Down Melody Lane..::..Article on Films, Personalities, Music Reviews and More..

Bimal Roy founded no school, yet he left an indelible imprint on many minds, prominent among them Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Gulzar. Both have acknowledged their debt to their mentor and despite the overwhelming pressures of Bombay's meretricious movie market stuck to the values inherited from Roy. Of the two, Hrishikesh has had a longer innings as a film-maker, with an impressive body of work to his credit, some 40 feature films, many of them winning him popular acclaim as well as critical respect. A skilful craftsman, his selective use of sound and images and the rhythmic flow of his films, owe much to his early training as a film editor.

A science graduate, Hrishikesh joined New Theatres, Calcutta in 1945. Bimal Roy had just shot to fame with Udayer Pathey. It was he who spotted Hrishikesh and put him through the paces of film making. Then on he was a part of Roy's entourage and came with him to Bombay in 1951, working as his assistant until 1957, when he made his debut as a director with Musafir from his own story with the screenplay by Ritwik Ghatak. Despite its impressive cast with Dilip Kumar and Suchitra Sen and the assemblage of such assured talent as Rajinder Singh Bedi (dialogue writer) Shailendra (lyrics) and Salil Choudhary (music), the film failed to attract audiences. An episodic film, comprising three unrelated stories is set in a house "To Let", occupied by three tenants in successions - a pair of young lovers who have eloped, an ageing pensioner and his widowed, pregnant daughter and finally a widow and her crippled son. Dramatic unity is sought to be achieved by three broad stages of life - birth, marriage and death. Despite occasional brilliance, the film does not hang together. Part of the reason for its failure could be that most audiences prefer a well told single story to an unrelated trio. Way back in 1936, Bombay Talkies had attempted a double bill - Mamta and Miya Biwi and came a cropper. Satyajit Ray on the other hand in Teen Kanya (1961) based on three stories of Tagore turned at least two of the episodes into masterpieces. Musafir unfortunately was much too schematic and predictable to sustain audience interest for any length of time. What saved a shaky career was the commercial success of the film that followed Anari (1959) which also won for Hrishikesh the President's award.

Anari was the familiar enough story of love between a poor boy and a rich girl but Hrishikesh turns this mundane material into a very watchable film. Particularly interesting was the handling of the relationship between the unemployed lodger (Raj Kapoor) ever in arrears of his rent and his stern (yet kind) landlady Mrs. D'sa, played with considerable skill by Lalita Pawar. However, it was Anuradha that established Hrishikesh as a film-maker of repute with a distinctive style - simple, direct and effective.

Anuradha (1960), a gay, vivacious woman (played by Leela Naidu) accompanies her idealist doctor husband (Balraj Sahani) to a village to serve the rural poor. Too busy with his humanitarian work, the husband neglects his wife. The boredom of village life turns her into a frustrated (she had aspired for a musical career) and lonely creature. Hrishikesh manages to keep alive our sympathy both for the wife who gradually wilts with a sense of emptiness and for the husband who in difference to his calling reduces his personal life to a shambles. Mukherjee also displays a sure hand in building up his characters. The accumulating tension in the mind of the wife is apparent but never explodes. This is perhaps best expressed in the songs (Dil mein mere khelen nanhi munni kaliyan, Piya Jaane Na) brilliantly composed by Ravi Shankar. Hrishikesh's simple, sensitive style, shorn of technical bravura, brought out the theme effectively. "It was only when I ventured to transfer a simple story to the screen," said Mukherjee, "that I realized how difficult is the art of simplicity."

Anand, Abhimaan & Mili

The period between Anuradha and Satyakam was not particularly distinguished in Hrishikesh's career barring perhaps one film - Anupama (1966) which focused on the relationship between an irrational father and his hapless daughter. While Mukherjee remained highly prolific in output (a dozen films), creatively, he seemed to have reached a cul-de-sac. With Satyakam (1969) about an idealist's struggle to survive in a largely cynical, pragmatic world, Hrishikesh retrieved his reputation as a film-maker whose concern extended beyond mindless entertainment. The film also honed the acting talents of its principal - Dharmendra and Sharmila Tagore, breaking the mould in which other film makers had typecast them.

Anand (1970) the film that followed typifies Hrishikesh's work at its best, a grim subject treated with a sense of fun and compassion. Written by the director himself, the protagonist Anand Sehgal (played by Rajesh Khanna) suffers from terminal cancer. Knowing his days are numbered, he is determined to make every moment of his life joyful. The film is told in flashback through a diary kept by his Doctor, Bhaskar Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan). As the shadow of death lurks in the background, Anand's zest for life enhances its poignancy. His death is fleetingly shown, instead, at the end. Hrishikesh makes dramatic use of the taped voice of the dead hero filling the room with laughter. As a critic remarked, "The deep conviction of the Hindu that death is transitory is given psychological reinforcement." The concurrent life and death theme and the contrasting attitude of its chief protagonists, the extrovert ailing Anand, oblivious of his imminent death, and the introvert doctor keep alive the dramatic tension and interest. The film also confirmed a brilliant future for Amitabh Bachchan, whose second film this was.

The following year came Guddi (1971) from a story and script by Gulzar who had earlier provided the dialogue and lyrics for Anand. The film was in lighter vein, a genre Hrishikesh was to employ with considerable success in several later films. The narrative of Guddi is about a star-struck young girl's (Jaya Bhaduri) obsessive infatuation for a matinee idol (Dharmendra). Face to face with him and reality of the make-believe world she gets disenchanted. The film had snippets of actual shooting and in the process brought together a number of stars, while the plot attempted to unravel the glamour myth. The film is not a critique of the commercial cinema, except to highlight the sorry plight of studio workers and technicians and the waste and boredom in the film-making process. It is interesting that the essential myth of the screen hero as the gallant saviour is kept intact as Dharmendra brings together Jaya and her lover.

Jaya Bhaduri was cast again with Amitabh Bachchan in Abhimaan (1973), a successful musical centering around a married couple and their crash of egos. Both singers, the conflict arises when the wife overtakes the husband in popularity and their married life is on the verge of a breakdown. The denouement comes when the wife decides to give up her career. A retrogressive ending but largely true of a hide-bound, conventional society. In Mili (1975) which had the same cast, Hrishikesh returns to the theme of his earlier film Anand. But here his concern with death is more serious and profound. Mili was memorable not only for the brilliance of its principal performers but its deeply felt and emotionally engaging treatment.

Hrishikesh moved with equal ease from serious drama to breezy comedy. Bawarchi (1972) sparkles with wit and humor as Rajesh Khanna plays a cook in a middle class family riddled with petty problems. In Khoobsurat (1980), a tomboyish Rekha, breaking every rule, brings a touch of sanity to a rigidly-run household. Hrishikesh understands the middle class mentality as few others. He pokes gentle fun as its outworn values, its failings and foibles, sometimes prodding it to think and move with the time. But he never resort to rhetoric, nor does he wear the mantle of a reformer. His films are an affirmation of life. His characters even in adversity are capable of laughter. It is not facile optimism but a conviction evolved in the crucible of his own experience. His films show the tensions between tradition and modernity, individual and society. His style may be eclectic but the Indianness of his themes, milieu and treatment, unmistakable. As a film-maker, Hrishikesh lacked the daring to do away with the established clich�s of commercial cinema. It is a measure of the innate honesty of the man that he was the first to admit it.