The Divas: Sharmila Tagore

Yes, it is a new category, and yes, it came about because I really didn't know how to slot these actresses who I like, but who wouldn't fit into the earlier ones. These were the actresses who made their entrance when glamour became an intrinsic part of an actress' arsenal. Nargis, Nutan, Meena Kumari, Waheeda Rehman, et al were beautiful, but they also had well-etched roles to play, strong characters who complemented their heroes, and their cinema was good. The division between 'commercial' and 'art' didn't affect them, since their world was (mostly) one of artistic commercial cinema. Madhubala, perhaps, was the one heroine of that era, who could also be considered 'glamorous'. Yet, even she had roles where her obvious beauty only complemented her character, instead of overwhelming it.

The new set of actresses were different. They were beautiful alright and, with the advent of colour, they were packaged very well. The coming of the musical love-story, the sort of entertaining fluffy confections that were different from the social commentaries that came before them, meant that cinema demanded a certain amount of polish and pizazz. And so we were introduced to a new breed of women who looked pretty, moved gracefully, and provided a perfect foil for their manly heroes. These were actresses who held audience interest by a fringe on their forehead, a dimpled smile, a coquettish look, or an upturned nose.

The roles were (mostly) interchangeable. Yet, the films they acted in wouldn't have been what they were without these actresses. Within the constraints of their circumscribed roles, they even displayed their acting chops. Some of the actresses in this category even worked with 'serious' filmmakers.

Intoxicating Dev Anand

Kal koi mujhko yaad kare

Kyun koi mujhko yaad kare

Mazroof zamana mere liye

Kyun waqt apna barbaad kare...

Knowing of Dev Anand's philosophy of living in the moment, I can only imagine that, if asked how he should be remembered after his death, he would probably have quoted Sahir's lines. He had no use for living on past glory while he lived; I doubt he would care much that he was remembered after his death. 

But his legacy lives on - in the man he was when he lived, in his body of work that stands testimony to an age, and in the memories of the people who loved him. The generation before us sees him as one of their own. We, who grew up watching Dev Anand's (earlier) films even though the golden period of his creativity was over by the time our generation came along, will remember him fondly for introducing us to a different age. Perhaps the generation after us who only saw him as a man who made bad film after bad film (though with topical plots; unfortunately, there was many a slip between idea and execution), will only remember this Dev Anand through our  memories of a man whose movies were ahead of his time, whose ear for music gave us songs that have withstood the test of time, and who took on roles shaded with grey without needing to be heroic. 

How do you stop wholesale copying?

I have come across instances of plagiarism before, both professionally and personally. It seems to be endemic. Two of my blogger friends, Cinematters and Songs of Yore, dealt with it when their posts were lifted without so much as a by-your-leave. In the latter case, I was also the person who spotted the similarities and informed the blogger. 

But while I have the usual admonition on my site that what I post on my site is my own writing, and anyone who wants to quote something from my posts is free to do so as long as they give me credit, and provide a link to my site, I have never really gone about looking to see whether anyone has stolen my thoughts and ideas.

Dilli ka Thug

1958
Directed by: SD Narang
Music: Ravi
Starring: Kishore Kumar, Nutan, Iftekhar, Madan Puri, 
Krishnakant, Smriti Biswas, Protima Devi

I had watched New Delhi and loved it. So I actually dug through my to-watch pile to grab another Kishore Kumar film, Dilli ka Thug. Unlike New Delhi, I had grown up listening to the songs of this film, and I especially loved the absolutely frivolous C-A-T, Cat maane billi, the manic Hum toh mohabath karega and the softly romantic Ye raatein ye mausam. Besides, it had Nutan; beautiful, glowing, light-up-the-screen Nutan in a comic role - I was ill, and a comedy had to be good medicine, right? 

I can only be thankful that I watched New Delhi before I watched Dilli ka Thug. If not, I think I would have pushed every single Kishore Kumar film I hadn't yet watched to the bottom of the pile of unwatched DVDs and tried to forget they ever existed! Yes, it was that bad. And no, the last 45 minutes of rather decent suspense did not compensate for the sheer misery of two-thirds of the movie that I had to endure to get to that part. 

Not the songs, not Nutan, not even a rather decent(-ish) scene where Kishore pretends to be two people at once - nothing will ever compensate for my moans of misery. This is one film that should have come with its own statutory warning - Watch at your own risk! It is almost as if the director was AWOL for most of the film, or in coma, and then suddenly recovered to salvage the final parts. I had once poached the phrase 'the curse of the second half'  from fellow blogger bollyviewer's blog.  Well, this was the reverse. 

New Delhi

1956

Directed by: Mohan Sehgal

Music: Shankar-Jaikishen

Starring: Kishore Kumar, Vyjayanthimala, Nana Palsikar, Nasir Hussain, 

Radhekrishan, Dhumal, Prabhu Dayal, Jabeen Jaleel, Mumtaz Begum

I must confess that I'm usually wary of watching Kishore Kumar movies, especially his comedies. His brand of humour does not really tickle my funny bone. At the risk of offending many, Kishore Kumar + humour usually equals, in my mind, the painful comic side plots in many films of that period, with the operative word being 'painful'.

The 'other' Kishore, the thoughtful, sensitive director of  Door Gagan ki Chaaon Mein, the serious actor of Musafir, the truly physical comedian of Chalti ka Naam Gaadi, the crooner extraordinaire? That is the Kishore I truly love.

So, picking up New Delhi on my trip to India last year, was a whim. The only thing I knew about the film was that it had Nakhrewali... and that was not really a recommendation, since I'm not very sure I like it very much...

Just after popping it in to my DVD player and before I pressed 'play', I looked up the plot online. What I read did not predispose me to watching it. Don't get me wrong. The plot sounded rather engaging, in and of itself. Punjabi boy meeting Tamilian girl, housing woes, star-crossed lovers, warring fathers - these are the alu-masala of filmi entertainers. But honestly, I'd had it up to my hairline, the way south-Indians are stereotyped in Hindi films. 

But I was too tired to get up and change the film, so I decided to give it a go. Can I just say that I was proved very, very wrong? I have never been so glad to be wrong. What a little gem of a movie this is! (And why haven't I heard better things about it before?)

Word Play: Chand

I was driving my son back from his ballet class on Monday when, just as I was about to turn the corner to our home, he exclaimed excitedly from the back seat. I stopped the car on the slope so we could both enjoy the glimpse of the golden orb that looked like it was hanging between the trees. It was a glorious sight. 

And that brought me to my sorely neglected blog. The last few months have been stressful, for various reasons, and the blog has suffered as a result. Never mind. That can always be changed. 'Word Play' is not a new category for my readers, but it has been woefully under-represented. In the two years that I have been consistently blogging, I have only written two posts under this category. So this seems the perfect time to make amends. Interestingly enough, this word links to my earlier posts - Raat and Piya.  

Au Revoir Les Enfants

Goodbye, Children

1987

Directed by: Louis Malle

Music: Schubert, Saint-Saens

Starring: Gaspard Manesse, Raphaël Fejtö, Philippe Morier-Genoud, 

Francine Racette, Stanislas Carré de Malberg, François Négre

A couple of days ago, I was complaining to my husband that my blog had been sadly neglected for the past few months. Posts have been sporadic at best, and I have not even been able to muster up the interest or the energy to watch a film, much less write about it. So in a bid to remedy the situation, I looked through my drafts - many of them have notes even I cannot decipher, and I'm too tired, and too disinclined, to watch the films again that I might know what the heck I meant by 'It is just one of his many excuses.' (Honest confession? I know neither what the excuses are, nor who the 'he' might be referring to...) A few of them are nominally complete, but need pictures - and again, my head is too fuzzy to sit through a film so I can capture the necessary screenshots. Some drafts though, were 'just right' and only needed to be polished, and published.

Along with Les Quatre Cents Coup, Au Revoir Les Enfants is a film that has nestled among my complete drafts for more than a year. Dustedoff wrote a very good review of the former (Which means that my review of Le Quatre Cents Coup had better take another year before it sees the light of day!), and reading it prompted me to dust off (Ha! see what I did there?) my draft of the latter.  The third and final part of Louis Malle's trilogy (the other two films are Le Souffle au Cœur and Lacombe Lucien) about growing up amidst the upheaval of war, Au Revoir Les Enfants is a complex tale of friendship and betrayal told with quiet simplicity.

Shikar

1968

Directed by Atma Ram

Music: Shankar-Jaikishen

Starring: Dharmendra, Asha Parekh, Sanjeev Kumar, 

Helen, Johnny Walker, Rehman

The last few weeks haven't been fun. Battling deadline demons and ill health at the same time took its toll, to the extent that I didn't feel like watching a film, much less writing a review. With the pressure off, for the moment, I dragged my creaking bones, weary and protesting to do some much needed housekeeping, quite forgetting that my ill health meant that I tired quicker, and that aches and pains seemed much sharper and lasted much longer. Trying to not think of the pain, I was browsing through a new website that a friend told me about; I wasn't in any mood to watch any movie that required me to think, so when I saw Rajkumar, I decided a raja-rani film, even one from the dreaded nineties, would be the very thing. Ugh! I'd obviously forgotten how bad the early nineties were - fashions, dances (or what passed for them), plot (or the lack, thereof) - even Naseeruddin Shah hammed his way through an execrable excuse of a film. Ghastly!

The next day, I decided to be a bit more circumspect. Scrolling through the selection on the site, I came across a film that was described as a murder mystery. I had never watched this film, and truth to tell, had not heard of it before. No, that is not true. I do (vaguely) remember discussing this with someone in the blogging world, but I have no clue who. Whoever it was spoke highly of the film, and that is all I knew about it. But Dharmendra in the 60s had not entered his Main tera khoon pee jaaoonga phase, and was rather dishy to boot. So was Sanjeev Kumar, long a favourite of mine, and while Asha Parekh is not a house favourite, the film had Helen and Johnny Walker. It had  to be better than Rajkumar! (It was.) 

My Favourites: Bewafaai Songs

A long, long time ago, probably back in my pichle janam,  I made a list of songs of heartbreak. Not much to my surprise, all my songs (except one) were sung by women. And of course, I was accused of being unfair to men by a couple of my male readers who posted songs of male angst. Which just proved (once again) that men only sing of heartbreak when their significant others die. 

I was promptly pounced upon by one reader who told me I wasn't looking hard enough. Men do suffer from heartbreak. So, yes, while it took almost two years, I did look. And yes, these are all songs of heartbreak. All sung by males (sorry, one woman sneaked in!) - but you know what? While the women usually mourned the loss of their love in private, singing tearfully of their broken hearts, the men seemed to think that it was a good idea to sing in public, at social events, at the engagement parties of their erstwhile lovers, sometimes even in the presence of the new husbands. Hmm...  

Gentleman's Agreement

1947

Directed by: Elia Kazan

Starring: Gregory Peck, John Garfield, Dorothy McGuire, 

Celeste Holm, Anne Revere

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. 

One would think that a film made in 1947 would be dated today, that its theme or story would not resonate with people, that the underlying premise of the story itself - that of religious prejudice - would be so out of place in today's 'inclusive' society that we would watch the film and wonder that there was such a dark period in our collective past.

Unfortunately, the questions that the film poses, the conflict that its characters face, are as valid today as they were more than sixty years ago. Perhaps more so. Yes, society has come a long way; yes, there have been changes, and it has been for the better; yes, Desegregation and Affirmative Action (here) and Reservation (India) have done their part in bringing marginalised peoples into the mainstream fold. Yet, we are still beset by our prejudices. Oh, we all have them, though we might claim not to, some less egregious than the others, perhaps, but they colour our views on people and events.

It is all the more insidious for it being unconscious, so much a part of our psyche that we are really not lying when we say we are not biased. It is there in the unconscious shifting when a 'Black' man sits near you on public transport; it is present when you see a woman in a burqa and mentally, unconsciously almost, make a judgement about her subservience; it is there when you see a teeka on a forehead and a paan-stained mouth and file a man away as 'one of those types'.

Which type?