be comprehensive in a by-the-numbers, encyclopaedic way. In the Wikipedia age, I’m unsure what value there is in listing most of a performer’s movies with two or three trite sentences about each of them. And when you do commit yourself to providing such information, the fact-checking should be exemplary. Instead there are many careless errors. To mention just two, we are told that by 1954 “a whole new generation of actresses like Asha Parekh, Sadhana and Saira Banu had appeared on the scene and the era of colour films was also ushered in” (this is off by roughly a decade) and that Prithviraj Kapoor was over 30 years senior to Suraiya (22, actually).
That might sound like nitpicking, but when many similar instances of indifferent writing and editing pile up in a book, it’s a reminder that film literature in India is often treated flippantly even by those who engage deeply with cinema. I sometimes hear the defence that essays about mainstream Hindi films should be as accessible and egalitarian as the films themselves are. But in the same way as there are good Manmohan Desai films and bad Manmohan Desai films (how many movie buffs would put Ganga Jamuna Saraswati in the same league as Amar Akbar Anthony?), there are good and bad ways of writing accessibly about popular movies and movie-stars. (For a sample of intelligent, engaged writing in this vein, see Mukul Kesavan’s essay on Dharmendra.)
Of course, it would be silly to claim that there are no high points in such a varied collection. The pieces on K L Saigal and Devika Rani (by Vikram Sampath and Cary Rajinder Sawhney respectively) read smoothly because they make at least a perfunctory effort at a narrative structure. Jerry Pinto’s Waheeda Rehman essay characteristically combines thoughtful analysis with lightness of touch. Shefalee Vasudev’s piece on Madhuri Dixit, though overwritten in places (“Madhubala was mesmerising, Waheeda Rehman engrossingly attractive, Hema Malini the ultimate dream girl and Rekha sensational, but Madhuri – oh, she was something else. An incidental sum total of desirable parts of moh [allure] and maya [illusion]”), does take the trouble to examine the evolution of a star persona against the background of a changing movie-going culture.
The writers whose subjects had relatively short careers are at an advantage, since their pieces lend themselves to more focused analysis (in writing about Meena Kumari, for example, Pavan Varma can devote a generous amount of space to her key role as Chhoti Bahu in Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam), but I didn’t envy the task of those saddled with a really big superstar whose career has played out – wholly or partly – during the media explosion of the past two decades: what more is there to say about Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, for instance? Still, Sidharth Bhatia and Namrata Joshi manage a decent, professional job on these two subjects. Bhatia covers well-trodden ground (including Bachchan’s much-analysed shift from the Angry Young Man battling the system to “the settled establishment man” over the past decade), but his observation that the young Amitabh “was an angular personality”, easily cast in edgy or villainous roles, led me to contemplate an alternate universe where the actor might have made an adequate career playing intense second leads like he did in the early films Gehri Chaal and Parwana. And Joshi’s piece on Shah Rukh includes some intriguing thoughts on the private persona versus the public one, and on the cracks that have been appearing in a once-secure image (the essay was written before SRK’s much-publicised brawl with Shirish Kunder).
Also enjoyable is Avijit Ghosh’s wry dissection of Hindi cinema’s headiest, most enigmatic superstar phase – Rajesh Khanna’s dominance in the early 1970s. At one point, Ghosh writes of Khanna’s decline: “With half Rajesh’s acting ability, one-third his waistline and four times the discipline, Jeetendra comfortably ensconced himself as the director’s favourite for weepy socials or mindless entertainers made down South. Rajesh could only watch the water flow.”
This is a sample of the irreverence that comes with being a fan (the attitude that goes “these stars belong to us, we can say what we like about them”). One also sees it in the cheeky ending to Bhaichand Patel’s own (otherwise unremarkable) essay on Ashok Kumar – a reference to Kumar’s affair with Nalini Jaywant and the speculation that they “might have bumped into each other on their evening walks” in their old age.
More of this sort of thing could have made Bollywood’s Top 20 a better, more intimate book. More typical, alas, is the last paragraph of the Madhubala piece – of all things, a quote from Manoj Kumar in 2008, when the long-deceased actress had a stamp issued in her honour. “There can only be one Madhubala in one century,” Kumar said, “Every time I would see her, my heart would start singing ghazals.” This would be a moderately acceptable way to end the essay, but the quote continues thus: “I am happy and want to thank the department for their initiative.”
Yes, THAT is the closing sentence of a piece about one of Hindi cinema’s loveliest performers. Manoj Kumar is happy! He congratulates the postal department! It says something about the peculiarly distant tone of this collection and the sloppiness of its editing.
P.S. the accompanying CD of songs helps make up for some of the uninspired writing, but given this book’s cover price I thought it was naughty of Patel to describe it as “a free disc” in his Introduction.
The second of my "Persistence of Vision" columns for Yahoo! India is up. This one is about Agatha Christie filtered through Manoj Kumar's quivering lower lip, Helen's swimsuit dance and Mehmood's Hitler moustache. Here's the link.
The full post:
Lost on Translation Island
The pilot announces that the engine has a snag and they have to make an emergency landing. The passengers - a small group of lucky-draw winners whose prize was a trip to "videsh", and a young steward named Anand (Manoj Kumar) - disembark and wander about what could be a jungle, an island, a desert or possibly all three at once. Then the plane takes off, leaving them stranded (but thoughtfully unloading their luggage before going).
So the wrathful tourists converge on the steward, who seems a natural candidate for co-conspirator in this turn of events. Manoj Kumar is facing the camera, brooding handsomely, contemplating a long future playing martyred characters in patriotic films. Why not get in some practice? He looks down, covers half his face and says in a broken tone that somehow manages to be understated and overwrought at the same time: "Mera iss mein koi haath nahin. Main kuch nahin jaanta!" ("I had no hand in this. I know nothing!") Laurence Olivier, preparing to play Iago at the Old Vic, would have had a jealous tantrum if he had witnessed this scene.
Thus unfolds the central premise of the eye-popping 1965 film Gumnaam, which was one of the few movies of its vintage that I actively sought out as a child, scouring the city's video-parlours until I had a new cassette of the film in my hand. Only because I had heard that it was based on one of my favourite Agatha Christie mysteries, And Then There Were None (also known by the less politically correct title Ten Little Niggers, or Ten Little Indians). But Gumnaam turned out to be so, so much more. It forever changed my conservative ideas about how a book should be turned into a film.
Christie's novel, one of her best-crafted, is about ten people - each of whom has a guilty secret - brought together on an island by a mysterious, absent host who then proceeds to knock them off one by one. As their number diminishes, the survivors get increasingly paranoid; it's obvious that the murderer is one of them. For a (mostly) straight-faced screen version of this story, you can't do better than the 1945 And Then There Were None, directed by Rene Clair and featuring a cast of very honourable character actors including Walter Huston, Barry Fitzgerald and Judith Anderson. It deviates from the book's ending, settling for a more upbeat climax, and there are moments of tongue-in-cheek silliness, but the events it describes are recognisably from the world of the classic thriller.
Gumnaam, on the other hand, takes the original template and works in slapstick comedy, a hurriedly developed romance, a confusing back-story about an inheritance, truly bizarre set design, a couple of item numbers, a dream sequence featuring statues of Egyptian mummies with glowing eyes, and even a red herring about a "bhatki hui aatma" (wandering spirit). And boy, does it play with our expectations of Hindi cinema's star personalities. Pran was the leading screen villain of the time, so naturally he is framed in various sinister ways - giving the camera a knowing smile as he closes a door, for example - that make him the most obvious suspect early on. Likewise, the swimsuit-wearing Helen is clearly the "bad girl" (though she's easily the most graceful thing about the film), especially when compared to the demure Nanda; but since this is a mystery, could the "twist" be that the murderer is someone we least expect it to be? The film's original viewers must have struggled with these questions. I know I did.
The thing I loved most about Gumnaam as a child was the soundtrack, especially the rambunctious 'Jaan pehchaan ho', which plays in a brilliant nightclub scene early in the film, and the title track 'Gumnaam hai koi' (the tune of which, I later discovered, was "borrowed" from Henry Mancini's score for Charade). But alas, some of the loveliest songs in old Hindi movies are mismatched with tacky visuals or careless lip-synching, so that the music and the images belong to completely different worlds. Thus the plaintive etherealness of Lata Mangeshkar's voice as she sings "Gumnaam hai koi" goes hand in glove with shots of Manoj Kumar's twitching eyebrows. The song leads the protagonists (and us) directly to a large mansion, and thence to a magnificently silly scene where a shrouded figure lying on a dining table rises slowly like the Frankenstein monster and then drops the sheet ... to reveal Mehmood, wearing a Hitler moustache and a lungi.
(From the Christie novel: "In the open doorway of the house a correct butler was awaiting them, and something about his gravity reassured them ... The butler came forward, bowing slightly. He was a tall, lank man, grey-haired and very respectable.")
Hitler-Mehmood looks around at the party and giggles. Everyone smiles, relieved. Hey, it's only Mehmood. He has to be harmless, right?
And indeed, he is. He's the bawarchi who has been hired to receive these guests (the Rene Clair film turns the butler Rogers into a comic figure too, but it's nothing compared to this), and one of the great joys of Gumnaam is how quickly everyone comes to terms with the morbid situation and settles down into what is effectively a five-star heritage hotel. They have their own rooms with fancy furniture and beach views; Mehmood brings them tea and snacks; since there is no television, and cellphones and the Internet haven't yet been invented, they spend their time smoking and drinking copiously, and forming little cliques. Even after the killings begin, there's a general sense of bonhomie, and some of them treat the whole thing as a game: "Tum kehte ho ke main kaatil hoon. Main kehta hoon ke tum kaatil ho. Isska faisla toh ek aur laash ke baad hi hoga." ("You say I'm the killer. I say you're the killer. We'll know only when another body turns up.") Twenty-first-century reality TV could learn a trick or two from this film.
Gumnaam is filled with little mysteries that Agatha Christie would be hard put to resolve. Why does Manoj Kumar randomly scratch his cheek while singing "Jaane chaman, shola badan" to Nanda in the rain? (Is it a form of naturalistic acting?) Why would anyone sing "Jaane chaman, shola badan" to Nanda in the rain? What's with the brief shot of the statue of Jesus on the cross, with a pigeon fluttering near his shoulder? What was the film's set decorator smoking? Where did the two pink, green and white beach-balls come from when Helen sings 'Iss duniya mein jeena ho'? (Was someone carrying them in their luggage?) That rock band we see in the nightclub scene - is it really called "Ted Lyons & His Cubs"? (Lyon cubs?)
That nightclub scene, incidentally, reappeared when I least expected it, in one of the greatest WTF moments in my movie-watching career. I had just acquired a DVD of Terry Zwigoff's indie film Ghost World. I slipped it into the player and sat gaping as 'Jaan pehchaan ho' began to play alongside the credits, accompanied by the familiar sight of Laxmi Chhaya (aptly credited as "Masked Dancer" on Gumnaam's IMDB page) convulsing across a dance floor. The video is being watched by Ghost World's protagonist, the sullen social misfit Enid, whose love for "old Indian rock videos" suggests a non-conformist, even warped, bent of mind. I think she would have liked the rest of the film.
I don't often use this space to showcase blogs by people I don't know, but Briyanshu's Bollywood Butt Blog was a great discovery. It's run by a "white American gay guy" who fetishizes Indian film and TV actors so much that he has entire sections, with lots of screen grabs, dedicated to such legends as Himanshu Malik - whose butt crack has been located in a "Briyanshu Exclusive" - and Mohnish Behl (in addition to the more obvious names like John Abraham). There's a Kasautii Zindagii Kay section. There are stills from old Rajendra Kumar and Manoj Kumar films (who knew you could see exciting butt shots in those!). And in the Puneet Issar section, there's the scene from episode 90 of B R Chopra's Mahabharat where Duryodhana goes to Gandhari naked but runs into Krishna (described here as "a friend of his - sorry, didn't catch his name") who encourages him to don a loin cloth. Here and here.
I also love that the blogger's short list of favourite movies includes both Wild Strawberries and Aakhri Inteqam. Such pluralism alone will save the world.
Veteran actor Manoj Kumar – he who turned the trembling lower lip, the twitching eyebrow and the martyred expression into an art form – is upset about how he was parodied in Om Shanti Om. Now we can’t have a veteran actor (much less one who by his own admission is a living embodiment of patriotism) feeling humiliated, so here, by way of compensation for Shah Rukh Khan and Farah Khan’s insensitivity, are a few of my favourite moments from Manoj Kumar’s films:
- From Kranti: this multi-starrer has countless fabulous setpieces, including the timeless song sequence “Zindagi ki na toote ladi” where a slithering Hema Malini donates her cleavage to the revolutionary cause. But my favourite scene is the one where Manoj Kumar and Dilip Kumar have been captured by the British and made to stand precariously, nooses tied around their necks, on two ends of a weighing scale-like instrument. With their lives and the future of their country thus at stake, our heroes unexpectedly begin singing a song that includes the lyrics: “Mera channa hai apni marzee ka” (rough translation: “My chickpea has a mind of its own”). Perhaps it’s because the scale makes them feel like legumes in a bazaar, though I’d be more inclined to think of two giant chunks of ham.
- From Purab aur Paschim: The upright Mr Bharat visits decadent London (it’s a – shudder! Lip tremble! – Western city) and is shocked by how Indians abroad have forgotten the values of their motherland. Particularly the haughty Saira Banu, who smokes cigarettes (!) and wears a mini-skirt (!!). Bharat is dismayed, though the twitching of Manoj Kumar's thespian eyebrows as he looks down at her uncovered legs suggests that this isn’t the only emotion he’s feeling. Eventually he converts her to the pallu-covered Good Indian Girl, but not before taking a few more peeks beneath the pallu.
Note: contrast Kumar’s approach in this film with that of Dev Anand, who coincidentally was also parodied in Om Shanti Om. In Des Pardes, which Anand directed and starred in, his character actively encourages Tina Munim to strip, saying the equivalent of “When in Rome, wear what the Romans do!” Manoj Kumar would have covered his face and looked away. (To paraphrase Tolstoy, "Every Bollywood legend is a legend in his own way, and they can all be parodied regardless.")
- From Gumnaam: in this 1960s thriller based on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (alternative title: Mr Bharat and Nine Other Indians), there’s a blink-and-miss moment when the alluring Miss Kitty (Helen) comes a little too close to the dashing pilot played by Manoj Kumar. Watch how he recoils; it’s like he’s been bitten by a cobra! (This lends credence to the belief that Kumar preferred not to get too close to women onscreen because Priapism and Patriotism don’t mix well.) Later he tells heroine Nanda not to drink alcohol because then she will be no different from Kitty (whose only fault, as far as we can see, has been to dance about in a swimsuit). This film was made before Kumar’s patriotic ventures, but he was already primed for a career in fending off the depraved westernised woman.
- From Kalyug aur Ramayan: In a case of inspired casting, Manoj Kumar plays a monkey in this latter-day film - a safari-suited modern-day incarnation of Hanuman-ji, returned to earth to check out what’s been happening since the Treta Yuga; are discos still in vogue, for example? During a prayer meeting a pandit alternatively shouts “Jai Shri Ram!” and “Jai Hanuman!”, but the Kumar character joins in the chorus only when the name of Lord Rama is being hailed (he does this by covering his face with one hand – presumably to conceal his orgiastic glee – and pumping the other fist in the air). When the cry of “Jai Hanuman!” goes up, he remains silent (he does this by covering his face with one hand – presumably to conceal his orgiastic humility – and keeping the other hand down). Because you see, being Hanuman himself, how can he participate in self-worship?
Perhaps the real-life Mr Bharat should have taken a cue from the above scene.
“Dogs produce pups, but a lioness delivers cubs.”(Manoj Kumar, when asked why he didn’t direct films more often)
To celebrate 60 years of independence, Bollywood should make a patriotic film about India’s endeavour to become the world’s most populous country by the year 2015. It should star Amitabh Bachchan in a rock-star outfit, with Manoj Kumar in a cameo appearance as Lord Hanuman, who would carry hordes of Lankans back across the ocean to add to India’s numbers.
Amitabh will sing a song from an earlier film: “Kitne baazu, kitne sar, gin le dushman dhyan se.” (“Count our arms and heads, O Enemy, and have some gin while you’re at it.”) The “dushman” would be China, which will suffer an unexplained population decrease, thus helping India realise its goal. The film will be called Chini Kum.
Not having been to a movie hall in weeks, I suddenly find that the “ensemble film” is hot property in Bollywood, with the release of Salaam-e-Ishq, Honeymoon Travels and Life in a Metro. Haven’t seen any of these yet but I did see – and write about – Naseeruddin Shah’s directorial debut Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota, which had converging narratives about a number of Indians travelling to the US for different reasons.
But this isn’t Bollywood’s first tryst with the ensemble movie. The masala Hindi film has always been episodic by its very nature, requiring pre-formatted doses of comedy, drama, romance and action, neatly measured and sprinkled together like the garnishings on a Burmese dish. So any such film with a large star-cast becomes an ensemble movie by default: if there are three heroes, you know the songs and fight sequences will be divided equally between them. When I was growing up in that magnificently kitschy decade, the 1980s, such films used to be referred to, much more naively, as multi-starrers. Quick notes on some old favourites I’ve rediscovered on TV.
Nagin
Rajkumar Kohli was a master at the forgotten art of gathering a number of heavyweights/has-beens together, giving them the money that might otherwise have been wasted on a script (along with the promise of ego-massaging credits such as “Friendly Guest Appearance By Sanjay Khan”), and convincing them they were participating in something future generations would never forget. In a way, he was right; no one who sees Nagin will ever forget this classic, which begins with Jeetendra, dressed in a short skirt (he’s an ichadaari naag – a snake that turns into a man whenever it wishes to sing Laxmikant-Pyarelal songs – and that’s just how they dress). When he is cruelly shot down by a group of friends (Sunil Dutt, Feroz Khan, Kabir Bedi and other friendly guests) who figured he was just a regular snake in a mini-skirt, his bereaved spouse (Reena Roy) goes on the revenge-trail. This means finding new and innovative ways to dispose of each culprit, but the hardest task is that she occasionally has to disguise herself as her victims’ girlfriends – which means simulating the facial expressions of Rekha, Mumtaz and Yogeeta Bali. Would you wish such a fate on a girl?
Jaani Dushman
Another Kohli epic, billed as India’s first big-budget horror film. A werewolf (we think; it’s hard to tell under all that makeup) goes on a killing spree each time he sees a young bride (dressed in those knee-length frocks that village belles always wore in the 1980s). Since the village people don’t have enough sense to stop holding large weddings, a series of murders occur — until Sunil Dutt, Shatrughan Sinha and others take on the beast in his own backyard, and he turns out to be Sanjeev Kumar, in another of those character roles that he played because he wanted to be “an actor, not a hero”. (Here, as in many of his other films, he’s neither.) Don’t miss the opening scene with Amrish Puri reading a book of “supernatural stories” before abruptly sprouting hair on his back, and the title card that reads “And above all, Jeetendra”.
Kranti
Manoj Kumar’s florid tribute to the patriotic men and women who fought against the evil British Empire in the early 1800s (never mind that the idea of nationalism didn’t even exist back then in the way it does today; people were probably too busy killing each other over caste, state or mohalla to bother with country-love). Kumar plays the anarchist Bharat, whose eagerness to die for the country is indicated by his waggling eyebrows, twitching lower lip, and the way he keeps smearing soil all over his face. Dilip Kumar is his father, “senior Kranti”**, Hema Malini contributes her bit to the cause by writhing about the deck of a boat during a rain-storm while evil British captors, crosses dangling from their necks, leer at her, and Shashi Kapoor is a dashing prince who switches allegiance. Just when you think the British Raj couldn’t possibly deal with any more star power, in struts the ubiquitous Shatrughan Sinha as a brave Pathan who plans to sabotage the Empire’s collective stomach by selling them chana jor garam. Eventually, our stars sing patriotic songs and die heroically ever after. Jeetendra is nowhere to be seen; they couldn’t meet the requirements of his contract, which specified white shoes and/or a snake-dance.
(To be continued)
** In an earlier Manoj Kumar-as-Bharat film, Purab aur Paschim, Dilip Kumar’s real-life missus Saira Banu played a West-corrupted Indian girl who smokes and wears mini-skirts. Bharat redeems this fallen angel, restoring her to the Bharatiya ideal of the pallu-clad bahu (and in the process fulfilling the archetypal Indian male fantasy of possessing a woman by getting her to cover up rather than the other way around). Unconfirmed reports suggest that Dilip Kumar’s appearance in Kranti was a gesture of gratitude.
[Also see this post on The Burning Train]