100 Bollywood Films

100 Bollywood Films

100 BOLLYWOOD FILMS

Rachel Dwyer

To the menagerie:

SEMPER FIDELIS

Lotus Collection

Copyright © Rachel Dwyer 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

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First published in 2005 by the

British Film Institute

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First published in India in 2005

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Cover design: Paul Wright

Cover image: Sholay (Ramesh Sippy, 1975, Sippy Films)

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Set by: Fakenham Photosetting Ltd, Fakenham, Norfolk

ISBN: 81-7436-433-1

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Aankhen, David Dhawan, 1993

Abhimaan, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, 1973

Achhut kanya, Franz Osten, 1936

Amar, Akbar, Anthony, Manmohan Desai, 1977

Anand, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, 1970

Andaz, Mehboob Khan, 1949

Angoor, S. S. Gulzar, 1982

Anmol ghadi, Mehboob Khan, 1946

Aradhana, Shakti Samanta, 1969

Ardh satya, Govind Nihalani, 1983

Arth, Mahesh Bhatt, 1982

Awara, Raj Kapoor, 1951

Baiju Bawra, Vijay Bhatt, 1952

Bandini, Bimal Roy, 1963

Bandit Queen, Shekhar Kapur, 1994

Bhumika, Shyam Benegal, 1976

Bobby, Raj Kapoor, 1973

Bombay, Mani Ratnam, 1995

Border, J. P. Dutta, 1997

Chalti ka naam gaadi, Satyen Bose, 1958

Chandni, Yash Chopra, 1989

Deewaar, Yash Chopra, 1975

CID, Raj Khosla, 1956

Devdas, P. C. Barua, 1935

Diamond Queen, Homi Wadia, 1940

Dil chahta hai, Farhan Akhtar, 2001

Dil to pagal hai, Yash Chopra, 1997

Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge, Aditya Chopra, 1995

Disco Dancer, Babbar Subhash, 1982

Do aankhen baarah haath, V. Shantaram, 1957

Do bigha zamin, Bimal Roy, 1953

Don, Chandra Barot, 1978

Duniya na mane/The Unexpected, V. Shantaram, 1937

Ek duuje ke liye, K. Balachander, 1981

Gadar – Ek prem katha, Anil Sharma, 2001

Garam hawa, M. S. Sathyu, 1973

Ghayal, Raj Kumar Santoshi, 1990

Gol maal, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, 1979

Guide, Vijay Anand, 1965

Gunga Jumna, Nitin Bose, 1961

Haqeeqat, Chetan Anand, 1964

Hare Rama Hare Krishna, Dev Anand, 1971

Hum aapke hain koun…!, Sooraj Barjatya, 1994

Hum dil de chuke sanam, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, 1999

Jaane bhi do yaaro, Kundan Shah, 1983

Jab jab phool khile, Suraj Prakash, 1965

Jai Santoshi Maa, Vijay Sharma, 1975

Jewel Thief, Vijay Anand, 1967

Johny mera naam, Vijay Anand, 1970

Junglee, Subodh Mukherji, 1961

Kaagaz ke phool, Guru Dutt, 1959

Kabhi kabhie, Yash Chopra, 1976

Kaho na pyaar hai, Rakesh Roshan, 2000

Karz, Subhash Ghai, 1980

Khalnayak, Subhash Ghai, 1993

Khazanchi, Moti B. Gidwani, 1941

Kismet, Gyan Mukherjee, 1943

Kuch kuch hota hai, Karan Johar, 1998

Lagaan/Once Upon a Time in India, Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001

Madhumati, Bimal Roy, 1958

Maine pyar kiya, Sooraj Barjatya, 1989

Main tulsi tere aangan ki, Raj Khosla, 1978

Masoom, Shekhar Kapur, 1982

Mera gaon mera desh, Raj Khosla, 1971

Mother India, Mehboob Khan, 1957

Mr India, Shekhar Kapur, 1987

Mughal-e Azam, K. Asif, 1960

Munnabhai MBBS, Rajkumar Hirani, 2004

Muqaddar ka Sikandar, Prakash Mehra, 1978

Naya daur, B. R. Chopra, 1957

Nikaah, B. R. Chopra, 1982

Padosan, Jyoti Swaroop, 1968

Pakeezah, Kamal Amrohi, 1971

Parinda, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, 1989

Phool, K. Asif, 1944

Purab aur pachhim, Manoj Kumar, 1970

Pyaasa, Guru Dutt, 1957

Qayamat se qayamat tak, Mansoor Khan, 1988

Qurbani, Feroz Khan, 1980

Ram aur Shyam, Tapi Chanakya, 1967

Rangeela, Ram Gopal Varma, 1995

Roja, Mani Ratnam, 1992

Roti kapada aur makaan, Manoj Kumar, 1974

Sahib bibi aur ghulam, Abrar Alvi, 1961

Sangam, Raj Kapoor, 1964

Satya, Ram Gopal Varma, 1998

Seeta aur Geeta, Ramesh Sippy, 1972

Shakti, Ramesh Sippy, 1982

Sholay, Ramesh Sippy, 1975

Shree 420, Raj Kapoor, 1955

Sikandar, Sohrab Modi, 1941

Silsila, Yash Chopra, 1981

Teesri kasam, Basu Bhattacharya, 1966

Teesri manzil, Vijay Anand, 1966

Tezaab, N. Chandra, 1988

Trishul, Yash Chopra, 1978

Umrao Jaan, Muzaffar Ali, 1981

Upkar, Manoj Kumar, 1967

Waqt, Yash Chopra, 1965

Yaadon ki baaraat, Nasir Hussain, 1973

Zanjeer, Prakash Mehra, 1973

Index

Acknowledgments

I should like to thank all my friends for their patience and for taking my random phone calls, persistent emails and frantic SMSes about this book. The encyclopaedic knowledge of Kaushik Bhaumik, Jerry Pinto and Maithili Rao meant they suffered more than others, but they endlessly gave me prompt and helpful advice, which they may think I wilfully ignored. I also discussed my selection with Sikander Berry, Anurag Kashyap, Gautam Pemmaraju, Shaad Ali Sahgal, Sameer Sharma, Shanoo Sharma and Kush Varia.

The indefatigable Jerry Pinto deserves special thanks for making many visits to Video Plaza at Leamington Road and Rhythm House at Kala Ghoda, whether with me, or on his own, working from emailed lists or having three-way conversations with the staff and me on the phone, getting copies sent to London and arranging rental copies when I was in Bombay.

I should like to thank Rajni Bhatia for her great generosity in helping to compile the filmographic details at the end of each film. I am not sure she had any idea of how much work this would involve, but she spent several days on this task with good humour.

Special thanks are due also to Ramdas Bhatkal, who gave me sound advice on Marathi items relating to Shantaram’s films; Anna Morcom for helping me collect materials from Kamat Foto Flash; thanks to Randhir Kapoor for his suggestion we do this; and to Fifi Haroon, who supplied me with DVDs and VCDs.

I should like to thank everyone at the National Film and Television Archive of India (Pune), who often act more like a team of research assistants than archive staff, for their help in supplying me with photographs, films and printed materials; in particular, Mr Shashidharan, Mrs Joshi, Aarti Karkhanis and Laxmi Iyer, Dilip Rajput and others involved in the screening.

Several producers supplied me with photographs and permissions at no cost. These include Farhan Akhtar, Shyam Benegal, Yash Chopra, Subhash Ghai, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Ram Gopal Varma, Vinci Wadia and the National Film Development Corporation.

Once again, thanks to my friends in Bombay and Pune for their endless kindness and hospitality during my research for this book. It is hard to list you all, but special thanks to Pam Chopra for her extraordinary hospitality; and to Mohan Agashe, Ashim Ahluwalia, Titu Ahluwalia, Apurva Asrani, Aarti Bajaj, Shyam Benegal, Harsha and Smita Bhatkal, Christophe Carvalho, Priya and Suresh Chabria, Gayatri Chatterjee, Angad Chowdhry, Harish Dayani, Shobhaa Dé, Richard Delacy, Abhay Deol, Faisal Devji, Ayesha Dharker, Imtiaz Dharker, Naresh Fernandes, Sanjay Gadhvi, Shumona Goel, Rumana Hameid, Udita Jhunjhunwala, Meera Mehta, A. G. Noorani, Gautam Pemmaraju, Satya Pemmaraju, Swamy Rao, Vyjayanthi Rao, Shaad Ali Sahgal, Asim Shah, Sonal Shah, Navdeep and Madhuri Singh, Paul Smith, Rahul Srivastava, Paromita Vora, the late Riyad Wadia and Vinci Wadia.

Thanks as ever to Michael.

Introduction

The films in this volume have been chosen for different reasons. The only common ground is that they should be recognisable as a ‘Bollywood’ or a Hindi film. I suggest the following parameters: the films are produced in India, their language is Hindi (or Urdu) and they had a theatrical release across the usual distribution circuits of (north) India.

Although this is not a selection of the ‘100 best’ films, some of the movies here are widely held to be ‘better’ than others, in terms of structure, style, acting and other features that would be recognisable to those who know other cinemas. Perhaps one could suggest that the films of Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt, Mani Ratnam and some outstanding films (such as Sholay [1975], Deewaar [1975], Pakeezah [1971]) could be assessed under the umbrella term ‘world cinema’, where despite their noticeable differences from other cinemas, they can be appraised on some of the same critical and aesthetic terms.

Yet to those unfamiliar with Hindi cinema, some of the films in this volume do not look like ‘good’ movies, yet most of them would be regarded as such by their audiences. There is no defined aesthetics of Hindi cinema, but these films share noticeable features, such as the use of melodrama and heightened emotion, especially around the family, an engaging narrative, stars, a certain mise en scène, usually one of glamour, grandiloquent dialogues and the all-important songs. These are therefore the topics upon which I have focused in my discussion, as indicators of why these films are significant.

The pleasures of cinema, as of other art forms, are complex, and it is never easy to analyse people’s responses to films. Box-office success should ne noted as it suggests that the audiences found these films to be ‘good’, although we do not usually know for what reasons. Statistics for Bollywood films are notoriously unreliable as figures are said to be ‘adjusted’, in the face of rampant piracy, but I have taken into account films that were clearly major hits.

Another criterion for selection is the film’s importance in the history of Hindi cinema. For example, Bobby (1973), a film that would deserve inclusion by any of my criteria, also brought in the ‘love as friendship’ theme which flourished in the 1990s; Lagaan (2001) for its ‘Oscar’ success; Hum aapke hain koun…! (1994) for its marketing; Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge (1995) for Hindi film and the diaspora (and for its 500-week run in India); Dil chahta hai (2001) for changing style within the Hindi movie format, and so on.

I have omitted silent films, although they are foundational to Indian cinema history, on several grounds. Few silents were made in Bombay and to call them ‘Hindi’ films is wildly inaccurate. Were I to choose any examples, Phalke’s work would have been the obvious choice, but we do not have complete versions of his films. Other films might have been Shiraz (1928) or Light of Asia (1926) but these are English films, as a very basic grasp of lip-reading shows. All India’s remaining silent films are available in the Film and Television Archives of India in Pune and can be watched over a few days. They may be of historical interest but I am not sure how many would count as good cinema.

The important talkie cinema of pre-independent India is underrepresented here, as it is only gradually becoming available beyond the Archives. While many films are lost, including Alam ara (1931), India’s first talkie, some studios’ outputs are fairly well preserved, notably those of Calcutta’s New Theatres, Bombay Talkies and Pune’s Prabhat Studios. Prabhat Studios have issued many of their films with subtitles on VHS and VCD. However, some of the work of New Theatres and Prabhat is excluded on the grounds of language (Bengali and Marathi respectively), and only their Hindi films (mostly made in parallel to the Bengali or Marathi versions) may be considered. The hugely influential Bombay Talkies which spawned Filmistan has only two films here, while Prabhat has only one, as some of their best features were in Marathi only (Sant Tukaram [1936], Ramshastri [1944], Sant Dnyaneshwar); New Theatres made some of the key early films (Vidyapati [1937], Chandidas [1927], Devdas) and nurtured major talent such as K. L. Saigal, Prithviraj Kapoor and Bimal Roy, but I have included the work of these figures only once they had moved to Bombay.

It is hard not to allow the 1950s to dominate, as this was the era in which so many classic films were made and the great directors Mehboob Khan, Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt were at their peak. The 1970s was also an extraordinarily fertile period when, alongside the great Salim–Javed films for Amitabh Bachchan, there was also the middle-class cinema of film-makers such as Hrishikesh Mukherjee, while the ‘parallel cinema’ also had a productive decade.

I have tried to include key figures – directors, stars, music directors, writers – throughout the selection, but I have also tried not to let any one of them dominate. If the list were of ‘good’ films or my favourites, there would have been more films by Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy and Yash Chopra. Some key figures feature surprisingly infrequently, in particular those who have become important since the 1990s, while there is a disproportionate number of Salim–Javed films. The latter are foundational to the modern Hindi cinema, were huge hits, widely held to be ‘good’ films and set a standard which has rarely been equalled. Amitabh Bachchan starred in most of their films and, as he also acted in many of the middle-class films of Hrishikesh Mukherjee, he has by far the greatest number of entries in the volume. Yet I had to leave some of his films out and still regret missing some, such as Coolie (1983) and Naseeb (1981).

The ‘parallel’ or ‘middle’ cinema does not belong in this book, as it was produced, distributed and exhibited on different circuits from the others, and has hardly any connection with the mainstream cinema. Were I to pick films just for being ‘good’, this group would be more highly represented. Even Shyam Benegal, one of the most important film-makers and intellectuals in the Indian film industry, has only one film in this selection despite having made many ‘good’ films. Although Benegal’s films are privately produced and many had theatrical releases, they are viewed as a separate form of cinema, a type of realist cinema that is close to that government-sponsored cinema of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC). I have included only one NFDC-funded film, Jaane bhi do yaaro (1983) as it has reached wide audiences and is always cited as a landmark.

Satyajit Ray is internationally recognised as India’s greatest film-maker and is certainly one of my favourite directors. He made only one Hindi film (apart from his film for television, Sadgati [1981]), which was Shatranj ke khiladi (1977). This is a great film but I have not included it here, as Ray’s films belong to an entirely different tradition of film-making in terms of production and distribution. (I was amazed to find that many of the younger generation of Hindi film-makers who know their Hollywood movies have not seen a single film by Ray.)

I am not a connoisseur of Hindi B-movies, but they are not a part of the history of mainstream cinema. They have their own separate circuits of production, distribution and exhibition. In recent years, the horror movies of the Ramsay brothers have generated their own cult following, for films such as Bandh darwaza (1990), Do gaz zamin ke neeche (1972) and Purana mandir (1984). No one would call them ‘good cinema’, however.

I had thought of leaving out films that are not generally accessible, but I have included a couple (for example, Phool [1944] and Khazanchi [1941]), as these may soon join the others in becoming available on VCD and DVD. Most of the films in this book are available at least on VCD, with many on DVD (the latter have English subtitles and are more expensive). One of the great pleasures of writing this book was rewatching the films on DVD, as I had previously seen many of them only on low-quality VHS where the image was spoilt by advertising, the sound was poor and I saw them when my knowledge of Hindi was very limited.

‘Bollywood’

There has been controversy over the name ‘Bollywood’ for some time now. Several voices in the industry have expressed a dislike for the term, as it implies that Hindi cinema is a derivation of Hollywood and thus an insulting term. The etymology of the word is clearly from ‘Hollywood’, the word that all round the world signifies ‘cinema’. Hollywood is the centre of the largest film industry in the world in terms of distribution, budgets and global impact, and has created much of the world’s cinema style. Indian cinema is not entirely indigenous (its supposed connections with Sanskrit drama and folk traditions are highly exaggerated) but it is a hybrid form that has been influenced heavily by other cinemas, in particular that of Hollywood, as well as by photography, painting, theatre, narrative forms and popular music, none of which can be described as ‘purely’ Indian. However, this hybridity does not mean that it is entirely derivative or imitative, but that it has evolved its own sense of style and form.

There is some dispute as to the origins of the term ‘Bollywood’. It seems that the first use of ‘Tollywood’, to mean the cinema made in the Calcutta suburb of Tollygunge, dates back to 1932. (Madhava Prasad, ‘This Thing Called Bollywood’, , viewed 8 March 2005.) Prasad suggests that it is unlikely that Bombay cinema would have become known as Bollywood without this detour via Tollywood. Perhaps it is after the word Bollywood was coined that we find terms like ‘Nollywood’ used to mean ‘Nigerian cinema’ and ‘Lollywood’ employed to describe ‘cinema made in Lahore; Pakistani cinema’.

We can quibble with the ‘B’ in ‘Bollywood. This cinema is not made only in Bombay (or, since 1995, Mumbai). Much of it has been produced in other cities (for example, Prabhat Studios in Pune made bilingual films in Marathi and Hindi), so this restriction would exclude films such as Aadmi (1939), Padosi (1941) and Duniya na mane, and most of K. L. Saigal’s films, as he made them in Calcutta with New Theatres (including the 1935 Devdas), along with several by Prithviraj Kapoor and P. C. Barua; it would also exclude the Hindi films made in the Madras studios (such as Ram aur Shyam), and those made in the Lahore studios before independence, such as Khazanchi.

If we discard the term ‘Bollywood’, then what do we call this cinema? Hindi cinema? This opens up another can of worms. Many films are classed as Urdu films (right up to and including Junglee [1961]). Should it be called the Hindi–Urdu cinema? Would anyone recognise that term? If English continues to make inroads into Indian cinema, will it become English cinema, even if it follows the style of the former? If the actors say ‘I