Meena Kumari in Pakeezah (1971)

While courtesans feature in many films, mostly in minor roles, the two great films in which they are the main heroines are set in the nineteenth- century Avadhi court of Lucknow (Umrao Jaan), and in Delhi and the Punjabi princely state of Patiala in the early years of the twentieth century (Pakeezah), as these were two of the great centres of courtly Muslim culture of their time.

Shahabuddin (Ashok Kumar) is in love with a courtesan, Nargis (Meena Kumari), but his family will not let him marry her. Nargis dies in a graveyard where she has given birth to a daughter, who is brought up by her sister, also a courtesan. Sahibjaan (Meena Kumari) becomes a courtesan too and she also falls in love with a forestry officer, Salim (Raaj Kumar), whom she does not know is her nephew from father’s side. They have some romantic moments together and want to get married but his family insists that he marries someone else. Sahibjaan is invited to dance at their wedding …

Pakeezah has very stylised aesthetics, with its beautiful actress, music and dance, the elaboration of scenery and in particular of clothing, tied to a certain nostalgia arising from the decline and disappearance of courtesan culture. The courtesan is a quintessentially romantic figure: a beautiful but tragic woman, who pours out her grief for the love she is denied in tears, poetry and dance. Yet although denied marriage and respectability, she is also a source of power. She ignores constraints on women’s chastity and economic rights, succeeding through a combination of talent and education. Meena Kumari had a strong star persona, as a tragedian who was exploited by her parents and her lovers, despite her beauty and her talent as an actress and a poet. She had an alcohol problem, which killed her less than two months after Pakeezah’s release, when she was only forty. During the fourteen years it had taken to make this film, she and the film’s director, producer and writer, Amrohi, were divorced.

All this makes Pakeezah something of a camp classic. It has strong elements of foot fetishism: the lover leaves a note tucked into Pakeezah’s toes on the train/(‘Aap ke paon bahut haseen hain. lnhen zameen par mat utariyega, maile ho jaayenge’/Your feet are very beautiful. Do not let them touch the ground, they will get dirty!’) and dancing at her lover’s wedding, she lacerates her feet on broken glass to leave symbolically resonant bloody marks on the white sheet of her performance. Although her sexual allure is constantly on display in the film, she calls her body a zinda lash (‘living corpse’) and writes romantic ghazals about love, maintaining the hope that she might marry, although her career would make this impossible.

The extended filming schedule meant that several of the crew and cast were rather old by the time it was finished. It was shot by Josef Wirsching, who had been a cameraman at Bombay Talkies in the 1930s. The songs from the film were beautiful, tragic compositions by Ghulam Mohammed, who wrote them in the late 1950s and died before the film’s release, and they are often played even today, as well as commonly sampled in modern mixes such as ‘Chalte chalte’, ‘Inhi logon ne’, ‘Thaade rahiyo’, ‘Chalo dildaar chalo’, ‘Mausam hai aashiqaana’, and many more. Naushad stepped in to compose the background music for the film.

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1971, Genre – Drama, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Kamal Amrohi, Director – Kamal Amrohi, Music Director – Ghulam Mohammed, Naushad, Cast - Ashok Kumar, Meena Kumari, Raj Kumar, Veena, Sapru, Kamal Kapoor, Vijayalaxmi, Jagdish Kanwal, Nadira, Meenakshi, Zebunissa, Pratima Devi

Sadhana in Waqt (1965)

Waqt was a landmark in many ways: it is a multi-starrer with four main heroes and two major heroines; it set a trend for showing the lifestyles of the super-rich; it is a ‘lost and found’ film, a storyline that became a favorite in the 1970s; and it has memorable songs.

A prosperous merchant, Lala Kedarnath (Balraj Sahni), believes nothing can disrupt his happy family life until an earthquake tears his world apart and he loses everything including his loved ones. He is on the verge of finding his eldest son but, hearing he has just escaped from an orphanage where he was beaten, Kedarnath kills the warden and goes to jail for twenty years. The eldest boy, Raja (Raaj Kumar), is raised by a criminal and becomes a professional thief, while the second son, Ravi (Sunil Dutt), is adopted by a rich couple and trains as a lawyer. They both live in Bombay, while the youngest, Vijay (Shashi Kapoor), looks after their mother in Delhi, where he falls in love with Renu (Sharmila Tagore), a rich college girl.

Raja and Ravi both love Meena (Sadhana) but Raja, finding a childhood picture of Ravi, realizes that he is his long lost brother and sacrifices his relationship with Meena. Vijay has moved to Bombay, where he is hired as a chauffeur by Renu. Ravi reproaches Renu

for having an affair with his driver, then Meena’s parents object to Ravi marrying their daughter when they do not know who his parents are.

Raja throws a party to announce the identity of Ravi’s parents. Although other members of the family bump into one another — such as Vijay and Kedarnath — no connections are made.

When Raja is framed in a murder, he hires Ravi as his lawyer. A courtroom drama ensues, in which Vijay appears as a witness; then his mother comes into court. Kedarnath recognizes her and is reunited with Vijay, after which Raja reveals that he and Ravi are his other two children. The family returns to open a shop, with the two future laughter-in-laws settled into the family.

The film is an example of an early ‘lost and found’. Although Waqt hows the family separated by an earthquake, probably referring to the Quetta earthquake of 1935, it requires only a little imagination to see its as a partition story, where the earthquake is a metaphor for a far greater human upheaval. The line of migration from Punjab to Bombay is the one followed by many in the Hindi film industry.

Waqt is justly famous for its whole new glamorous ‘look’ in clothing and lifestyle. While the outdoor locations were in Kashmir, Simla, Nainital, Bombay and Delhi, the film spares the viewer no detail of the lifestyle of the super-rich, who have motor boats, American cars, throw lavish parties and live in houses adorned with fountains, circular beds, sunken seating and grand pianos. This set the style for a whole ‘look’ for Hindi films, away from the drama of feudal riches to newly upwardly mobile social groups. The women are glamorous in every respect, displaying highly stylish outfits, diamond jewellery and elegant grooming. The men wear the tight suits that were fashionable at the time, while only the older generation appears in ‘traditional’ clothes.

Waqt has enduringly popular songs, composed by Ravi with lyrics by Sahir, including ‘Ai meri zohrajabeen’ (Manna Dey) (which Yash Chopra’s son Aditya includes in his debut film, Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge, as a love song for the older generation) and ‘Aage bhi jaane na tu’ (Asha Bhosle).

Waqt was the first colour film made by B. R. Films and established Yash Chopra as a major film-maker, a position he still holds nearly forty years later after directing films such as Dhool ka phool (1959), Daag (1970), Deewaar, Kabhi kabhie, Trishul, Silsila, Chandni, Lamhe, Dil to pagal hai and Veer-Zaara (2004), and producing other films, such as Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge – Rachel Dwyer

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1965, Genre – Drama, Country – India, Language – Urdu/Hindi, Producer – B.R. Films, Director – Yash Chopra, Music Director – Ravi, Cast – Sunil Dutt, Sadhana, Balraj Sahini, Achla Sachdev, Raj Kumar, Rehman, Sharmila Tagore, Shashi Kapoor, Shashikala