Dutt's Entertainment: ten immortal Indian musicals

When most people think of Indian movies, they think of "Bollywood,"
of men and women in colorful costumes, dancing and singing before
elaborate sets; when more knowing people think of Indian movies they
also think of Satyajit Ray and his brand of understated realism. The
world's perception of Indian cinema remains fixed on a juxtaposition
of these two extremes--extravagant commercialism vs. austere
arthouse. Film critic Pauline Kael didn't help matters when she
said "Ray is the only Indian director; he is, as yet, in a class by
himself...the Indian film industry is so thoroughly corrupt that Ray
could start fresh, as if it did not exist..."

Which is an amazing statement, one she'd probably never have made if
she knew better--if, say, she had sampled the gritty neorealism of
Bimal Roy's "Bandini," or Raj Kapoor's "Awaara," the elemental power
of Mehboob Khan's "Mother India," the noirish gloom of Guru
Dutt's "Pyaasa." Indian cinema is a grand buffet of different styles
and subcultures, from Bengali (not just Ray, but Ritwik Ghatak, and
Mrinal Sen) to Bollywood; Ray didn't just come out of a vacuum but
out of a teeming sea of productive filmmaking, most of which are
wonderful musicals, some of which have a strong thread of realism
and social commentary running through them that surely influenced
him, and which he in turn influenced. Roy, Kapoor, Mehboob and Dutt
among others made money and won large audiences; they worked in a
strictly commercial format, but made films that were at the same
time recognizably art.

By way of introduction to this turbulently colorful film culture,
particularly to the usually disparaged form of the Indian musical,
here is a list of my favorites, in ascending order:

"Half Ticket"

Credits say Kalidas directed and Ramesh Pant wrote "Half Ticket"
(1962) but every aspect of the movie bears the fingerprints of its
star, Kishore Kumar--the first Indian comic actor to break out of
the sidekick roles usually handed to comedians and assume the lead
in his own pictures (Kumar also has a wonderful voice, and worked a
second career as a successful playback singer). The film is
haphazardly made, with indifferent black-and-white camerawork and
editing that tends to jump, sometimes over entire scenes, making
hash of what story there is. Possibly it's the source print from
which the DVD was made--I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the
original negative was poorly maintained and has since deteriorated;
I would be equally unsurprised to learn that this was the movie's
final form when it was commercially screened. Comedy has never
enjoyed much respect, even in India (especially in India?); you'd be
hard-put to find a picture where the makers actually cared enough to
polish their work, much less preserve it.

But "Half Ticket" doesn't really need polish; all it needs is Kumar,
who delivers a monumentally funny performance as Vijay, the good-for-
nothing, irrepressibly mischievous son of a rich industrialist. The
film's story is suitably bizarre: Vijay dabbles in socialism and
doesn't think twice of delivering pro-labor speeches in front of his
own father's workers. He is summarily thrown out of his own house,
decides to take a train to Bombay to find a job, but can't afford
the ticket; undaunted, he transforms himself into Munna, an outsized
brat with lollipop in hand, and buys a "half-ticket," a half-price
ticket for children. Along the way he meets Asha (Madhubala), a
beautiful woman taken in by his childlike helplessness, and Raja
Babu (Pran), a jewel smuggler who surreptitiously slips a diamond in
his pocket. The rest of the film has Raja running after Munna and
the rock in his pocket while Munna runs after Asha, the love of his
life.

Kumar's Vijay/Munna ranks up there with characters created by Harry
Langdon, Harpo Marx and, more recently, early Jim Carrey as great
obsessives who go after something with an insane intensity--no one
is quite sure just what. Good food, certainly; sometimes the curve
of a woman's admirable behind (sometimes, as in Langdon's case,
not); the satisfaction of justice being done, and damn the cost. In
one especially deranged scene, Vijay is in line waiting to be
interviewed; he learns that to get the job he needs to "spread a
little butter," so to speak, and when he meets the interviewer
proceeds to do exactly that: with two fingers of one hand, all over
the helpless victim's face. Pointed satire on corrupt labor
practices, of course, and totally in keeping with Vijay's character
(remember he used to deliver pro-labor speeches), but the method of
execution is pure Kumar. This, I think, is for the ages.

"Mughal-E-Azam"

This film made in 1960 and set sometime during the reign of the
Mughal emperors is easily the most visually rich Indian musical I've
ever seen--which is saying something, as Bollywood musicals are not
known for their restrained art direction or lukewarm color schemes.
K. Asif's epic tale (from a screenplay by Asif and Aman) takes the
legendary (and considered largely apocryphal) love between Prince
Salim (Dilip Kumar), son of Emperor Akbar (Prithviraj Kapoor, father
of filmmaker Raj Kapoor), and Anarkali (Madhubala), a lowly but
beautiful commoner, and turns their tragic affair into a visual
feast for the eyes. Like the Taj Mahal (another Mughal masterpiece)
the film is assembled from all over India: costumes from Delhi
tailors, special embroidery from Surat-Khambayat, elaborate footwear
from Agra, armor and weaponry from Rajasthani blacksmiths, jewelry
from Hyderabad goldsmiths, and, for just one of the musical numbers,
a chorus of a hundred singers.

The result is a fevered dream of a movie, with opulence enough to
rival even that of the original Mughals: terrace upon terrace of
women dance, weaving intricate choreography; a little boat with a
message (actually, a lotus leaf with paper inserted into the flower
petals) floats down canal after canal (the imperial palace's
beautiful yet functional central air-conditioning system) to its
intended recipient; in one rare sequence the screen bursts into full
color (most of the picture is in black-and-white (shot by R.D.
Mathur), which you can't help but think is a blessed respite from
all the extravagance), and a woman dances in the famously ornate
Sheesh Mahal, the Palace of Mirrors. The thousands upon thousands of
mirrors and crystals and bits of flashing jewelry are enough to put
your eyes out--or make you almost wish they did.

All this would be pointless if there wasn't a drama strong enough to
dominate the overpowering décor; luckily we have Kumar's flashing
dark eyes locked with Kapoor's imperious ones in mortal combat, a
battle of wills that sorely test their relationship as father and
son. Caught in between is Madhubala as an innocent dancer who adores
her Prince and will do anything for him, even at the cost of her
life, even at the cost of her love.

It may be Madhubala's finest performance, and she never looked more
beautiful; as a sculptor who used her as a model puts it, when they
see her "soldiers shall lay down their swords, emperors their
crowns, and men will carve out their hearts in oblation." The
sculpture is veiled; to uncover it, Prince Salim shoots an arrow at
the veil's knot--revealing the live girl hidden underneath. "But
that arrow was aimed at you," Salim exclaims; "why did you stand
still?" Kalyani's cool reply: "I wanted to see how stories are made
to come true." What she felt with that arrow pointed at her through
the veil, waiting for all kinds of wonders to happen--that's the
kind of thrill "Mughal-E-Azam" is likely to inspire in us, the
viewers.

"Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram"

Then there is Raj Kapoor, one of the finest and most commercially
successful of Bollywood filmmakers, with a directing career spanning
thirty-seven years (his acting career was, if anything, even
longer). "Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram" (Love Sublime, 1978), which
Kapoor directed from a script by Jainendra Jain, has an interesting
premise, about a beautiful woman named Rupa (the voluptuous Zeenat
Aman) who cannot find herself a man, first because she's thought to
be unlucky, second because she's disfigured by a hideous burn scar.
True to her unlucky nature, she falls in love with Rajeev (Shashi
Kapoor, Raj's brother) an engineer working on a nearby dam who not
only believes she's perfect (somehow she manages to cover her scar)
but is pathologically incapable of tolerating ugliness of any kind.

The movie, made late in Kapoor's career, is famous (or infamous) its
sensuality; various scenes have Aman exposing increasing amounts of
skin and cleavage, includes a number by a waterfall where she wears
a see-through sari, and climaxes (literally) with an actual, honest-
to-goodness kiss with Shashi Kapoor (yep, I replayed it on my DVD
player to make sure I really saw it). But there's much more to the
picture than the, uh, titillating factor; as with Kapoor's other
films the story brings out interesting psychological elements. Rupa
as fleshed out (literally) by Aman is a sensual creature, given to
wearing two-piece bikinis in her musical numbers that barely contain
her generous nature, fore and aft (the rationale for this is given
in a throwaway line: that she's so unlucky her father didn't want to
spend for clothes, hence everything is several sizes too small).
Despite her beauty, her unlucky nature and ugly scar have been
hammered into her consciousness for years, to the point that it's
the only thing she can see; it gives her a reserve, a becoming
humility that should enchant any pair of testosterone sacs that walk
by (it helps that Rupa is given a lovely singing voice which Shashi
Kapoor hears before seeing her). I might add that Aman's habit of
hiding her scar by biting the edge of a veil with her teeth is
unbearably sexy--you badly want to be that bit of veil caught in her
teeth.

Rajeev is a piece of work; when he hears Rupa's voice he tells
himself that a woman who sings so beautifully must herself be
beautiful (it never occurs to him that things could be otherwise).
When he finally sees the scar--this right after their wedding--he
goes wild, believing he's married the wrong woman, and runs off
looking for the right one. Rupa humors him; all she has to do is put
back on her veil, and there you go. The amazing thing is Rajeev buys
this ridiculous bit of business; he shuns the half-monstrous wife at
home, and throws himself at the half-veiled mistress he meets at the
waterfalls (their favorite trysting place). And the only difference
between wife and mistress--the only thing that makes the entire
deception work--is a simple veil. It makes you wonder about human
nature, and its powers of self-delusion.

Raj Kapoor lines his tale with a luxurious visual texture and color
scheme that would put "Moulin Rouge" to shame (cinematography by
Radhu Karmakar), all tinkling waterfalls (recreated because Kapoor
couldn't find a cascade elaborate enough to satisfy him) and
ravishing sunsets (that happen so often you wonder why the film
doesn't mostly take place at night); when he photographs the dam
that Rajeev works on, there's a hair-raising sense of power barely
held in check--Kapoor is saying something here about women and the
fury unleashed when they feel they've been grievously wronged. Or,
as Rupa so eloquently puts it: "The heart breaks soundlessly but
when it does the earth quakes, the heavens open, the world ends."
It's a rip-roaring melodrama that approaches the size and scale of
genuine tragedy, and a great Bollywood musical.

"Sangam"

Raj Kapoor's "Sangam" (Union, 1964) tells of a love triangle between
Sunder (Raj Kapoor), Radha (Vyjayantimala, a real beauty) and Gopal
(Rajendra Kumar). Sunder the buffoon loves Radha, who loves the tall
and handsome Gopal; Radha rejects Sunder flat out, telling him a man
can't always be a clown, but always seems to have trouble letting
Gopal know about her love for him. Later, when Sunder reads Radha's
love letter meant for Gopal and thinks it's for him, he finds the
courage in him to join the Air Force (before this he used to fly
planes for the fun of it). Sunder makes Gopal promise not to let any
man come between him and Radha, then flies off on a dangerous
mission from which he ends up reported missing, presumed dead.

"Pearl Harbor," anyone? Not fair--"Sangam" is a much better movie.
Kapoor knows how to make his characters engaging, full of charm and
light comic banter (no small thanks to a solidly structured script
by Inder Raj Anand), and he really, really knows how to use the wide
screen--the film's visual opulence and rich color palette (again, by
Radhu Karmakar) reminds me of Luchino Visconti's films, only with
less pretension and a better sense of humor.

And then there's the subtext. It grew more and more apparent to me
while watching the film that the reason why Radha has so much
trouble trying to land Gopal is because Gopal isn't really
interested in her, but in Sunder…

So--when Sunder is reported dead and Gopal starts courting Radha,
his motivation is obvious: 1) he's displacing his love for Sunder to
the girl, and 2) this girl is the one person in the whole world who
matters to Sunder, and, as he promised, he must take care of her as
best he can; what better way than as his lawfully wedded wife?

When Sunder turns out alive and well after all, it's all too easy
for Gopal to explain his promise to Radha and break off their
courtship, telling her "friendship is more important to me than my
happiness." Radha, heartbroken, marries Sunder; Gopal is content to
stay in the sidelines, single.

Does this make sense at all? Let me put it this way--do you believe
a guy would throw over the love of his life for his best friend?
Unless, of course, his best friend is the love of his life…

Okay, so…Radha and Sunder have been married a year…during which
Radha really looks like she's learning to love Sunder…

Then Sunder discovers an unsigned love letter Gopal once wrote to
Radha, goes totally berserk, and pulls out a gun. Radha manages to
take the gun away from him, but runs out of their house in a state
of panic…

And where does she go? To the one man who can help her, of course--
Gopal. And where does Sunder go…?

My theory about Gopal's behavior is this: he's loved Sunder for
years--has in fact stayed away hoping to 1) keep Sunder happy with
Radha, and 2) masochistically enjoy his loneliness. When the whole
situation blows up and he sees Sunder's devastated face, Gopal
realizes that he's been going about this the wrong way, that the
most effective way to gain the attention of his true love isn't to
help him but to hurt him, preferably with the truth. After which he
can consolidate his victory by placing his love forever out of
Sunder's reach, beyond anything else Radha can possibly do…

What a drama queen.

Did Kapoor know what he was doing? Did he realize how interesting
his film really was, functioning on one level as a wonderfully
shameless melodrama and on another as a repressed homoerotic love
affair, and coming up with sound psychology for both stories? Was
Kapoor gay? From what I've heard and what I see onscreen, I don't
think so...in which case what he achieved with this film is all the
more remarkable.

Oh, and there's a scene in a party where the guests all rise up and
ask Radha to sing for them--this after Radha had just had a stormy
confrontation with Sunder over the letter. Radha whispers to
Sunder "How can I sing--now, of all times?" Sunder replies: "But of
course--now is the perfect time for you to sing." And he's right, I
thought: in the world of the Bollywood musical, he was right--this
was the perfect time for a musical number.

"Pakeezah"

Kamal Amrohi struggled for ten years to make "Pakeezah" (The Pure
One, 1972), all the while having to deal with lack of money and the
chronic ill health and alcoholism of his wife, Meena Kumari (the
star of the picture, who died shortly after finishing the film).

The results are difficult to describe. The sets, for example--
think "A Thousand and One Nights," or opulence on the level of the
Mughal emperors (remember "Mughal" is the basis of the word "movie
mogul"--only the Mughals make modern Hollywood moguls look miserly
in comparison): graceful Islamic arches, endless rectangular pools
(the Mughal equivalent of central air-conditioning); vast, thick-
woven carpets. When Kumari lies down to sleep, her hair is lowered
into a huge bowl of water fed by a tinkling fountain--presumably to
keep the strands lustrous and moist.

Kumari is beautiful, but in an almost Oriental way--slanted eyes,
oval face, delicate nose and lips. The musical numbers are designed
to showcase her dancing--simple, stately dolly shots capture her
simple steps (actually Kumari wasn't much of a dancer) as she
pranced her way through complex, fully built sets. Amrohi makes sure
you see architectural detail even in the far distance, as the camera
swings around; the color camerawork (by Josef Wirsching and R.D.
Mathur) is the loveliest money can buy, all the more impressive
since money wasn't always available.

But more than the set design and the photography, there's a real
sensibility working here. Amrohi seems to want to say something
about the passage of beauty, how it flares up and quickly dies down,
and how this very transience is in itself beautiful. He repeatedly
shoots lights and lamps waning; he also has about a dozen shots of
utterly gorgeous sunsets. There's a progression too, from the
perfumed atmosphere of the palace where the film's first half is set
to the even more beautiful outdoors (the coal-glow dusks; the
mountaintop view of a chain of waterfalls) where Kumari meets her
true love.

None of this would work, or all this would just be an exercise in
excessive Bollywood style, if there wasn't a gripping tale to tell.
The story (the screenplay of which Amrohi also wrote) is as old
as "Camille" or "La Traviata"--young man from wealthy family falls
in love with a prostitute named Sahibjaan--but Amrohi adds an extra
dimension by making her mother (also played by Kumari) yet another
prostitute who fell for a wealthy young man, only her mother's story
ended badly; the circularity of events adds an element of suspense:
you wonder if the daughter will end up the same way.

One more thing--Amrohi, for all the seeming slavishness of his
devotion to his wife, presents her as selfless martyr saved by the
goodness of a noble husband. You might say that at the core of every
tribute, no matter how extravagant, no matter how self-sacrificing,
is a kernel of selfish egotism. Considered one of the greatest
Bollywood films ever made; can't say I completely disagree.

"Bandini"

"Bandini," based on a book by Jarasandha, a former jail
superintendent (with a screenplay by M. Gosh and Nabendu Gosh, and
dialogue by Paul Mahendra), is considered to be filmmaking legend
Bimal Roy's finest film--even over his "Do Bigha Zamin," which won a
prize at Cannes. It's the story of Kalyani (Nutan), a convict who,
while working in the prison hospital, captures the heart of Deven
(Dharmendra), the doctor working there. The doctor proposes to her,
is refused, applies for transfer out of the prison.

When the sympathetic warden investigates, Kalyani is unable to
explain her refusal; she instead confesses everything through a
diary, and the film goes into a long flashback--about how she once
loved an imprisoned revolutionary named Bikash Gosh (Ashok Kumar),
how they ultimately lost each other.

Roy meant the film to be a plea for rehabilitation of convicts;
unfortunately his heroine is so saintly and pure, the people around
her so sympathetic and ready to listen, that all that seems to stand
in the way of a full pardon of her crime is the paperwork (if it's
women in prison we're talking about, I prefer the sullenly pregnant
convict Filipina actress Nora Aunor played in Mario
O'Hara's "Bulaklak sa City Jail" (Flowers of the City Jail)--her
path to redemption seems more interestingly rocky, with some of the
rocks self-inflicted). But if it's sheer, unadulterated suffering
we're talking about, Kalyani is up there with the worst world-class
masochists; as played by the beautiful Nutan, she makes us feel
every ounce of her pain and loss, every shuffling step of the way.

Visually it's stunning, thanks to Roy and Kamal Bose's black-and-
white cinematography; there are few images more moving in all of
Indian cinema than that of Kalyani sitting, small and alone, beside
one of the great prison walls, a single shaft of sunlight picking
her out from among the deep shadows. A woman sings a plaintive song
while turning a stone mill, and Roy only has to lift his camera a
bit to present the wheel to us, grain pouring down one hole--as apt
a metaphor as any for the way women's lives seem to pour heedlessly
down, to be crushed under revolving stones.

"Mother India"

Raj Kapoor has acted opposite many beautiful women in his films, but
none had the same fire, or set off the same kind of incandescent
chemistry in him as the incomparable Nargis; for some four to five
years she worked exclusively for Kapoor, even refusing to act in her
mentor Mehboob Khan's projects. Then the pair broke up, and Mehboob
immediately offered Nargis the role of her career, as the
indestructible matriarch of "Mother India."

It's been called the Indian "Gone With the Wind," though the
comparison seems not just irrelevant but insulting; I much prefer
this film. The drama (thanks to a screenplay by Khan, Wajahat Mirza,
and S. Ali Raza) feels bigger, the suffering more profound; the
challenges our heroine Radha faces, most of the time alone and
without the support of friends or neighbors, would bring any number
of Scarlett O'Haras to their knees. Nargis plays Radha like a force
of nature; where elaborate sets and extravagant production design
help lend "Gone With the Wind" a larger-than-life quality, it's
mostly Nargis who gives "Mother India" its monumental scale (with
some help from Faredoon A. Irani's gorgeous cinematography). To see
her bowed, broken down by adversity and a severe flood, then somehow
rise to her feet and shake a defiant fist at the skies is to see a
woman embody the very spirit of a nation; you feel appalled at the
size of the task she's undertaking, awed at just how much she
actually succeeds.

Of course, it helps to have a few subsidiary characters, to give
Radha's figure contrast and scale--in this case, Sukhilala
(Kanhaiyalal), the repulsively unctuous moneylender who not only
ties Radha's family down with an ever-growing mountain of debt but
actually lusts after Radha, hoping to make her his own. In the
film's latter half Radha's own son Biju (Sunil Dutt) becomes the
source of her troubles, eventually forcing her to test which value
she holds up higher: her mother's love for her son, or her woman's
love for her--or any woman's--honor.

"Awaara"

"Awaara" (Vagabond) was Raj Kapoor's breakthrough picture, and he
builds on a strong premise (and a strong screenplay, by K.A. Abbas):
a judge (played by Raj's father, Prithviraj Kapoor) throws out his
wife when he believes (wrongly) that she had been raped and
impregnated by a bandit out for revenge (the judge had once sent the
bandit to prison); years later, the boy Raju (played by Raj Kapoor)
has grown to become a petty criminal and vagabond. It's the issue of
nature vs. nurture, as Kapoor shows us how social class and
circumstance can straitjacket a man--which may explain why the film
was a big hit not just in India but in the Soviet Union.

"Awaara" is an amazing work, with a black and white visual style
(thanks yet again to Kapoor regular Radhu Karmakar) and other
elements borrowed from a number of filmmakers. You can see from the
way the first five minutes (where Raju is brought into a courtroom
and interrogated) was shot and edited that Kapoor learned much from
Orson Welles; the shadowy look of the hideout where the judge's wife
is kidnapped and held prisoner shows the influence of
Welles' "Macbeth." Scenes of Raju growing up in the slums have the
documentary realism of Vittorio de Sica, or John Ford's "Grapes of
Wrath;" along the way you see a dream sequence straight out of Busby
Berkely. Kapoor's vagabond Raju, of course, is a variation on
Charlie Chaplin's famous Tramp.

But it's more than just picking here and there from great directors--
"Sholay," for example, shows trace elements of Peckinpah and Leone,
but clumsily used--Kapoor takes from his masters and turns them into
something entirely new; you might say that where most Indian
musicals use a variety of colors and locales to keep the audience
entertained, Kapoor uses a variety of film styles the same way (he
would show more restraint, comparatively speaking, in films
like "Sangam" and "Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram").

Kapoor doesn't always depend on visual razzle-dazzle--in one scene
Raju steals the purse of a beautiful girl named Rita (Nargis), then,
conscience-stricken, contrives to chase after an imaginary thief,
jumping over a brick wall to beat the robber while Rita (with
increasing alarm) listens from the other side, ultimately returning
the purse without her being any wiser. It's a simple joke, and a
deft metaphor for the movie's theme--Raju must fight his own
conflicted nature to win Rita's trust. Raju also has a favorite
line, whenever he's suspected of being a pickpocket, piano tuner, or
car thief: "it's not your fault--it's my face." The line is a
running gag that gets funnier and more meaningful every time it's
repeated.

Actually, despite a few heavy-handed speeches--which didn't feel all
that heavy, actually, since Kapoor drops them where they'd be most
expected (some dramatic high points, the trial scene), and they're
not delivered in an overwrought manner (as in Mani
Rathnam's "Bombay")--I thought the film effectively worked out its
themes. The real villain here isn't the bandit who kidnaps Kapoor's
mother but Kapoor's father the judge, who insists that a bad man
stays bad--the bandit had been innocent when first captured, but
since father and grandfather were criminals the judge assumed he was
one too; it's this injustice that drives the bandit to such
vindictive cruelty. The film shows us that the corollary is equally
untrue--that the issue of a decent man, in this case the judge's
son, can't stay good if circumstances won't allow him. Any man can
fall into evil, and the cause can be something as simple and
frighteningly arbitrary as the plot twists of a Bollywood musical.

A note on Nargis: newly introduced, you might say "she's not pretty--
she's got a nose like an aardvark and a curled upper lip." Nargis'
beauty is the kind that grows on you as the movie progresses--by
film's end you realize that her expressive face and effortless
acting have wiped out practically every other actress from memory,
Indian or otherwise (with possible exception of Waheeda Rehman--but
Nargis is the far greater better actress). She fully incarnates
Kapoor's motive for reforming himself--you can understand why he
would do anything to win the adoration of those eyes, the approval
of that smile (it's in the same league as Ingrid Bergman's). Kapoor
couldn't resist letting some of that chemistry spill over into his
real life; his relationship with Nargis reportedly wreaked havoc on
his marriage. Great Bollywood musical, one of the greatest, I think.

"Kaagaz ke Phool"

Guru Dutt started out in the Prabhat Film Company where he
befriended struggling actor Dev Anand, who promised that if he ever
became famous, Dutt would direct one of his films; Anand became
famous, so Dutt directed "Baazi" (The Game) in 1951.

Dutt would go on to make a series of excellent and commercially
successful musicals, from the practically perfect comedy "Mr. and
Ms. 55" to the darkly noirish "Pyaasa." Dutt's films are
characterized by a highly visual style, gritty realism, smart
dialogue, and strong sympathy for the lower-class underdog (with
equally strong disdain for the upper-class cad).

Having raised the bar with his films, which were critical and
commercial successes, Dutt proceeded to try raise it even higher--he
took the considerable profits he made from his last hit ("Pyaasa")
and plowed it into his next project, "Kaagaz ke Phool" (Paper
Flowers, 1959), about the decline and fall of a famous filmmaker
named Suresh (Dutt) and the simultaneous rise of his beautifully
innocent protégé named Shanti (Waheeda Rehman). The film is, if
anything, even more ambitious than "Pyaasa," with a beginning that
dares to evoke the opening sequence of "Citizen Kane"--Dutt as the
once-famous Suresh, wandering into what looks like an abandoned
Xanadu (an empty studio lot).

Dutt employs a battery of special effects--huge sets, miniature
cityscapes, windblown confetti, dramatic shafts of light (devised by
master cinematographer V.K. Murthy)--to create his remarkable vision
of the Indian filmmaking industry; at one point, he uses swirling
crowds and swooping crane shots to suggest the exhilaration one
feels when everyone adores you and you're on top of the moviemaking
pyramid. "Kaagaz" was the biggest film Dutt had ever directed, and,
as it turns out, a staggering commercial failure--
Dutt's "Intolerance," so to speak, following the success of
his "Birth of a Nation" ("Pyaasa"). Dutt's character as written (by
Dutt regular Abrar Alvi) may have been too alienating, his problems
too dark and complex for the audience to relate to; scenes involving
Suresh's in-laws, including a comic brother-in-law entertainingly if
rather pointlessly played by Johnny Walker, suggest entire subplots
developed but never successfully integrated.

"Kaagaz" as a story may have been a conventional failure, but as a
collection of visually breathtaking, near-autobiographical moments
in a filmmaker's life it's incomparable. At the very heart of the
film lies the love between Suresh and Shanti, surely one of the
subtlest, most honestly depicted in all of Indian cinema; watching
them, it's easy to believe Dutt was inspired by his real-life
infatuation with Rehman. At the same time, Suresh's self-
destructiveness is unsparingly portrayed--a scene where Suresh
presents his latest film and the audience riots, tearing up the
seats in protest, might have been a preview of "Kaagaz's" own
opening night. Dutt went on to act and produce several more films,
but never directed again; you can't help but wonder if his suicide
at the age of thirty-nine was but his last, most desperate attempt
to prove a point: that real life can be as messy, flawed, and
unforgettable as the reel life he showed us in "Kaagaz ke Phool."

"Pyaasa"

Dutt's masterpiece, "Pyaasa" (Thirst, 1957) is about an unknown poet
named Vijay (Dutt) whose brothers have sold off his poems because he
refuses to get a decent job and support his family. He wanders
about, homeless and hopeless, and meets Meena (Mala Sinha) an old
high school sweetheart who has since married a rich publisher, Mr.
Gosh (Rehman); Mr. Gosh hires him, then as quickly fires him when
he's caught alone with Meena. Everyone looks down on him, everyone
thinks he's a loser except for this one girl, Gulab (the lovely
Waheeda Rehman), and she's a prostitute. The plot (from a screenplay
by Abrar Alvi) resembles Michael Curtiz's "Casablanca" (think of
Curtiz set to playback music) with the sexes reversed: a crowd-
pleasing melodrama about a male Ingrid Bergman (Vijay) who has to
choose between Paul Henreid's idealism (Gulab) and Humphrey Bogart's
practicality (Meena). Suddenly Vijay is involved in a train
accident, and everyone thinks he's dead...

"Pyaasa" is pure bathos, an ultramasochist's fantasy, with the whole
film predicated on taking the sufferings of this sensitive young
artist seriously. What probably gives the game away (aside from his
angelic homelessness, his involvement with two beautiful women, and
his refined sense of integrity) is the moment where Vijay appears at
an auditorium entrance, transfixed by streaming light, his arms
stretched out on either side in the classic cruciform pose. If it's
true that it takes an egotist to think he can be a lead romantic
actor and an even bigger egotist to think he can be a filmmaker; how
big an egotist would you need to be to think yourself a lead
romantic actor and filmmaker?

What saves "Casablanca" from being a camp comedy classic is Max
Steiner's haunting score, Michael Curtiz's swooping camera, Bogart
and (above all) Bergman's convincing performances as the film's
forbidden lovers. Listen to a line like "kees me--kees me as eef for
da last time!" and it's impossible not to laugh…until you catch
sight of Bergman's tragic, unbelievably beautiful face and the
laughter dies in your throat. "Pyaasa" has that same kind of
transformative magic--this is hilarious material that should have
you doubled over howling except for Dutt's mastery of film
technique. When Vijay, for example, sings to Meena ("Who knows the
kind of people they are?") the camera repeatedly leaps away from him
towards her, suggesting both the impact his singing is having on her
and the enormous social distance separating them both (think of
Spielberg set to playback music). Later, Vijay stands brooding on a
balcony while Gulab watches from behind; the sequence where she
sings, alternately sidling up to and shrinking away from the object
of her adoration without him being any wiser, is as skillfully shot
and edited a suspense setpiece (Will she hug him? Leave him? Stab
him in the back?) as in any noir film. Vijay's resurrection, set in
that fateful auditorium as he sings of disillusionment with material
wealth ("This world of palaces, of crowns, of thrones") is a
thrilling piece of moviemaking, with the crowd rising up in
astonishment, then furious riot (think Abel Gance set to playback
music).

Dutt has a genuine Midas' touch; anything he touches turns into
gold. He takes a character like Vijay's masseuse friend Abdul (the
inimitable Johnny Walker) looking for customers in a park and
creates a lovely little comic gem of a solo number--with Walker's
elbows akimbo and his massage oil in a pair of cruets, he looks as
if he planned to turn someone's hair into tossed salad. Later Vijay
visits a whorehouse where a prostitute is forced to entertain
despite the wails of her sick child, and Dutt turns Vijay's sung
response ("These alleys, these houses of attraction") into a genuine
cry of pain and moral disgust (no narcissism in sight, here). The
noirish camera angles and lighting (by V.K. Murthy); the gritty
imagery (railroad yard, waterfront); the occasional in-joke (Meena
at one point reading a "Life" magazine featuring Christ on its front
cover) round up Dutt's capacious bag of tricks.

Dutt in a way resembles another master of cinematic bombast, Orson
Welles--like Welles he's a liberal and humanist; like Welles, if you
scratch the surface you're likelier to find emotional clichés
instead of a rigorous and coherent political philosophy. Like
Welles, Dutt cares about the poor and downtrodden, but only in a way
that feeds his personal demons (he's on their side because it's more
romantic). What makes his and Welles' films profound aren't the
liberal sentiments but the obsessions working away beneath them--in
Welles' case, his fascination with death and decay, in Dutt's case
his anger over the world's hypocrisy. You might say that's why their
visual styles are so expressive--they're not only covering up their
political shallowness, but also a complex knot of emotions they'd
rather not reveal (and yet are too great as artists not to).

And we're not even enjoying all that the film has to offer, I
suspect. The subtitles are serviceable, but if you ignore the
translation and focus on the actual words being spoken (or sung)--if
you listen to the rhythms, the strange sounds and aural concordances-
-you'd suspect that the lyrics to the many songs in the film (based
on the poems of Sahir Ludhianvi, set to the music of S.D. Burman)
are as rich in rhyme and meter, as steeped in romance and gothic
doom as, say, the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. Think, in short, of Poe
set to playback music.

"Casablanca" is a dinky little melodrama set in a fantasy
nowhereland where the problems of three people amount to little more
than a hill of beans in this crazy world. "Pyaasa" is a dinky little
melodrama set in present-day Calcutta (shot in actual locations)
where the problems of one person amount to the world's most
important hill of beans--such is Dutt's achievement. A great film,
absolutely.

("Half Ticket," "Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram," "Sangam," "Mother
India," "Kaagaz ke Phool," and "Pyaasa" are all available on Netflix
at http://www.netflix.com; "Bandini" and "Mughal-E-Azam" are
available on Facets rentals at http://www.facets.org/asticat)

(First published in The Brutarian, Spring 2004)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)