MANNA DEY (1919-2013)

                 The legend who was his own voice 

 

Irony was the constant refrain of Manna Dey’s life. A world happy to sway to jingles could not always appreciate the steeped-in-classicism kalaam of Manna Da. Not blessed with the rare yodelling skills of Kishore Kumar or the soaked-in-romance style of Mohammed Rafi, there were a few things Manna Dey could do which his contemporaries could not aspire to. He could whip up a Lagi chunari mein daag, or Aayo kahan se Ghanshyam with such ease that he made a mockery of all predictions of the songs being difficult or challenging. Music directors Shankar-Jaikishen, indeed Mohammed Rafi too, felt he was the best choice when it came to songs with classical leanings.

Manna Da though wanted to break the stereotype, ready at a moment’s notice to improvise, to innovate. He could dish out Aao twist karein too but the Hindi film world gave him only occasional opportunities to show his range, always keen to tap into his classical reservoir. In some ways, he remained an under-valued genius, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award notwithstanding. His voice was never associated with any hero, his name never doing the rounds of any music director’s camp for all songs of a movie; he charted his own path.

A man most humble who did his own grocery purchases, he, however, was not happy about being the voice of Mahmood in Padosan. The song, Ek chatur naar, a kind of a singing contest in which he shared the baton with Kishore Kumar, was filmed on Sunil Dutt and Mahmood with Manna Da’s voice being used for the comedian. It left him unimpressed and he had to be persuaded to allow the song to be used in the film. Yet the same Manna Da once refused to sing with Pandit Bhimsen Joshi out of reverence for Pandit ji. The song in question, Ketki gulab juhi had Bhimsen’s character losing to Manna Da’s character in the film Basant Bahar. So Manna Da lost to Kishore Kumar in Padosan and defeated Bhimsen Joshi a decade before that! Ketki gulab juhi, however, was the not the biggest hit from Basant Bahar. That honour went to Sur na saje kya gaoon main”, where again only Manna Da could have done justice to all the ebbs and crests of music. Sur na… was picturised on Bharat Bhushan, a fine case of Manna Da singing for the hero, otherwise though his voice continued to be used for non-heroes.

Another memorable case being Yaari hai imaan mera in Zanjeer, which was lip-synced by Pran, not the hero Amitabh Bachchan.

The ironies did not leave Manna Da there. Mukesh was generally regarded as the voice of RK Films. Yet Manna Da gave some of his best songs for Raj Kapoor in films like Chori Chori, Shree 420 and even Bobby. In Chori Chori he gave us superhits like Aaja sanam madhur chandni mein hum and Ye raat bheegi bheegi while Rafi had to make do with the now forgotten “All line clear”.

Born in 1919, he started as a music assistant in 1942. The following year he got his first whiff of public appreciation with songs of Ramrajya. It was, however, not until Upar gagan vishal in Mashaal (1950) that he began to be taken seriously as a solo singer. By the time he left youth, he was an accomplished performer, a diligent artiste who toiled endlessly yet never compromised on his music. In a delicious irony of life, Manna Da, who was never taken to be voice of any romantic hero of the era – the likes of Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor and Rajesh Khanna used Kishore Kumar and Rafi’s voice – managed to give us two ultimate romantic songs for people young, and those young at heart. His Pyar hua iqrar hua hai pyar se phir kyun darta hai dil from Shree 420 (1955) was used in an advertisement campaign to promote contraceptives some 40 years after it became a chartbuster.

If this song was an ode to love young and fearless, his number in Waqt was all about love that has withstood the test of tide and time. The song Ae meri Zohra Jabeen under the baton of music director Ravi, was a mischievous blend of seasoned love with innocent pranks with both Balraj Sahni and Achala Sachdev doing a wonderful job on the screen.

Little appreciated, but Manna Da was a constant factor in the films of V. Shantaram; his songs of Do Ankhen Barah Haath and Navrang have scarcely been forgotten.

His voice which could encapsulate almost all shades of life was used for patriotic as well as devotional songs. The irony could not have been greater – at one time Manna Da was ready to quit the country when an article by Rupayan Bhattacharya in a Kolkata daily compelled him to change his mind. And in the industry cine-goers hardly thought beyond Rafi or Mahendra Kapoor when it came to patriotic songs. Yet Manna Da gave us Ae mere pyare watan in Kabuliwala.

Similarly, he lent his voice to the ever soothing Tu pyar ka sagar hai, a song from Seema, which the faithful play in praise of the Almighty. His voice had the haunting quality of a companion left behind. It could also have a tinge of a friend extolling you to march on. The two examples being provided by songs of Safar and Shor, where he sang Nadiya chale chale re dhara and Jeevan chalne ka naam — the latter being one of the few songs he sang with Mahendra Kapoor. Interestingly, he sang more than 50 songs with Rafi and 100 songs each with Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle.

Memorable as his songs were in Hindi cinema, Manna Da, who, for all his accomplishments, lived a humble life, sang in many Indian languages — notably Bengali, Assamese, Gujrati and Malayalam. His non-film albums too made a mark in the market, Yeh Awaara Raatein being truly remarkable. In ‘live’ shows too, he was peerless. Always holding the audience captive with his mastery over the medium. For many years, he confined himself to his residence in Bangalore, venturing out but rarely. Old age did not allow him to grace Kolkata on the opening day of IPL-VI, which was a disappointment for all, notably for Manna Da too as he was a keen student of the game. He had deep interest in soccer as well, being among a handful of artistes in cinema whose interests went beyond movies. His departure leaves a vacuum nobody will dare attempt to fill. But as Manna Da himself sang Chalat musafir, it is time for the second innings of the journey called life. History might appreciate him better.

Courtesy-http://www.thehindu.com

Outtakes: Jean-Luc Godard / Srikanth Srinivasan

WHO is he?

Iconoclastic French filmmaker and writer with a formidable body of work consisting of over hundred short and feature films made on film, video and DV. Before his foray into filmmaking, Godard was a critic for the famous film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, alongside other film directors who would go on to form the French New Wave.

WHAT are his films about?

Themes

Godard’s working life could be divided roughly into four stages — the early, flamboyant and culturally-hip Nouvelle Vague films dealing with contemporary French youth life, the leftist agit-prop films he made with the Dziga-Vertov group, his return to the examination of the problems of life in a modern world and his essay films dealing with history, politics and art. However, all his films are about cinema itself — its achievements, its dangers and its possibilities.

Style

All of Godard’s films are formally experimental, taking a near-complete break from the tradition they were born in. They all deal with the problem of representation and the politics of image-making. The most startling technical and dramatic innovations of his early films are now part of mainstream pop culture. Though his later avant-garde pictures increasingly alienated the early champions of his cinema, they are now widely recognised as crucial to the progress of film as art.

WHY is he of interest?

One does not know where to begin or where to end when talking about Godard, for so vast is the range of his cinematic output and so drastic the shifts in the many phases of his filmmaking career, that it is hard for anyone to summarise them in a simple narrative. If a book about cinema of the second half of the 20th century is to be written, it is Godard, more than any other filmmaker, who deserves to be on its cover page.

WHERE to discover him?

Made piecewise during the years between 1988 and 1998, Histoire(s) du Cinéma is one of the most important and astounding achievements on film. Divided into eight chapters and running for over four hours, this dense and challenging essay work examines the history of 20th century through that of cinema and vice versa, producing a hypnotic work that is at once an anthology of the many histories of cinema, a political treatise and an autobiography that never ceases to surprise, delight, awe and provoke.

Courtesy- http://www.thehindu.com

Abused, not amused/ DEEPAK MAHAAN

Cinema Veteran film writers feel the current trend of on-screen violence and abusive language is largely unjustified — dramatically or morally.

 

Abuse is the new muse in Bollywood, what with every second filmmaker nowadays taking vicarious pleasure in inflicting a heavy dose of cruelty — visual and oral — upon our senses. So rapidly is the disease spreading that avid filmgoers are convinced that the day is not far off when films, like tobacco products, would come with a statutory warning about the content being dangerous for human consumption! And if cancer is a natural corollary of long term use of tobacco, it is inevitable that this onslaught of violence, nudity, abusive dialogues and lurid songs will fracture our social conscience beyond repair.

The purpose of art may be providing an enlightened vision but it is an idea alien to most Bollywood producers, barring a few, since they now treat cinema as cutthroat business rather than a passion. Unlike Bimal Roy, Mehboob Khan, Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Asit Sen and Nitin Bose whose films washed the ‘dirt’ from our souls, most writers and directors today seem in a hurry to be the devil’s advocate to raise cheap money. Else, what explains the overriding emphasis on abusive language and double entendre, sleaze and mindless vitriol in films like “Delhi Belly”, “Gangs of Wasseypur”, “Pyar Ka Panchnama”, “The Dirty Picture” or “Grand Masti” (to name a few) instead of a poignant human story?

Noted film writer Kamlesh Pandey opines such creations as “arrogance of filmmaking with no concern about a movie being a public art with responsibility to move audiences with good storytelling”. Despite penning outstanding films like “Rang De Basanti”, “Beta”, “Tezaab” and “Saudagar”, Pandey is no moralistic rabble rouser and can accept raw, abusive dialogue provided it is part of a character’s daily life and serves the story. While one may not agree with all the ‘liberties’ taken by Shekhar Kapur in “Bandit Queen” (in the name of real life depiction), one understands Pandey’s reference to the scene where “child Phoolan Devi’s use of an abuse actually defines her character instead of titillating the audience”. But these have to be rare exceptions as “abusive language or an item song in the name of reality” are abuse of the most powerful medium of modern times — apart from glamorising of indecency.

Like the myth that Lata Mangeshkar has sung the highest number of songs in the world and Shah Rukh Khan was the first Bollywood hero to depict a negative role, many critics perpetuate the lie that offensive dialogues are necessary to portray real-life issues in films. However, this argument doesn’t hold water for Sagar Sarhadi who asks if films like “Mujhe Jeeno Do”, “Gunga Jamuna”, “Mother India” or “Bazaar” did not tackle real-life problems of the Indian heartland?

Crediting such filmmakers as “powerful communicators with a great sense of social responsibility”, the star writer-director explains, “These and many earlier films not only depicted reality but also made strong socio-political comments” without resorting to indecent language even though most characters were based on real people who spoke abusively in their natural environments. Writer of some of the finest romances like “Kabhi-Kabhie”, “Silsila”, “Chandni” and “Bazaar” to list a few, Sarhadi’s language in the personal domain is sprinkled with a fair dose of rustic abuse, but he affirms “it cannot be a justification to put abusive dialogues on screen”.

Sarhadi emphasises a writer or director’s job is to provide a deeper insight or understanding of an issue rather than glorifying and ornamenting outward appearances of actors and props as most films do these days. In a certain sense, Sarhadi is not off the mark. With entertainment trading on ‘emotional violence’ (abusive dialogues, pelvic thrusts and suggestive lyrics too are forms of aggression), producers depict ‘evil’ with great relish.

This is a disturbing trend on television too, wherein murder is a nightly fare for family audiences in the garb of information, via serials like “Crime Patrol” and “Shaitaan”. American psychologists have long blamed its cinema and television industry’s graphic accounts of ‘violence’ for the country’s high percentage of mental illnesses, and we can only wonder where Indian citizens would end up if this trend continues unabated on our screens. No wonder the highly respected actor Tom Hanks recently slammed glorification of violence in Hollywood movies, but we have to wait and see if any Bollywood stalwart would object to this blatant ‘abuse’ of screen and senses!

Prominent writer Javed Siddiqui has over 50 film screen works to his credit and is nauseated by “abuse camouflaged in the name of a script’s demand”. A respected word weaver who has given a large number of thought provoking dramas and wide variety of films from “Taal” to “Chakra” and “Umrao Jaan” to “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge”, Siddiqui believes indecent language and senseless violence is on the rise due to “lack of skills and a noble vision to communicate a story”.

Anguished by the apathy of irresponsible filmmakers’ towards society’s well being, Siddiqui opines abusive films will lead to “erosion of moral values that’ll harm several generations including their own children” and regret thereafter will be of no use. He rues many fine writers and directors are “selling their souls for bucks” endangering everyone’s future.

It is a serious issue that administrators and educationists must seriously reflect upon since films, television, internet and computer games are all brainwashing children and adults alike with glorification of abuse, violence and sex. According to research by late Dr. David R Hawkins, a mental processes specialist, every onslaught of ‘abuse’ damages the human mind and nervous system leading to depression and physical weaknesses. Hawkins’ far reaching findings have established how manic depression is a growing menace in America because of years of glamorous depiction of violence in sex and speech.

Surely we must take heed from other’s mistakes, and if we don’t, probably it’ll be too late to avert a disaster of monstrous proportions!

Courtesy- http://www.thehindu.com

Outtakes: G. Aravindan- Srikanth Srinivasan

WHO is he?

Kerala-born film and theatre director, screenwriter and music composer who made over 15 feature-length fictional and documentary works during the seventies and the eighties. Aravindan was a noted cartoonist before his foray into theatre and cinema. Chidambaram (1985) fetched him the National Award for Best Feature Film.

WHAT are his films about?

Themes

Aravindan’s films certainly have a leftist political bent, but they do not trade philosophical curiosity for ideological commitment or formal experimentation for polemics. He is more often than not content with playing the detached but astute observer — no doubt a satirist trait that harks back to his cartoonist days — chronicling the foibles and fallibility of the people he depicts. Some of the major themes in his body of work are the construction and perpetuation of myths in a society, the persistence of the spiritual and the magical in everyday life and the transformative power of class guilt.

Style

Aravindan was a singular Indian filmmaker in how he was almost alone in working entirely in the poetic mode. The best of Aravindan’s cinema is free from the theatrical tradition of performance and mise en scene and the literary tradition of narrative and character psychology. These films rightly reinforce the idea of film as a medium of surfaces by emphasising the physical and material aspects of the world we see rather than its ethereal and idealist dimensions. Aravindan’s career as a cartoonist had a deep influence in his visual sensibility, with his flat and balanced compositions, regularly set against the horizon.

WHY is he of interest?

To classify him as a member of the relatively dogmatic Parallel Cinema — as has been widely the case — is in itself a disservice to the philosophical and aesthetic foundation of his cinema. Arguably the greatest filmmaker the country has produced, Aravindan made films that opened the doors to unexplored expanses of the filmic medium — doors that, rather unfortunately, have rarely been used since.

WHERE to discover him?

Esthappan (1980) is presented as a series of testimonies — reverential and derogatory — by the members of a fisherman community about the eponymous, mysterious wanderer and his alleged supernatural powers. A magnificent embodiment of Marx’s theory of religion, Esthappan is a work that is at once prophetic and atheistic, an intelligent portrait that both understands the economic roots of religion and yet refuses to reduce to a convenient theory. 

Courtesy- http://www.thehindu.com

प्यार वो बीज है / गुलज़ार

प्यार कभी इकतरफ़ा होता है; न होगा
दो रूहों के मिलन की जुड़वां पैदाईश है ये
प्यार अकेला नहीं जी सकता
जीता है तो दो लोगों में
मरता है तो दो मरते हैं

प्यार इक बहता दरिया है
झील नहीं कि जिसको किनारे बाँध के बैठे रहते हैं
सागर भी नहीं कि जिसका किनारा नहीं होता
बस दरिया है और बह जाता है.

दरिया जैसे चढ़ जाता है ढल जाता है
चढ़ना ढलना प्यार में वो सब होता है
पानी की आदत है उपर से नीचे की जानिब बहना
नीचे से फिर भाग के सूरत उपर उठना
बादल बन आकाश में बहना
कांपने लगता है जब तेज़ हवाएँ छेड़े
बूँद-बूँद बरस जाता है.

प्यार एक ज़िस्म के साज़ पर बजती गूँज नहीं है
न मन्दिर की आरती है न पूजा है
प्यार नफा है न लालच है
न कोई लाभ न हानि कोई
प्यार हेलान हैं न एहसान है.

न कोई जंग की जीत है ये
न ये हुनर है न ये इनाम है
न रिवाज कोई न रीत है ये
ये रहम नहीं ये दान नहीं
न बीज नहीं कोई जो बेच सकें.

खुशबू है मगर ये खुशबू की पहचान नहीं
दर्द, दिलासे, शक़, विश्वास, जुनूं,
और होशो हवास के इक अहसास के कोख से पैदा हुआ
इक रिश्ता है ये
यह सम्बन्ध है दुनियारों का,
दुरमाओं का, पहचानों का
पैदा होता है, बढ़ता है ये, बूढा होता नहीं
मिटटी में पले इक दर्द की ठंढी धूप तले
जड़ और तल की एक फसल
कटती है मगर ये फटती नहीं.

मट्टी और पानी और हवा कुछ रौशनी
और तारीकी को छोड़
जब बीज की आँख में झांकते हैं
तब पौधा गर्दन ऊँची करके
मुंह नाक नज़र दिखलाता है.

पौधे के पत्ते-पत्ते पर
कुछ प्रश्न भी है कुछ उत्तर भी
किस मिट्टी की कोख़ से हो तुम
किस मौसम ने पाला पोसा
औ' सूरज का छिड़काव किया.

किस सिम्त गयी साखें उसकी
कुछ पत्तों के चेहरे उपर हैं
आकाश के ज़ानिब तकते हैं
कुछ लटके हुए ग़मगीन मगर
शाखों के रगों से बहते हुए
पानी से जुड़े मट्टी के तले
एक बीज से आकर पूछते हैं.

हम तुम तो नहीं
पर पूछना है तुम हमसे हो या हम तुमसे
प्यार अगर वो बीज है तो
इक प्रश्न भी है इक उत्तर भी.

Outtakes: Lav Diaz/ Srikanth Srinivasan

WHO is he?

Filipino filmmaker, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor, cinematographer, poet, playwright and composer who has made 16 feature films since his debut in 1998. To count his movies as feature-length films would be grossly undervaluing his artistic output, given that most of these works have a runtime of several hours. The film that brought him onto the international film scene in a big way, Evolution Of A Filipino Family (2004), runs for almost eleven hours!

WHAT are his films about?

Themes

Diaz’s films must rank among the most politically committed today. They have regularly criticised Ferdinand Marcos’ rule of the Philippines, hitting out against his corrupt governance and high handed-methods. The figure of the artist plays a major role in these films, frequently going against the establishment with heart-wrenching consequences. They have also dealt with the life of migrant Filipinos in the United States and often combine mythical elements and political commentary.

Style

Most of Diaz’s films are shot in black and white — which has both a thematic and stylistic justification — with digital cameras and direct sound. They employ very long shots, often framing characters from a distance amidst landscapes and in deep space. Scenes primarily consist of long stretches of dead time — speechless duration in which mood and atmosphere replace plot and psychological explanation. However, there are also scenes with extended amount of dialogue and poetry with explicit political criticism and polemic.

WHY is he of interest?

One of the most outspoken and artless filmmakers working today, Diaz's cinema is something of a reminder of an era in which commitment and political belief were still considered virtues of good art. In an age where sincere idealism is fodder for parody and films running for more than three hours are looked upon with suspicion, Diaz’s cinema comes across as both anachronistic and nonconformist. In a way, their very existence in their current form is both a registration of protest and a testament of hope.

WHERE to discover him?

Flamboyant, self-referential and incisive, Evolution Of A Filipino Family combines various styles of filmmaking such as talking-head interviews, newsreels and epic narration and examines the most familiar of Diaz’s themes such as the art-commerce dichotomy, the tragic persistence of past and the necessity of resistance — political and artistic — in a manner that blurs the line between fiction and reality.

Courtesy- The Hindu

Outtakes: Roman Polanski/ Srikanth Srinivasan

 

WHO is he?

Polish-born film director, producer, actor and scenarist who has made over 20 feature films and several short films since the late Fifties. Polanski’s working career has spanned diverse genres, geographies and ideological climates and his personal life riddled with numerous grave controversies. He won the top prizes at the Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals respectively for Cul-de-sac (1966) and The Pianist (2002) and took the Academy Award for Direction for the latter film.

WHAT are his films about?

Themes

Polanski’s early short films were absurdist lampoons of Polish communism, while his subsequent films in England — many of them belonging to the horror genre — were subversive critiques of conventional notions about masculinity, psychological normalcy and moral righteousness. The most persistent idea that pervades his body of work is that of banality of evil. The question of what it takes for Good to cross over to Evil is one that is at the heart of these films and which, one imagines, has its roots in Polanski’s grappling with the fact of the Holocaust, an event that marked a profound personal loss for him.

Style

Polanski, like Brian de Palma, was influenced by Alfred Hitchcock and his films demonstrate a clear-eyed mastery over the techniques that Hitchcock pioneered or refined: point-of-view shots, emphasis on character subjectivity, claustrophobic use of interior locations and keen eye for material objects of a scene. He additionally uses deep space compositions, pan shots that survey the environment a character inhabits and a sufficiently restrained soundtrack that complements the image instead of supplanting it.

WHY is he of interest?

It would be quite unfortunate if Polanski is to be remembered primarily by the extraordinary events surrounding his personal life (though they are certainly vital elements). One of the foremost cinematic modernists to have worked in the popular format, Polanski has persistently, through his work, engaged with ideas most pertinent to modern life and his cinema has influenced scores of important filmmakers from the newer generation.

 

WHERE to discover him?

Polanski’s second feature and the first he made in England, Repulsion (1965) charts the gradual disintegration of Carol (a perfectly cast Catherine Deneuve), a foreigner living in a modest apartment in London. A minimalist masterwork and a watershed for horror cinema, the film transcends simple genre ambitions and unfolds as a critique of social hegemony and religious dogmatism.

Courtesy- The Hindu