Do bigha zamin (1953)

admin — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 00:27:29 +0000

Balraj Sahini in Do bigha zamin (1953)

Bimal Roy, one of India’s foremost film-makers, made many great films including Do bigha zamin, which is one of Roy’s best works and is a remarkable film by any standards. It brings together Roy’s neo-realist form of Hindi cinema’s melodrama with his deeply felt political concerns, to form a great study of human values and dignity among the poor.

Do bigha zamin explores the real impact of money-lending on the peasant farmer, as he becomes enslaved by his debts. Driven to try to raise money to pay off his loan, Shambu (Balraj Sahni) leaves his pregnant wife (Nirupa Roy) and elderly father to head for Calcutta. His young son smuggles himself onto the train and helps his father as a shoe-shiner. Robbed on their first day, the couple soon remake their village ties by finding surrogate families in the city: Dadi as their mother and Rani as an elder sister to the boy. Shambu’s experience of helping a sick man leads him into rickshaw-pulling. While terrible accidents befall the family, the film avoids easy answers to the serious problems facing the urban migrant. Roy’s melodrama is restrained, and he uses few devices of the Hindi film, with songs kept to a minimum, placing the emphasis instead on the black-and-white photography of realistic sets and wonderful footage of contemporary Calcutta.

The main strength of this film lies in the performance of Balraj Sahni as Shambhu. Sahni is regarded as one of the greatest actors of Indian cinema, both during his lifetime and with hindsight. He rarely appeared as the Hindi film hero but usually, as he said, as ‘all those fathers and uncles’, often taking roles in films dominated by the outstanding female stars such as Nargis and Meena Kumari. While Sahni’s younger brother, Bhisham, became one of the great figures of modern Hindi literature, Balraj had a variable career in theatre and cinema, as well as working for the BBC in London before independence. Despite his own elite and educated background, Sahni is totally plausible as the desperate but determined peasant, his physical movement accurately reproducing that of a labourer, while his facial expressions are restrained and powerful.

One scene in this film is particularly resonant, its images condensing the narrative of the invisibility of the poor and the way the rickshaw- pullers are seen as little more than draught animals. A middle-class woman, arguing with her lover, leaps into a rickshaw. The man follows her and they egg the pullers into a chase, where the pullers seem to be running after the extra money itself with no other sight in mind. The rapid editing by Hrishikesh Mukherjee adds to the speed of the chase and the desperate pursuit of a few extra coins. During the race, Shambu’s rickshaw overturns and he is severely injured, but the couple pay no attention.

The setting of this film in the Bengali village and Calcutta of the 1950s inevitably invites comparison with Ray, and the differing merits of the Hindi film and the ‘art’ film.

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1953, Genre – Drama, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Bimal Roy, Director –Bimal Roy, Music Director – Salil Chaudhary, Cast - Murad, Ratan Kumar, Tiwari, Balraj Sahni, Nirupa Roy, Nana Palsikar, Nazir Hussain, Noor, Kusum, Hiralal, Misra, Rajlaxmi, Dilip, Nand Kishore, Jagdeep, Mehmood, Paul Mahendra, Navendu Ghose, Sunil Das Gupta, Ashit Sen, Shelly Banerjee

Ram Aur Shyam (1967)

admin — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 03:16:16 +0000

Waheeda Rehman in Ram aur Shyam (1967)

The theme of identical twins has been present in many cinemas (this being one of the most basic ‘tricks’ available to cinema that was not available to live performances such as plays). Common to melodramas, it is taken to extremes in Hindi cinema, with not just identical twins (Afsana [1951], Anhonee [1952], Gol maal, Hum dono [1961], and others, including ‘fake’ doubles in Jewel Thief) but unrelated doubles (Don, Kaho na pyaar hai), while there are many other examples of non-identical brothers separated at birth (Amar, Akbar, Anthony, Johny mera naam and many others) as well as brothers who are opposites (Mother India, Gunga Jumna, Deewaar and so on).

Ram aur Shyam is also interesting for being one of several south Indian films that were remade in Hindi in southern studios. Shot in Madras, it was a remake of a Telugu hit starring N. T. Rama Rao, Ramudu Bheemudu (1964), whose director, B. Nagi Reddi, produced this film for a new director, Chanakya.

The timid Ram (Dilip Kumar) is terrified of his brother-in-law Gajendra Babu (Pran), who has bullied him all his life but, to protect his sister (Nirupa Roy) and niece, he suffers in silence. Gajendra wants Ram to marry heiress Anjana (Waheeda Rehman) so he can take her money as well as Ram’s. When Ram realises that Gajendra will stop at nothing, he runs away. Meanwhile, we have met the lively and fearless Shyam (Dilip Kumar) who lives in a village, where he gets up to mischief and loves playing jokes, especially on his friend Shanta (Mumtaz). He goes to the city, where he rescues Anjana, who thinks he is Ram. They fall in love but he cannot convince her that he is not Ram. Meanwhile, Shanta falls in love with Ram, who has ended up in Shyam’s village. Gajendra also mistakes Shyam for Ram, so is in for a shock when Shyam asserts himself. However, he finds Ram and imprisons him, then accuses Shyam of his murder; only later does it emerge that Ram and Shyam are twins separated at birth.

Dilip Kumar was known as the king of tragedy, so his debut in comedy was anticipated with skepticism if not amusement. However, as soon as Shyam appears, all doubts were dispelled, as he gives a hilarious performance as a villager hired to be a hero in a film who actually beats up all the baddies and is told that he will never make it in the movies. He is then soundly beaten by his mother for even thinking about joining the film industry. It must have been quite a shock when the film came out to see Dilip Kumar dancing and singing at a children’s party, pulling faces and putting on silly voices. The others play roles with which they were usually associated. Waheeda and Mumtaz were well cast as opposing types. While Waheeda was already established as a major star, this was the film that moved Mumtaz onto the A-list of actresses, a position she would hold until her marriage. Nirupa Roy is saintly and long-suffering, while Pran is cruel and villainous.

The music for this film is not Naushad’s best score but songs such as ‘Aaj ki raat’ were quite popular.

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1967, Genre – Drama, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Vijaya International, Director – Chanakya, Music Director – Naushad, Cast – Dilip Kumar, Waheeda Rehman, Mumtaz, Nirupa Roy, Kanhaiyalal, Nazir Hussain, Sajjan, Mukri, Amar, Leela Misra, Zebunissa, Farida, Pran

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Do bigha zamin (1953)

Cast and Production Credits

Ram Aur Shyam (1967)

Cast and Production Credits