The Raj era

The 1960s belonged to Raj Kapoor (RK). His photographs were splashed all over the media, whether he imperiously smoked a cigar or was seen presiding over a film party. Known as the ‘showman’, RK was the uncrowned king of the film industry and a social A-lister in Mumbai and Delhi. Looking impossibly elegant in a blazer and silk scarf when he appeared on the sets directing a film, this dapper hero — not to forget for a moment — also produced movies, and most of them were monster hits.

Delhi’s social elite would claim to be on intimate terms with him, but many found themselves without an invite when his daughter Ritu got married and they were forced to gate-crash.

RK was the eldest son of Prithviraj Kapoor, himself a famous film star of the 1930s, owner of Prithvi Theatre and a future MP. Raj would travel with the theatre company and was fitfully educated in Kolkata and Dehradun. He never went to college. His father did not think much of his son’s acting talent, giving him odd jobs in the theatre company. A young RK built and fixed sets, set up and operated lights, looked after costumes. He would also tour new venues in a tonga, wielding a megaphone announcing the arrival of Prithvi Theatre plays, and how to get tickets.

RK broke away from his father’s company and became an assistant film director. The job paid Rs 20 a month, with which he could exist just above the poverty level. He owned two pairs of bush shirt and trousers. RK had taken some music lessons from Pt Jagannath Prasad where singer Mukesh was his senior. As he sang well, RK slowly started getting odd singer-actor roles and got a breakthrough in Madhubala’s debut film, ‘Neel Kamal’.

The actor, however, had greater ambitions, and at 23, he bought 4 acres of land in a nearby village and set up his own company, RK Films. ‘Aag’ was the first film produced under the RK banner in 1948.

‘Aag’ utilised many of the Prithvi Theatre artistes. RK also picked up talented individuals from the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), including writer KA Abbas, lyricists Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri, and Zohra Sehgal, who was a choreographer.

Kamini Kaushal, who worked in ‘Aag’, recalls Raj as a fun-loving prankster on the film’s sets. RK completed his team with the talented actress Nargis, who was already a big star. The two were in a relationship and their onscreen romance would light up the screen. ‘Barsaat’, a musical romance set in Kashmir, was the next RK production. It introduced actress Nimmi. Songs from ‘Barsaat’, sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh, were very popular and the film’s music directors, Shankar-Jaikishan, became industry favourites. ‘Barsaat’ was a smash hit.

SS Vasan of Gemini Studios had produced a multilingual extravaganza called ‘Chandralekha’ (1948) with the most elaborate sets ever seen. Inspired, Raj began constructing a bigger set, the first ever in Indian films, for his next film, ‘Awaara’. A tightly written crime drama, this huge set was for an extraordinary dream sequence in this anti-capitalist film. In fact, the film’s leftist tilt made RK a Nehru favourite. With his heroine Nargis also in official favour and his father Prithviraj a Rajya Sabha MP, Raj became the industry leader in Delhi.

Raj was a fan of Hollywood films but IPTA introduced him to Soviet directors like Vsevolod Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein, as also the over-dramatic style of German Expressionism.

From this mixture of commercial and socialist cinema as well as the Hollywood films of Frank Capra and Charlie Chaplin, which sympathised with the common man, was born Raj’s own artistic sensibility of sympathy with the underdog.

Out of all the RK films, the best pick remains ‘Awaara’. A tight rags-to-riches repentance story, the film had family break-ups and reunions, memorable music and dances, and some great acting. A huge success in India, it was also a runaway hit in Russia (where ticket sales were in millions), China, East Europe, West Asia and East and South Africa. It’s one of the few films to be considered among the great works of world cinema.

Two later films, ‘Boot Polish’ and ‘Shree 420’, completed this trilogy. His nine-year relationship with Nargis had come to an end after ‘Shree 420’. A disturbed Raj let a theatre director handle his experimental film, ‘Jagte Raho’, which flopped. He then turned to a patriotic dacoit drama, ‘Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai’, which had titillating shots of its heroine Padmini. Sensual depiction of the female body became a hallmark of his later films.

‘Sangam’ was another blockbuster and his relationship with his new heroine Vyjayanthimala threatened to break up his family. Now flush with money, he turned to his dream project, ‘Mera Naam Joker’. A cult classic at present, it was a major flop when it was released. The film’s distributors became almost bankrupt but Raj Kapoor honourably agreed to make up for their losses. Rumours went round that he was selling his house and RK Studios. He never regained his political and social standing afterwards.

But within RK Studios, his last kingdom, RK’s rule intensified. He took complete control of every artistic component of his films — from lighting to music to costumes. He would even demonstrate gestures and facial expressions to his actors. Aruna Irani, who acted in ‘Bobby’, recalled how he even once showed her the right walk for her character in the movie.

A low-budget ‘Bobby’ was a success, as were ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’, ‘Prem Rog’, ‘Ram Teri Ganga Maili’ and ‘Henna’, which was a posthumous hit. Unlike his earlier films, where the hero was without a family or caste, these films had a social message, attacking outmoded social prejudices, with heroes belonging to a well-defined class system and upper-caste background. Every small detail was evident of the director’s powers of observation and craftsmanship.

In later years, RK would shoot about five scenes a day. The actors were, however, quite appreciative of his vast knowledge about film-making. Sushma Seth once remarked that RK seemed to have visualised the entire film in his mind, as he seldom had to alter a shot. According to Kulbhushan Kharbanda, it appeared that even the background score would be playing in the director’s head, as Raj Kapoor would demonstrate a gesture and then add that this moment was where the violin theme would play alongside.

Nearly all his contemporaries were inspired by him. Manoj Kumar drew on Raj Kapoor’s patriotism, crime dramas and dream sequences (‘Awaara’). Subhash Ghai and Manmohan Desai declared that they belonged to the Raj Kapoor school of film-making. Anees Bazmee, director of ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3’, had worked as an assistant director with Raj Kapoor. For him, Raj Kapoor was always ‘Sahib’, a loving but strict boss, with a total understanding and passion for cinema.

The end came when Raj Kapoor had just received the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke award. He collapsed due to asthma and was admitted to hospital, where he slipped into a coma. When the news of his death came the next day, a mob of fans tried to storm the hospital. Raj Kapoor would have seen that as a tribute.

CULT CLASSICS

It is Raj Kapoor’s birth centenary and cinemas across India are having retrospective screenings of his best films (December 13-15). Tickets are priced at Rs 100.  YouTube, CDs and OTT networks have made viewing his films possible at home too. Watching his films in historical order, we can see the radical dreams of young adults at Independence, the gradual failure of these dreams and a retreat into finding comfort in traditional values.

AAG (1948) B&W: A young man is haunted by a childhood love and leaves his family profession of law to become a stage actor. Raj Kapoor’s light and shadow presented Nargis in this film more dramatically and beautiful than ever.

AWAARA (1951) B&W: It’s been called one of the most popular films of all time. The estranged son of a respectable judge is brought up by a thief and becomes a criminal. But a meeting with his childhood sweetheart rekindles old passion and he struggles to reform himself and be worthy of her. But will he ever win back his father’s love?

BOOT POLISH (1954) B&W: Two Bombay orphans are trained to beg on the streets by their cruel aunt. But they learn to polish shoes in an effort to better their life. Full of sympathy for the poor, the movie’s style is a tribute to Italian neo-realism director Vittorio De Sica. Asha Bhosle sang all the songs in her breakthrough film. For elder sister Lata, this breakthrough had come in another RK film, ‘Barsaat’ (1949).

SHRI 420 (1955) B&W: An unemployed gold medallist from Allahabad arrives looking for a job in Bombay and stays in a slum. He falls in love with a virtuous school teacher, Nargis, but under the evil influence of a society charmer, Nadira, he takes the get-rich-quick route of cheating at cards. Which side will win? The film has some of the best songs of Raj Kapoor and some comedy sequences, where RK imitated Charlie Chaplin’s character of a tramp.

JAGTE RAHO (1956) B&W: One of his two flop films, this was shot in both Bengali and Hindi. It was directed by famous Bengali theatre director Shambu Mitra. A farmer comes to Bombay looking for work and enters an apartment building to have water. He moves from flat to flat but is mistaken for a thief and gets caught up in a general commotion. In one of the film’s famous sequences, the hero joins a search party looking for the alleged thief. The heavy satire was unacceptable to the audience. Raj Kapoor said it was either before its time or perhaps just a pseudo-intellectual film. Predictably, the Bengali version did better business than the Hindi one.

MERA NAAM JOKER (1970) colour: Originally a five-hour film, it was reduced to four. It is the sad story of a circus clown who suffers heartbreak even as he makes the crowd laugh. In one heart-wrenching scene, the clown’s mother dies while watching the show, and he is helpless as the show must go on. The version on ZEE5 is a three-hour one. The US version is even shorter. Now regarded as a classic, the film is in three parts, showing the clown’s adolescence, maturity and old age. Six years in the making, it can be viewed as the Indian response to Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Limelight’. Its meditation on the fate of a creative artiste also bears comparison with Federico Fellini’s ‘8 ½’, Youssef Chahine’s ‘An Egyptian Story’ and in some ways, Guru Dutt’s ‘Pyaasa’. The first part is probably RK’s best and was admired by Satyajit Ray. The third part has memorable bits (RK as a faqir playing Ranjha with Malayali actress Padmini playing Heer), but the second part with the Russian circus does drag. Stylistically, it’s simpler. The dramatic light and shadow and rapid camera movements of his early films give way to unobtrusive camera work. The preachy dialogues of the early films are replaced by everyday language. A stupendous flop, it created a financial crisis for the maker and indeed the industry. But it was his favourite film and in his last interview, he quoted its lyrics — ‘Jane Kahan Gaye Woh Din’.

BOBBY (1973) colour: A low-budget film with two new stars, Dimple and Rishi Kapoor, it was the recovery film after ‘…Joker’. Based on RK’s love for Nargis, it has the vintage RK underpinnings of a class conflict as well as conflict with a controlling father. Great music and the dream-like romance of ‘Hum Tum Ek Kamre Mein Band Ho’ made it a blockbuster and RK Films was back in business.

SATYAM SHIVAM SUNDARAM (1978) colour: Starring Zeenat Aman, the film led to obscenity law suits. The Supreme Court ruled that once a film had the censor certificate, there could be no complaints. This film is still not discussed in polite society, but has RK’s most vivid psychedelic colours. Picturisation of ‘Bhor Bhayi’ and the title track show a master at work.

— The writer served as Director General, All India Radio