Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Conversing Cinema, a podcast about films from India and occasionally beyond. Your co -hosts are Deepak Mahan and me, Julian Cauldry.
Speaker: Welcome to conversing cinema. This is episode two and very excited about this episode because we're talking about an artist who I've been very excited to learn more about over the past couple of weeks. We did mention Gurudat in our last episode a little bit in the context of his friendship with Devanand. This episode we're going to deep dive into his life, his work and really examine
Speaker: why he's been such an enduring figure in Indian cinema and the impact of his artistry both now and at the time of the release of his films. First though, I thought we could start with a little bit of background on his career and how he came to be in the film industry in the first place because it wasn't necessarily a very smooth ride for him into the industry. Deepak, perhaps you could talk a little bit about how he got started.
Speaker: child of Vasanti and Shri Shankara of Padukune. And just because he was born on a Thursday, which is known as Guruar, Thursday is supposed to be an auspicious day. He was named as Guru Dutt. And subsequently his father who was working in a clerical capacity in Bama Shell, he moved away to Calcutta. The boy had a very disturbed childhood because the mother and his father did not get on very well.
Speaker: The marriage was just pulling on but it was the influence of one of his uncles, B .B. Bennigal, who was there in Calcutta, who used to do a lot of work for posters and taking stills for various films. He gave him introduction to not just films, he took him to various cinema halls and that really fascinated this young child.
Speaker: he made him look through his camera when he was shooting stills and Benegal really loved him and so spent a lot of money taking him around so it was the influence of Bibi Benegal and he was so fascinated by Uday Shankar the great dance master that he auditioned for him and he was selected by Uday Shankar to join his dance academy in Almora up in the Himalayas
Speaker: dance academy gave him a great opportunity to express himself and they say that though he was a tongue -tied boy he was very expressive in terms of delineating stories or various kinds of ways in which he would analyze movements and there was a particular swan song which he used to always do which really fascinated him. Uday Shankar and his troupe came down to Mumbai
Speaker: and they gave a performance there. And that performance was his first direct contact with the public. That, I think, was the turning point in his life. Later on, because the dance academy stopped functioning, he had to look around and during that time, Padukone family moved over to Mumbai. But it was Bibi Benakil, his uncle, who took him to Puna. In the last podcast, we had talked about a person called Bhavuvai Pai who had given the break to Devanand.
Speaker: He was a very senior executive in Prabhat Film Company at Pune. And so Benegal introduced him to Babubai Pai and Babubai Pai employed Gurudat as a choreographer and it was the first film of Devanand and they became friends.
Speaker: as we all know Devanand gave him his first break as a director.
Speaker: elements that you've mentioned are very strongly present in his films, these ideas of an audience and what it means to have an audience and how they respond, how they see you. The choreography is something that we definitely need to talk about when we start to look at some of his key films, because I think that his song sequences are very famous, but as I was watching his movies, it struck me that a sense of choreography informs almost every aspect of his filmmaking, not just
Speaker: elements with music or song. So we'll come back to that. So from what you're saying, it was a bit of a bumpy ride to get started. But then he started to experience quite significant success in the industry. So talk about some of those early successes that he had. As Guru Dutt was always struggling, moving from studio to studio, looking for work. There was a gentleman called Amiya Chakravarthy, who's also been a very, very profound influence on a lot of
Speaker: filmmakers and made some wonderful films like Pattita, Seema, Aamir Chakravarti took him up as one of his assistants. And while he was working, Aamir Chakravarti took Devanand in Pattita as his hero. Subsequently, Devanand with his two brothers formed a film company called Navketan.
Speaker: He had decided to make films and capitalise on the success of Devananda as a star of the family and he was in a position to give Gurudak a chance as a director.
Speaker: Gurudat narrated to him one script which Devanand liked immensely. Bazi was a breezy entertainer. It was one of the first ones which actually gave Dev a particular kind of a style of his own and established him as a person who was fit for a particular genre of new urban India. And I think
Speaker: The credit for that goes to Gurdak. Bazi was a success and Bazi in fact you can imagine that how much he had struggled and how his family was suffering the pangs of poverty that the success of Bazi actually got Gurdak family the first ceiling fan. That in itself is I think a metaphor to look at as to how much he had struggled all those years. Bazi paved the way and then he made the second directorial attempt
Speaker: in Jhaal which was also moderate success and then he went in for Paaz which was more about piracy on the high seas which of course the song sequences and various other things were the typical Gurudat style that it had fluidity of movement in very small camera frames he could make
Speaker: the characters move and the camera move in such a way that you never felt that actually this whole song had been shot in a constructed space. And that I think is the hallmark of his cinematic mirror. I think that's his creation. His camera movements are simple yet they are very weighty in terms of the visuals that they present. And I think it's very much visible. The first three films I think were the building blocks for Gurdak.
Speaker: But it was ultimately Aarpaar which kind of established him as a man who knew what he was speaking about and a man who knew what he had to do. I'll just give you one example. Aarpaar has one particular song, Sun Sun Sun Zalima. Now this is a beautiful song sung by Gita Dutt who was to be his
Speaker: future wife, at that time she was Geetha Roy and Raffi Saad. A composer is Opinayan and the lyrics were written by Majus Sultanpari. When you see that particular frame,
Speaker: What I am talking about is the constricted space. It's a very small garage in which there is a car and Gurudat as per his cameraman and great friend, Vee Murthy. The entire space he just saw, just looked at it and decided and Vee Murthy said that he was so spontaneous that once he got his angle, thereafter he knew how to build that entire movement. And if you see that song,
Speaker: you realize how in a very small constricted space of one car the manner in which he uses the sides of the car the manner in which the camera moves through the window panes as well as the doors of the car
Speaker: very skillfully as a choreographer he makes himself as well as the heroine Shama get onto the bonnet of the car and from the bonnet to the roof and then they climb down and so in a very small constricted space he makes the movement so fluid and the whole song the tempo of the song is so vivacious yet that space does not constrict that tempo and you really enjoy that song so I think from that time onwards he was in complete control
Speaker: Madhguru Sultan Puri also said it one place, Guru Dutt was so smart, he was extremely
Speaker: conscious of the likings of the people and that's why he would always go and watch his films the second or the third show inside the picture halls and he would gauge the reactions of the audiences and immediately sometimes even put in a few scenes or cut out a few scenes depending upon what he felt the audiences would really react to. So in this context there was a particular song
Speaker: where Madhguru Sultan Puri's statement that Guru Dutt knew that the grammar of the film, the grammar of the cinema is much different from the grammar of the spoken word. Madhguru Sultan Puri had put it in was Pyar Mujko Tujse Ho Gya means me and you. He made it into we which he said rhymes better and subsequently when Madhguru objected he said forget about the grammar people are going to listen it through the ears and if they
Speaker: Their ears are tickled and it appeals. The melody is good. Forget about it. They're not going to dissect the grammar. So, this is how Guru Dutt was very, very insightful about what the audiences wanted and how he should make films to hold their attention. The topic of how he moves his camera
Speaker: I'm sure if they haven't already been written, many books could be written just on that topic. Because one of the things that's really striking about his filmmaking for me is how intentional and how loaded, you know, loaded with meaning his camera movements are. Not just during choreographed moments, but at all points during his film. And I'd love to unpack that a little bit with you and just understand how some of those
Speaker: more technical aspects of his filmmaking were received and how influential they were. I think this idea of his relationship with the audience seems to be pervasive thematically through his films as well. And you could argue that a film like Yasa, for example, is just about that, in some respects. But it also, I think, infuses some of his other films as well, this consciousness of who he's speaking to as an artist and how they're receiving his work and whether or not they're pleased, how that affects him as an artist,
Speaker: All these ideas, I think, he was clearly very interested in exploring that particular terrain. One of the things that struck me as I was watching some of his films that he directed and acted in is that he has, it seemed to me, he has a very specific screen persona, this kind of slightly
Speaker: I would describe that persona as a man who's just puzzled and ultimately is defeated by life, but not in a depressing way. He has this kind of, I don't think he's a particularly expressive actor, but he has an ability to convey this almost continuous sense of surprise and disappointment at what life is doing to him.
Speaker: in a way that really makes you feel for his characters. He generates this incredible sense of empathy, I think, within the viewer. How did that particular persona, which seems consistent across many of his films, how did that start to emerge when we're talking about him as a performer? I think lots of great artists kind of weave their personal experiences and come out with
Speaker: extraordinary eternal statements about life and I think greater the artist, greater the personalization and in the case of Guru Dutt, this is absolutely true. It does seem to me that the period that he, the insecurities that he saw earlier on in life and also the fact that he was basically swinging from this end to that end with no purpose in life until he actually moved away to
Speaker: dance academy at Almora and then again that Almora dance academy suddenly failing and he finding himself totally in abyss made him introspect too much about life and he somehow the other understood the transience of life much better than most writers and most film directors and I think this was something which haunted him very much and also the struggle after
Speaker: Poona from Prabhat Vell to various other places and not getting the recognition and struggling within himself to give an expression to his own ideas, to his own experiences. I would not say sense of defeat, but a sense of struggle which really troubled him. And he felt that this effort to give expression to his creativity was a lot of it constructed by the forces of the market.
Speaker: and this was a kind of a paradox with which he always played and that is why I think he always looked around for appreciation he always looked around for applause and that is why his screen persona actually is just a kind of an extension of his own self in his own films you see he's done very few films outside the Gurudad banner and the few films that he's done outside he's been
Speaker: reasonably tolerable and acceptable. But when it comes to his own films, because the kind of films that he is making, the kind of stories that he is etching out on the big screen, they are nothing but personas of the real Gurudad. Piazza was written almost around the time when he was actually struggling and it was called kashmukash, that means struggle.
Speaker: and subsequently he then titled it as Pyaasa later on. He wanted to actually make Pyaasa much before Arpaar and Mr. and Mrs. 55 and all, but some of the Sainar counselors like V .Murti and others, they prevailed upon him that you should first be successful. So if you have money and if you have success behind you, you'll be able to do much better job and that's what held him on. So you can see that Vijay in Pyaasa is just an extension of that Gurudat. In Pyaasa,
Speaker: The actual persona of the hero is a poet. But the struggles are almost similar to Guru Das. The poet is struggling to get his poems out into the market, does not get the support from the publishers. Similarly, Guru Das also struggled, went from door to door, but people were not ready to back him up.
Speaker: It was only of course after Devanand backed him up that he got the break. But he was always conscious that the hit or the flop, these swings of time, they really reflected on his persona in real life. He was a very introspective man, very deep down serious and conscious about his commitment to life, commitment to society. And those were kind of things that he always portrayed. And I think every film that he made and where he himself acted,
Speaker: the persona of the real life just got extended onto the persona of the screen life. That certainly was part of the fascination for me while I was watching his movies because you have this I certainly had a really a real sense as I was watching that there was something almost uncomfortably personal about his films particularly I mean Piazza is a good example and it's interesting
Speaker: to reflect on what you were saying about his need for audience approval because the Vijay character in Piazza is in that context almost like his rejection of his own character in the sense that Vijay does reject the audience at the conclusion of that film and with great strength and a great personal cost and perhaps it's something that he wishes he could have done in real life but wasn't able to. It's kind of a fascinating thing to think about in the context of who he was really.
Speaker: Yes, if you look at the manner in which Bhuji rejects the audience's applause, it's like Guru Dutt deriding the audiences for the manner in which they do not appreciate the creativity, but are basically applauding only the success. So in a way, that's a paradox. And again, you can see this kind of a paradox can only be in a thinking man. So he did have a series of
Speaker: hit films in the lead up to Piazza and perhaps that enabled him to do much more deeply personal projects. Talk a little bit about that string of hits that he has.
Speaker: was always a quest for perfection and that is why he started many projects and sometimes even shot two three reels or four reels shot for two three months and then completely rejected that because he was completely dissatisfied with his work said in one place I am not dissatisfied with life I am dissatisfied within myself with my own self that sums up that
Speaker: He was not very much enamored by the success in a manner that he didn't want money. What he wanted was the freedom to create and that is why once ARPA came which of course established him
Speaker: somebody who knew what he had to do, the manner in which he made Mr. and Mrs. 55. Now Mr. and Mrs. 55 again is something of a satirical comedy trying to emphasize that the various kinds of Western influences are bad for the morality of the Indians. Through that satirical comedy he was able to make certain social comments.
Speaker: which in humorous manner, he pointed out flaws in the society of which he was very conscious. After Mr. and Mrs. 55, he had a very good team of people like V. Murthy, who was his cameraman. He had a very good production controller, Guru Swami. Then he had friends like Raman and Johnny Walker, who were very good artists. Johnny Walker was discovered by him and he gave them
Speaker: rolls in probably every film except for one or two. Similarly, he had great relationships with S .D. Barman and Sahir and Majeru Sultan Puri and Opinayan and all. And of course, his wife, he fell in love during Bazi itself and they got married and she became from Gita Roy to Gita Dutt. Just goes to show that he was such a committed filmmaker that once he became successful, he wanted others to also under him flourish. And one of those people who flourished under him was Raj Khosla and he gave him the chance
Speaker: in CID and CID is the first film where Vaida Rehman was discovered, discovered by Guru Dutt of course from a Southern film but he asked Raj Kursla was directing that film of Devanand and she got a very small part and subsequently in the very next film he took her for Piazza. In a way he saw the cinematic success as a tool to become free and make his kind of own films and that is why then he fully went in
Speaker: to produce a film like Piazza, which was of course a great spectacle later on. But when he was making, everybody was sure that he was making a film which was too dark, might go over the head of the people and may not be a success. He purposely took certain chances and lived his life on his own terms.
Speaker: I can understand how people might have thought that about Piazza as he was making it because it is a film for me that inhabits very uncomfortable terrain in terms of romantic relationships. He seems very interested in very unconventional romantic relationships, often several relationships at the same time as well, which is kind of fascinating. He also seems obsessed with certain aspects of life in Kolkata, particularly the
Speaker: the seedier side, and I understand that he went to great lengths to recreate on sound stages some of those locations that he must have remembered from when he was younger. So there are clearly some very interesting obsessions that he's exploring very deeply in a film like Gaza that I suppose at the time were not things that were commonly explored in popular cinema, or even now actually. I mean, they're quite daring topics.
Speaker: I think it's a very daring topic. A poet who's failed to impress the publishers and who then becomes an overnight success and people think that he's dead, they glorify him and subsequently when they come to realize that he's there and they want to put him on a pedestal, he realizes the futility of fame and money and glory and rejects all that.
Speaker: Now that I think in itself is a very scary subject to handle in print itself but to then portray it on screen and portray it like a great poetic philosophy I think hatched off to him. Absolutely and it's a very uncompromising film. I found it quite confronting thematically and emotionally. I think it's also a wonderful strategy to have
Speaker: the character of the prostitutes, and prostitutes are canonically known for costume and for putting on fake appearances, for having that character be the only character that actually understands his art in the whole film. So there's a wonderful irony of that. You put it very beautifully, yes, absolutely. That's his greatness, I think, the manner in which he portrays the society and he breaks it down
Speaker: And the only virtuous character, if you look around, are the two people, Massion and the prostitute. And both are actually products of the filthy side of society. But they are actually the most redeeming factors in that entire film. And they stand up in their humanism, in their honesty, integrity, much better than all those people
Speaker: who are wealthy and were educated but who actually are very dark inside their souls. Absolutely and the other interesting thing about the way
Speaker: prostitution or the prostitute character is portrayed in that film is she's not the prostitute with the heart of goal at all. The first time we meet her, she's seducing him, applying all of her skills to try and get him to pay money. And as soon as she realizes that he doesn't have any money, she completely turns on him. I mean, she's a pragmatist as a character and full of agency, which is something that I really enjoyed watching. That's realism.
Speaker: because she is ultimately trying to satiate her own hunger and not hunger in the sense of sexual hunger but she wants to fill up her stomach and earn her daily livelihood and that's what she is looking for a customer but once she realizes this is the poet whom she has been reading and whom she has adored
Speaker: There is a marked change in her character and that is why you will see that later on when there is a kind of a love song which is there where she is yearning for a union with him and the ball singer down below is singing a very sacred bhajan.
Speaker: the conflict between that song and this woman's yearning earlier she is actually pining to get him and make him sleep with her but here she wants to go and embrace him and yet because she loves him so truly so spiritually
Speaker: that now the boundaries of the flesh have actually disappeared and even though the song suggests a kind of a consummation of the soul and the body yet she is afraid distinctly standing apart he is having his back to her yet
Speaker: there is a union of souls and that is very beautifully brought out I think by the director and I think this is where Gurudat was an extraordinary political director I would say that he could actually make metaphors speak to you and make you understand a very very difficult skill to master but he could deliver deliver it with great ease
Speaker: So we must talk about his technique, the formal qualities of his filmmaking, because as much as we've been dissecting his films thematically, and the thing that first struck me as I started watching his films was actually his technique as a director, for a few reasons actually. The first is, and going back to the point you made about his perfectionism, it is inescapable as you watch his films, how perfectly each of his frames is composed. It's quite astonishing.
Speaker: And it immediately struck me with how much rigor and precision he's composed his frame. And it's not just a matter of how he's placed his characters, but he uses his environment, his characters move in and out of the environment that he constructs in the most sensual, interesting way. And the element that he has on top of that is movement of camera, which we touched on before,
Speaker: What I found with his filmmaking is that he moves his camera in a way that I can only describe as utterly intentional. I never felt like he was creating a camera move for any kind of cheap effect or just because it was cool or anything like that as a lot of filmmakers would give into that temptation.
Speaker: With him, I always feel like his camera movements are absolutely loaded with meaning, with metaphor. He's really saying something each time he makes a decision to change his camera position. And to the point where his filmmaking is so technically dense, it's actually really hard to take it in, in one viewing. I think they're films that absolutely demand very close inspection on a technical level. Understanding how he has constructed his frames and how those frames are very dynamic as he moves his camera.
Speaker: I don't have the context, the historical context that you do and I was curious as I was watching these films to know how influential he was as a director at a technical level. At that particular point of time filmmaking in India was just evolving. There are certain people who come in a particular era and they are like the doyens who establish certain rules who become
Speaker: Pillars on which the rest of the aesthetics get established. And I think, Gurudet was one of the first filmmakers in India who understood that movement is the fulcrum of filmmaking. One. And two, that movement must resonate with a certain sense of purpose. And three, the visual on screen should be interesting.
Speaker: Now, I must clear this out for most of the listeners. What happens is, many a time, let's take a film of Yash Chopra and a film of Guru Dutt. In a Yash Chopra film,
Speaker: The breeze is perfect. The Switzerland Valley is green. The chiffon of the girl, everything in sync with that color. And then she comes, moves and glides into the hands of the hero. Everything is way perfect, but then it is too synthetic.
Speaker: many of these films are very very highly talked of but let me tell you some of the romantic scenes that have been shot in the 90s and especially these days they're so synthetic that you feel as if everything is a kind of a very very concentrated effort and there is nothing like a sense of spontaneity to it on the other hand this camera moves with a certain purpose
Speaker: What happens with that camera is that the environment influences and is part of that story. It is not a picture postcard. You see there is a difference between a photograph and a painting. A photograph is a record of a particular situation. It's just a carbon copy.
Speaker: But a painting is an inspired creation of that particular influence that moves up. Now, I think that is the difference between camera movement in Switzerland of a song sequence and a black and white sequence of Kurudan. I did talk about Son Son Zalema.
Speaker: how he moves that camera is very deliberate yet it makes you feel the spontaneity and the teasing of the lovers in between the tiff that is going on very clearly similarly in piazza every time that he moves the camera or every time the angle is seen it is to perfection why because he has thought about exactly
Speaker: what he wants to convey. Let's talk about that particular scene where he goes up to a tap, he is hungry, his throat is parched, he is actually sweating and the moment he turns it on there is no water. From that angle he sees the girl whom he had loved in college.
Speaker: and she's stepping out of the car. Now, this kind of a contrast between a man whose clothes are tattered and torn, who's actually totally disheveled in penury, wanting a drop of water, the man in which he shows that contrast with the girl who's actually ditched him for money is where the title of Piazza, the thirsty person, absolutely gets embedded in the mind of a viewer.
Speaker: This is, I think, his beauty. The manner in which he moves his camera in the song, I think it's the ultimate philosophy of life. Like, what if you get the world? Nothing. It doesn't make one bit of difference to your life. I think I was one of the first ones in India to point out that public is there in the auditorium. And he sees what kind of treachery is going on. And the manner in which all those people who had rejected him are now paying
Speaker: growing tributes to him because they think that he is dead. He comes in, he stands in the doorway, the manner in which he uses that backlight, projection, the shade, the silences that he creates and then the gradual roll of the first line.
Speaker: And the manner in which he stands, he is like Christ on the cross. I think this is nothing but cinematic metaphor of absolute brilliance. Only a man who's immensely involved in his work, who is introspective and reflected very deeply, only a man like Gurudag can then conjure a scene like this. When it comes on the screen,
Speaker: it is reality in I think the most inspired form his scenes actually make an impact like a good melody that just goes down through your ears and trickles down into your heart and then just rests in your soul and gradually draws upon you and you kind of reflect and plays in your mind for a very very long time and you keep on humming I think his cinema is like that it just draws upon you
Speaker: you know you imbibe it and it just keeps on coming back to you again and again and as you reflect and as you marvel you see newer pictures, newer inspirations. I think that's the hallmark of a genius. I completely agree and it's as you were talking I was just reflecting on the degree to which he's willing to humiliate himself in his movies.
Speaker: in order to play out the themes that he's interested in. I mean, the lead character in Piazza just goes through a series of humiliations until he rejects the world, gains a great deal of dignity in the process, but it's a very difficult film to watch, actually. And so is Kaga's Keful. Well, absolutely. So let's talk about this movie. I understand that it was quite a big flop on its release, which is mystifying to me because I loved it. Well, in fact, today,
Speaker: It is supposed to be deemed as a classic by almost all the great reviewers and critics of modern cinema and some of the greatest filmmakers have hailed it. But unfortunately at that particular moment of time it just failed because it was too ahead of its time. But again the story
Speaker: and the manner of delineation is almost as if the real life gurdat and his life is unfolding on the screen in kagas ke pool. So this is the film where I really wondered where the real person stopped and the character started. I felt while I was watching this film that
Speaker: he was speaking from such an intensely personal place. I thought perhaps the film was just entirely autobiographical. That's certainly the effect it had on me as a viewer. This film struck me for a number of reasons. And again, the first was technique. I understand it was the first Indian film to be shot in cinemascope. Given that, it is incredible to me how he uses that format.
Speaker: There's no sense at all that he's experimenting or feeling his way with the wider aspect ratio. I mean, he absolutely uses it to the maximum, I think from the very first shot. What's your feeling about this film in particular? How do you relate to it? I think in a certain way, it becoming a commercial disaster did not hamper his filmmaking, but it did hamper him from
Speaker: not directing any other film than in future which I think is a loss of the synagogues not of Gurudan. Had this film been appreciated and if people would have understood the layers and layers of metaphors they would have understood what a great master was unfolding a story. Many people including me do feel that it certainly draws upon from his own life
Speaker: certainly has intake from his personal experiences and personal life as a producer, director, actor, who was at that time really hailed as a genius and was also a hugely commercial successful producer, director. But on another level, I really feel it is like a film that should be seen again and again. And when you see it again and again, you again marvel at how this man could come up
Speaker: mundane things are depicted by him in such a such a refined manner that they gain stature and they also improve the intellectual ability of the synagogue. Everybody talks about that great scene where the light is coming through the roof and these two people the director and his actress are standing apart. The director is a married man
Speaker: with these kinds of insight where very ordinary
Speaker: Here the woman is a spin star and yet they are drawn to each other and how their souls merge in that particular ray of light. This has been talked about by people since the day the film was released. Of course, it's an extraordinary creation of cinematic poetry. Let's even go to the opening scene, the manner in which he comes and enters that studio.
Speaker: or the manner in which he runs away from when that girl whom he has made a celebrity, a star, he runs away from her. The manner in which the wind comes, everything, or when the song comes in, which is again one of the outstanding songs of Indian cinema, Bichade Sabi Bari Bari. In translation, it means everybody parted ways. And the manner in which he uses the dissolves
Speaker: The man is signing autographs. People are running after him. There are hordes of audiences who wish to touch him, glorify him. And then the stark realization of the harsh reality that here is a man whose film has flopped and the people have forgotten me. I think it's an ideal description of what life really is. It's a bed of roses for people who are successful.
Speaker: who are materially well -endowed, who make tons of money and who can dictate. But if you are out of favor, if you are out of luck, you are deprived of your basic bread and butter, then you do not mean a thing to anybody. And even if you die, nobody bothers, the world goes on and on. I think it's a very, very strong critique of the manner in which
Speaker: the life is lived in this world sad to say, but it's going on for centuries. But particularly in the film industry, one of the things that's interesting to me about this film is that it is one of many films that have been made over the years about film. So it's a film about filmmaking and about cinema, but it's not, I wouldn't call it a love letter to cinema like a lot of such films have been. I actually think that
Speaker: It's a film that presents a very problematic relationship between the filmmaker and the industry in which he exists. Even though the lead character, the director, is clearly a born filmmaker and has an intense love for cinema and for what he does, as you rightly point out, the film ultimately is about how the industry destroys him. The industry that he loves so much kind of chews him up and spits him out.
Speaker: And so I think it's a very bittersweet film in that respect and it's very sad towards the end because of that. The other thing that I find interesting too is that as I was watching the film, a couple of things struck me in particular. One is there are quite a few scenes backstage in the sound stages, including that wonderful song that you had just talked about. Unfortunately, my Hindi is so bad I can't actually say the name of the title, but.
Speaker: Right. That sequence deserves every accolade. I mean, it's just even just as a self -contained piece of filmmaking. It is so perfect. I've actually watched it several times just in the last few days and it just moves me every time I watch it. It's such a beautiful piece of filmmaking.
Speaker: But what strikes me about that sequence and the film in general is that I have a sense that the point of view of the film is not actually the director's point of view, it's the camera's point of view. And Gurudat's putting us, I think the viewer, into the film through the camera because the last shot, I mean in that song sequence it's interesting because the two characters are essentially static and the choreography such as it is, is the camera.
Speaker: The camera is constantly moving and doing all sorts of interesting things. The two characters just stand there in these wonderful kind of statuesque poses for most of the song, which is a very interesting way, cinematically, to bring something to life. The way that different scenes are visualized. We've got these scenes in backstage environments, which for me are the most
Speaker: they have the most realistic texture visually of any of the scenes and you contrast that with quite a few scenes that happened in the quote real world in offices and houses and he films those scenes with a very flat visual texture almost with an artifice that suggests they're being filmed in fake environments so you've got this really weird irony where the real environments are presented as very fake looking but the
Speaker: the environment, the sound stage where fake things happen is the most real environment visually and emotionally of any of the environments in the film. So. I think you put it very well. You put it very well. Absolutely. I got a real sense that that's where he just wanted to be, the filmmaker and the director character. He just wants to be in the sound stage. He wants to be backstage.
Speaker: making magic, you know, that sort of is natural environment. The last shot is also very interesting. And coming back to this point about the point of view of the film, the last shot is this magnificent crane shot after the lead character dies. Sorry, spoiler alert in case people haven't watched the movie. The lead character does die. There's this wonderful crane shot, which is presumably his soul or some representation of him, you know, going to heaven.
Speaker: But that for me I think is, in terms of the film's point of view, that really concretizes the fact that we're actually
Speaker: The point of view of the film is through the lens of the camera. It's not these characters, it's not one particular character. It's us as viewers participating in this film. We're actually the lead character in some respects. It's just a fascinating strategy, cinematically. Again, it's a film that I need to watch again. I've only watched the whole thing once and then some sequences a few times. I have this yearning to look at it much more closely because I think there's just so much in this film that I couldn't possibly take in on first viewing.
Speaker: So I'm excited to go back and have a closer look. I have a take that most of the films are artistic creations which tell very stark realities. Somehow or the other, people might appreciate them for their aesthetics. But in a certain way, subconsciously people are disturbed by that truth because it denudes them. It denudes them of their entire linear
Speaker: of hypocrisy and I think one of the reasons for Kaga's kipul failing is the fact that he denudes the whole society the whole world the society has absolutely no value for anybody's greatness unless and until that is in consonance with money with certain power or
Speaker: with certain amount of fame. But in case the man is empty handed, irrespective of how much the person is good or talented, the world just rejects you. So I think in a certain way, this denuding of the audiences of the industry did not go very well with people. Even today, I have come across people who appreciate the film, yet there
Speaker: not ready to go much longer into the discussion of the film because they're intensely disturbed by the questions that he throws up and that I think is of course the quality of Gurudat and yet that is the reason for the film flopping. They are very confronting films emotionally
Speaker: And I can understand viewers not wanting to make that commitment. If you're looking for something fun and entertaining, I mean, these are not your films. I think the rewards are absolutely there, but I can also understand people not wanting to watch them.
Speaker: The last scene was recreated and he left it at a limbo where they are going away. Many say it's a self -defeater thing, no but in a certain way his rejection is yet that he is going to establish a new world order, maybe. And that gives a little bit of hope. But in Kaguske pool, the problem is that
Speaker: He is shown to have died and been defeated by the circumstances. That is a very stark and harsh reality which not many people are able to digest. Absolutely. And even though the lead character's death is presented as almost a noble death in the last camera shot, it's still very depressing. It's still ultimately the story of someone who, although
Speaker: a man of great integrity is absolutely defeated by the system in which he's operating and it's sort of an inescapable message of that film. Which brings me to the question that keeps coming up in my mind as I watch his films. They're films that are filled with not cynicism but pain and despair and dignity as well.
Speaker: How much of this was drawn from his life? What was his personal life like? You've talked about his childhood a little, but as an adult, when these films were being made, what was happening in his life? All the great creative scenes, they draw immensely from their own personal experiences. And Gurudad was no exception. In fact, he actually magnified it to a much greater level. And there is no doubt about it that he had fallen in love with
Speaker: Gita Roy, who was a very well -established singer at that time. And she was a bigger star than he was. They got married. They were immensely in love. But once Piazza came in and there were, you know, the regular rumor mills which started that he was having an affair with Waidar Amman. And just to kind of put the rumor mills to a stop, he started making a particular film
Speaker: with Gita Roy she was exceptionally beautiful apart from being a very gifted singer and he started making a Bengali film called Gauri with her just to satiate her and now my personal taking is that when a person is grooming an artist the director and actress relationship is drawn on various kinds of very very subtle layers you're talking to each other you're spending days out in the outdoors and you're
Speaker: trying to make that image come true which is the image that you're trying to create for the screen but unfortunately what happens is the woman has to be converted into that image and the proximity the manner in which you try to groom and change and you try to do every small little bit to make that reality come true through that woman is what
Speaker: starts spinning the rumor mills. And this is what happened in the film industry. And somehow the other Gita that became insecure, a major lacuna in Guru Dutt that he wanted Gita Roy to spend a lot more time at home, career children. He wanted her to sing only for his own creations and not go out for outside because that effect was cutting into the family's time. I think somehow the other
Speaker: drew a wall between them, apart from of course the rumor mills. Gori was in production, he was making it a beautiful film, it was a story about a rural Bengali woman, Itaroi was beautiful, so he wanted her to do the entire film without makeup. And it just seems that after several reels had been shot, in one particular sequence, she came up, decked in makeup,
Speaker: and he got very angry with her. And in turn she said something which was extremely brutal. Of course you would like Vaidar Eman to look beautiful on screen and not me. This I think in front of a unit of 100 -150 people really got his goat and he shelved the film. People who have seen the few reels which were short say it would have been a master film.
Speaker: and it would have done wonders to Geetha Roy as an actress also. This grew him apart and later on some of his friends like Abrar Alvi who was his regular script writer and a very close friend, he also said that there was nothing sexual between them. It was largely something that you were just inspired. Vaidar Eman adored him because he brought her from an extra and made her into a top heroine.
Speaker: He was deeply involved and romanticizing on that image that he wanted to build up. He was giving her roles. These conflicts made his personal life a little more torrid.
Speaker: He tried to keep away from Vaida, yet he had to meet her on the sets because she was his leading lady in most of the films. He had to meet Dita, then they separated, they stayed away. I think all these kinds of problems are also there in Kaga Skiful and to a certain extent I feel if he had shortened the length of Kaga Skiful and had not elaborated on
Speaker: the indifference of the woman and in a way that he showed his wife in the film as to be completely indifferent to family and just not caring, a kind of a socialite which Gita Rai was not. I think that in a way he was trying to structure and send a particular message which became too elaborated and people did not take too kindly. No doubt that in his films
Speaker: there is this conflict between his personal and there is a great deal of anguish which you can see which he goes through and Kaga Skiful reflects that very much. It's actually fascinating as you were talking about what was going on in his real life at that time, you were almost describing the plot of Kaga Skiful. It makes me wonder how difficult it must have been for the people around him to watch that film knowing how much in that movie must have been drawn from what was actually happening.
Speaker: His death was also very tragic too. I mean, he died at 39, a very, very young man, and presumably had a lot more to give, artistically. What happened? Was there any controversy around his death? I mean, what was happening at that time? He died in 1964, and as usual, the gossip mongers and the
Speaker: paparazzi just went around tom toming that he had committed suicide because he was in love with vaidarema and he was staying away from his wife and all having gone through his films and the manner in which he lived his life of course he was a man who was having a torrid time in his personal domain but yet I think he was a very brave man somebody who could confront the box office successes and failures with equanimity
Speaker: He was not a person who would actually commit suicide. I have a conjecture in which I have corroborated with several of the people of that time is that he was very impetuous and this problem in his personal domain led him to create a farmhouse around 30 -40 kilometers away from Bombay
Speaker: and he would actually run away from Bombay whenever he was somehow perplexed or petrified of anything he would just run away and go and do some fishing or go for hunting or just go and brood there somehow he could not sleep
Speaker: There was a film that he made with Bimal Mitra, a very popular Bengali writer, and he made that film called Sahib Bibi Ur Ghilam, and Bimal Mitra spent months together with Gurudat at his home as well as at his farmhouse. And Bimal Mitra also says that he was a man who was full of life, full of joy, but also given two bouts of extreme frustration with his own self.
Speaker: brooding, he was a disturbed man who was always constantly trying to do something and create something for the screen. In the process, since he could not sleep well, he started taking these tranquilizers which could put him to sleep. Now, according to the reports that come from Abraa Elwe who was the last person to see him off on that particular night, the previous evening
Speaker: Abraad Helbi had spent a lot of time discussing with him a particular scene. He was shooting Bahare Bheer Bhi Iyengi. He had rang up Kyaase who made Mughal Azam and he had fixed up a time with him. Then there was a particular script for which he made a phone call to Raj Kapoor. He actually wanted to drive all the way from Peddar Road to Chembur which is almost a distance of about 15 to 20 kilometers in Bombay.
Speaker: Rajkupu did not have time and so he said let's postpone it for next week and all and that's how they finish that telephonic conversation. So to me it doesn't seem like that it was a motivated decision of a suicide. He had become alcoholic and concoction of the tranquilizers, the sleeping pills and the liquor played upon his heart and he died. Very sad that he died at the age of 39 because
Speaker: He was just blooming and his craft was at his best and we in fact were the losers. We were deprived of some very good films that would have come in had he lived for a little more time.
Speaker: Absolutely. It just makes me wonder, as he matured even more as an artist, what sorts of themes he would have explored and how his technique might have developed over that time. It's kind of tantalizing to wonder about that. Of course, we'll never know, but we're very fortunate to have the body of work that he did leave.
Speaker: Certainly one of the joys of the lead up to this conversation was the homework that I was doing and just discovering his wonderful films mostly for the first time and just immersing myself in this very specific emotional world that he's able to create in his cinema. It's absolutely singular and I just thoroughly enjoyed watching his films. The greater thing is that he brought in so many talented people. He had an eye for talent, Johnny Walker,
Speaker: Raman, Abraa Alvi, Vmurti, Guru Swami, the manner in which for every different film he had different music directors to come in. Like just for this Sahib Bibi or Gulam which he wasn't directing, he had Abraa Alvi directing but yet and for Chaudhmi Kachand which was a Muslim subject, now for that he brought in M. Sadiq, a very renowned laureate
Speaker: and also director but for these two films also we shot all the song sequences and every song sequence in these two films is classic textbook for upcoming directors and writers and script writers cinematographers to see how the camera moves what he does everything is so perfect I'll just give you one example before we close off the title song of Chodmi Kachan it was just a one -take song
Speaker: Just one take and he approved the song. Music director Ravi had been taken for this particular film. He thought that this song was very well conceived, very well sung by Rafi Sahib. But somehow Rafi Sahib had given a particular tinge which felt like as if it's a man who's slightly drunk. So he wanted him to temper it a little bit.
Speaker: But Gurdat said nothing doing. I'm completely satisfied. And he took the spool away and went to Lucknow and shot it. He even had a bet with Ravi as well as Rafi Sahab. He said this song would be an extraordinary hit. And music director Ravi said that I learned a lesson when the song started on the radio before the release of the film.
Speaker: The manner of delineation, the expressive power, the emotive power of Ravi Sahib was extraordinary which he could not gauge and the ability of Gurudat as a director to foresee what and how it would look on screen and how it would be executed is something which made him predict that this would be a
Speaker: created. Now he said as a music director I could not visualize this kind of thing but these were two great geniuses who combined together and that song even today is a landmark song. It's an all -time bestseller and people just revert to Chodmi Kachan. Every now and then everybody who's in love they go back and listen to it again and again as one of the extraordinary outstanding songs of Bollywood. Hats off to Burudha and there is no doubt
Speaker: in my mind that his prominence in the annals of world cinema is undisputed and I think he was a man who made films of conviction, great humanism and with a great sense of purpose he would give you a message without preaching. There was something for people to understand, people to imbibe, for future generations to reflect, introspect and that is why I think you and me are here today.
Speaker: to wonder about some of his extraordinary abilities. It's been a real pleasure deep diving into his work with you Deepak. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation. In fact, pleasure has been mine and I hope our listeners enjoy it too. Request everybody to send in their reactions to us and wonderful conversing with you once again, Julian. It's been a great evening. Thank you so much.
Speaker: We'll see everyone on the next episode of Conversing Cinema. You've been listening to Conversing Cinema with Deepak Mahan and me, Julian Coldry. We'd love to hear from you. If you have any questions or comments, you can email us at podcast at conversingcinema .in. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review or rating, and most importantly, share us with your friends.
Speaker: Conversing Cinema is produced and edited by Julian Coldry and Deepak Mahan. Music is by Deepak Mahan. See you next time.
