Despite all this, however, was Anand an auteur? Or a director(as French call it, the metteur-en-scene), with tremendous competence with the film form, and a vast love for one genre – the thriller? Is his career marked

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The man of glorious crime, the father of the Hindi thriller, the king of Indian movie-cool; side-way tracking was his mistress, dollying-in hooks were his calling cards, and fast zoom-outs to reveal the foreground were his luxuries. Vijay Anand, the founder or, more essentially, the pioneer of the Indian film noir made films in 1960’s. He could well have been making them now.

Guided by a perennial affection for class, and an undying love for slickness, he could make films remarkably out of touch with the world around him, and yet, at frequent junctions, he could be making exalted statements about the world, the existence of the individual within the world, the ego, and even, what would have been his elder brother’s (Chetan) favourite topic – neighbouring countries.

His simultaneous mastery of the montage, as well as the long, uncut take; where his usage of the blocking to reveal curious understanding of the architecture and a deft comprehension of the spatial relationships between his characters, could well make him the most cinema-aware of all our directors from Bombay. His devotion to the exploration of the space available to him, made through the use of a dynamic, forever tracking camera, which revealed as it went; a wide pan almost as expressive as that of Ghatak, and a tradition of zooming-out at the most unexpected junctures, only to reveal a mysterious presence in the foreground. He could use the montage like in the climax of his debut feature, Nau Do Gyaarah, where a simple ticking of the clock, coupled with varying shots of actors lying in wait, could result in biomechanical urges of the heart; or like in Guide, where in order to evoke simultaneous sympathy and grief for a village which faces drought, he prepares a kaleidoscopic view of the village, through a series of shots of the people of village, all suffering in their personal ways, revealing also a particularistic and humanistic concern on the director’s part for the individuals of the village, rather than a generalized trivial concern for an entire village. It is like we say, the farmers of Vidarbha have committed suicide, thus reducing their problem to that of a collective, and as a result, not attending to it, but instead, subjugating the issue, because pain is made feebler when it is spread over a wide pan, but made more pointed when it is a montage.

Despite all this, however, was Anand an auteur? Or a director(as French call it, the metteur-en-scene), with tremendous competence with the film form, and a vast love for one genre – the thriller? Is his career marked by a consistent thread that he strings all his films on, or is it about the application of his glorious ability to whatever the script at hand was? We believe he was an auteur, because auteurism is not about subject, as much as it is about form. It is not as much about the arrangement of the words in a sentence, but the passage within which the sentence is contained. Besides, he wrote his own scripts. And edited them too.

Tere Ghar Ke Samne (1963)

A film which sticks as a vast anomaly in his work, both in terms of his usual thematic tendencies (submerged cynicism about human nature, skepticism about a smooth romance –which almost always generates out of a greater cause – Guide – Selfish Pursuits, JMN – Both work for a gang, Jewel Thief – The girl’s brother is kidnapped, why doesn’t he love the easily more alluring, more available Anjali? Peculiar apathy to the world around him; bordering fantasy – Nepal, Sikkim, Shimla) and his formal flourishes – the dynamic camera, adroit aforementioned usage of rapidly cut scenes, B-Movie credit designs, and deep explorations of space; sacrificing them, instead for the most mundane of psychological realism continuity techniques. His camera is almost always static, and his editing remains devoted to maintaining the cause of causality; to attend to the boringly written script, that is a 30 minute film extended over 2 hours, which has to look towards fabricated generation of sequences to keep it from being a short film. Two neighbours, one a urban, anglicized, modern-day businessman, and another, routed in his tradition, as shown by his contempt for his son’s progressive habits, absolutely hate each other. But as fate would have it, they become neighbours. And as fate would double-have it, both of them employ the same architect to construct their houses – Dev Anand.

And in the end, all that has to be done to solve the problem is a series of monologues, and a song picturised in high angles, that also reeks somewhere, too blatantly at points, of a ‘message’ directed at two neighbouring countries – India and China? India and Pakistan?

“Agar aap log aise padosi se nafrat karna chahte hai, jisne kismet ne likha hai ke aapke saath rahe, toh aapka bhala ho.”

Not Vijay Anand. But then, one may tell me, that he wrote it himself. I remain confused, for while such subservience to a message might be a debutant director’s concern, why would a man who had already made a impudent debut in Nau Do Gyaarah, and a reflective noir in Kala Bazaar. One could pinpoint it to a need to depart, like every great director one wants to, but if it is that, one can tell how he felt about the attempt by the fact that he soon returned to what he did best – make cinema.

Guide(1965)
I remain certain that more erudite eulogies to the film can be found on the site. But even a sometimes unaware, and undiscerning viewer like me can discern the greatness of this film. One can rise up and say that all the philosophical depth to the film is lent by the novel, (The Guide, RK Narayan, 1958), but I could argue that you can make this point only when Vijay Anand (and brother, Dev Anand) made a film out of the source material in the first place. A source material, that remains so unsuitable to the conventional Hindi film screen of that time, and of this time : the novel, as another author on the site tells me, had no redemption, it had no positive character, it had spiritual solutions at a time when tangible solutions were preferred, it had no definitive happy ending, the canvas was too expansive, the motivations of the characters remained ambiguous, and there were elements like infidelity, destruction of the family order, and an overtly assertive female character. And yet, the Anands made it. From a Vijay Anand script.

Yes, Anand refused participation in the project initially because of his discomfort with a project so at odds with his conception of presentation of the Hindi film, but one must remember, in view of the situation, that even then while his final script(and the final film), tampers with external texture and frankness of the novel, it does not sacrifice its philosophical musings, and only, through a modified ending, enhance it.

Anand, the master of economy of technique, often shooting his films in nifty long takes, where the camera just slightly turning its head in small angular pans to cover other dimension; consummates his ability with the picturisation of the song Tere Mere Sapne, which is shot in three long takes, each featuring inspiring blocking of the two leads. Will we ever get a song picturisation like this again in Mumbai? No. Because we are too busy with 150 foreign back-up dancers, Avid systems, and strobe lights. Who cares about the choreography? Does the Bollywood choreographer of today even edit his own song?

It is in all its attributes, a film that strangely reminds of Rashomon, which adopts such a bleak view of the reduction of humanity into animal instinct, and gets progressively bleaker, until the end arrives, to restore your faith. Guide is equally cynical, and at most points during the film, even harsher in its criticism of the modern man, the lead is ego-centric, insecure, jealous, and selfish. The female lead is at times, ungrateful, and at times, indifferent. She is not a human at all, “Dil ke aas paas ek qila sa ban gaya hai. Ab kisi such dukh ka farak hi nahin padta.” The female lead’s husband is an uncaring, medieval man, who believes infidelity is permitted for him, even as he obsesses over ancient caves, his wife just cannot have any desires – exhibited by his shock when she lies to him about her infidelity. The society is ruthless, hypocritical, seeped in blind tradition and receptive only towards success.

And yet, the finale of the film becomes about the attainment of a higher being – about the death of the ego – about restoration of humanity.

Also, to all that believe melodrama should be killed, stamped on, and annihilated by ‘realism’, I would say that well-constructed melodrama cannot be matched by much else – see the scene between Marco and Rosie in the cave.

Jewel Thief (1967)

A sense of mystery, a tinge of romance, an ingredient of drama, and a tarnish of thrills, what more do you want from a film? And if the people involved in making the film are Vijay Anand, Dev Anand, S. D Burman, Ashok Kumar, Vyjayanthimala, Tanuja, Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar, you know you will be rewarded.

We live in times where ‘impatience is the new life’. The slightest wait can get us tapping our feet in rising petulance, we cannot wait because that is what we hate. And yet, this 3 hour film is a luxury, because if there is a definition of tautness in cinema, through the use of great hooks, dynamic montages, and scenes which segue into each other, it is this film.

Vijay Anand exudes to the master – Hitchcock, and to combines the tenets of a Hitchcockian thriller with his B-Movie sensibilities – bright colour palette, a ridiculous plot, melodramatic acting, but done with conviction that makes the mixture into masterful cinema.

Often, suspense films fail in their revelation. They build the tension, create all the necessary moments, and as soon as the audience clings to the edge, they discover the downer. It is like being on a roller-coaster ride which reaches the top and then stops there. Films like Khiladi, and 36 China Town, which at odds to induce a twist in the film, introduce a hitherto unseen character into the film. What can be a greater revelation thatn that you cannot guess? But not Jewel Thief, since it remains a victory of the screenplay where the villain is an automatic conclusion and not an added attraction. An example of Anand’s use of technique to keep us the suspense is, in the film Amar is rarely shown in close up in person. Reason? I might end up giving the twist of the film and spoil the film for those who haven’t seen it yet.

The initial credit sequence could make Bass proud, and what more could be a proof of Anand’s excellent control over the edit, as he uses the tenets of rhythmic montage to reveal his and his titular character’s intentions. It itself says Jewel Thief is not an ordinary typical masala film but has been constructed with a sense of the film form, and that is why, it almost defies the conventional masala film. Intelligent credit sequence to fast newspaper cuts, all matching the sound track brilliantly designed by S.D. Burman, it clearly shows Vijay Anand is someone who’s aware of good filmmaking and how to make good commercial films.

Johnny Mera Naam(1970)
The golden phase was clearly over, and though the brilliance of the cut, and the love of the zoom was still there, the interest seemed to be diverting. Towards what? No one will know. But his blocking had become as weak as most of his contemporaries of yore, with actors merely placed in front of the camera, acting out their scenes like in a theatre play. His romance was now contrived, almost forced onto the viewers, unlike the great tempest of Rehman-Anand in Guide, and the victim-of-the-circumstance romance of Anand-Vyjanthimala of Jewel Thief. One cannot not take the example of this film and explain the futility of a competitive form in the absence of interesting content to apply it to. What was Anand dealing with? Situations as old as cinema itself – lost and found brothers, a mother clad in white waiting for both of them, a son waiting to take vendetta, brothers on the opposite side of law, jumping at their whim to the other side of the fence, and though it features a superlative, relaxed villain performance by Prem Nath, the film remains the only instance in the Anand oeuvre where his romantic sub-plot is a failure. The greed becomes the tedium, the heist a yawn, and the mystery, a formality, and the charismatic Dev Anand, an old man going to direct his own hippie film two years later.

At the end, then, Vijay Anand became the head of the censor board. Even there, all he wanted to propose was irreverence. What did he suggest? A separate theatre to screen adult films, and to initiate the tradition of adult cinema, but handled with sensitivity. Did they understand him? No, ofcourse. When have they ever?

-          The contribution on Jewel Thief is written by Ankit Choudhary.

Tags: Dev Anand, Guide, Jewel Thief, Johnny Mera Naam, Tere Ghar Ke Samne, Vijay Anand

Posted By Anuj | Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 | Filed under Auteur, News