rediff.com


                 HOME  |  MOVIES  |  FEEDBACK
Hrishikesh Mukherjee

E-Mail this feature to a friend
Print this page Best Printed on  HP Laserjets


Dinesh Raheja

Hrishikesh Mukherjee's cinema could make you cry. You sniffle when Sharmila Tagore's emotionally withdrawn father surmounts his long-festering resentment towards his daughter and comes to the railway station to secretly rejoice in her eloping with her lover in Anupama or when Ashok Kumar opens his heart, overcomes his distaste and makes his daughter-in-law's son, the product of rape, light his son's pyre in Satyakam.

Mukherjee's movies could make you laugh. You chuckle in the Wodehousian comedy of inconsequentialities, Chupke Chupke when Amitabh, posing as a professor of botany, grapples with the word 'corolla' or in Golmaal when a truant moustache leads to many merry muddles.

Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Landmark Films
 Year  Film  Cast
 1959  Anari  Raj Kapoor, Nutan
 1960  Anuradha  Balraj Sahni, Leela Naidu
 1966  Anupama  Dharmendra, Sharmila Tagore
 1968  Aashirwad  Ashok Kumar
 1969  Satyakam  Dharmendra, Sharmila Tagore
 1970  Anand  Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan
 1971  Guddi  Jaya Bhaduri, Samit Bhanja
 1973  Abhimaan  Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bhaduri
 1973  Namak Haram  Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan
 1975  Chupke Chupke  Dharmendra, Sharmila Tagore, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bhaduri
 1979  Golmaal  Amol Palekar, Utpal Dutt, Bindiya Goswami
 1980  Khubsoorat  Rekha, Rakesh Roshan

Sometimes, his films could make you laugh even while you were blinking hard to part the film of tears covering your eyes. Like in Anand, where Rajesh Khanna greets even death with a well-turned bon mot.

Without being aggressively experimental or ostentatiously avant garde in form, theme or treatment, many of Mukherjee's 40-plus films have charmed audiences and critics alike because of their middle-of-the-road accessibility, heart-warming irony and literate sensibilities.

Most of his captivating characters inhabit a middle-class, urban, educated milieu and lightly wear an air of high morality and intrinsic geniality.

Amitabh Bachchan once said, "A director's films reflect his personality." Mukherjee was a soft-spoken, well-educated professional (he loves a game of chess), who learnt the ropes of filmmaking from venerable institutions like Kolkata's New Theatres and director Bimal Roy. He assisted Roy on classics like Do Bigha Zameen and Devdas.

Roy's influence was evident in Mukherjee's choice of subjects. Mukherjee got to know Dilip Kumar during his stint with Roy and got the star to act in his directorial debut, Musafir (1957), an episodic ensemble drama about six characters and a house.

Mukherjee had obviously made a name for himself as an editor because he got Kishore Kumar, Nirupa Roy, Suchitra Sen and Usha Kiron to costar in the film.

At the box office, Mukherjee hit his stride with his second film, Anari (1959). Studded with hit Shankar-Jaikishen songs, Anari is the well-meaning point of view from a simple, but idealistic young man (Raj Kapoor) disillusioned with the rich (mainly heroine Nutan's uncle, Motilal).

Famous Songs from Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Films
 Song  Film  Singers
 Sab kuch seekha hamne  Anari  Mukesh
 Haaey re woh din kyon
  na aaye
 Anuradha  Lata Mangeshkar
 Itna na mujhse tu
 pyar badha
 Chhaya  Lata Mangeshkar,
 Talat Mehmood
 Tera mera pyar amar  Asli Naqli  Lata Mangeshkar
 Ya dil ki suno  duniyawalon  Anupama  Hemant Kumar
 Rail gaadi  Aashirwad  Ashok Kumar
 Zindagi kaisi hai paheli  Anand  Manna Dey
 Hum ko man ki shakti dena  Guddi  Vani Jairam
 Diye jalte hai  Namak Haram  Kishore Kumar
 Aanewala pal  Golmaal  Kishore Kumar
 Sun sun sun didi  Khubsoorat  Asha Bhosle

A certain sensitivity and a benign aura (Raj Kapoor sings Kisi ki muskurahaton pe ho nisaar, jeena isika naam hai in Anari), pervaded Mukherjee's cinema from the beginning.

Anari featured Lalita Pawar as Mrs D'Sa, the sandpaper-tongued, but soft-hearted landlady. Mukherjee had such kindly character actors (often played by David) in many of his films. Witness 1971's Guddi where Sumita Sanyal plays Jaya Bhaduri's sweet but not saccharine bhabhi. When Guddi is adamant about wearing a miniskirt, the bhabhi placidly states, "Why would you listen to me? I am just your bhabhi, not your mother."

With minimum fuss, Guddi establishes the depth of their mutual affection by changing into a sari.

After Anari's success, Mukherjee bravely plunged into making small movies like Anuradha (which introduced the lovely Leela Naidu and harnessed maestro Ravi Shankar's composing talents), and Mem Didi (fuelled by Lalita Pawar's star power!) alongside Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand starrers.

Anupama (1966), an intimate look at a daughter's unarticulated anguish at her father's rejection (he holds her responsible for her mother's death in childbirth), and her final assertion of her self, was a burnished gem. Mukherjee continued to take risks and cast Ashok Kumar, by then established as a character actor, as the protagonist of his Aashirwad (another poignant father-daughter tale) and steered him to a Best Actor Award win.

Dharmendra produced Mukherjee's Satyakam and was rewarded with his best performance ever as the straight-backed soldier of truth.

Mukherjee's fame as a director loved by actors was confirmed with two biographical classics in the early 1970s -- Anand and Guddi -- films which boosted Rajesh Khanna and Jaya Bhaduri's careers tremendously.

    Recent Profiles
Bimal Roy
S D Burman
Nargis
Zeenat Aman
Hema Malini
Madhubala
Hemant Kumar
Lata Mangeshkar
Balraj Sahni
Rajesh Khanna
Sunil Dutt
Kalyanji Anandji
Mumtaz
More

His films were shorn of affectation so were his heroines. Mukherjee established the girl-next-door look with Jaya in Guddi but his heroines were archetypal even when he worked with glamour icons like Sadhana (sari-wrapped and beguiling in Asli Naqli), and Sharmila Tagore (no outlandish eyeliner in her Mukherjee films). Jaya continued her look in subsequent Mukherjee films like Abhimaan (1973), an astute observation of the attendant ego hassles which rise when a married couple is in the same profession.

Namak Haram, released in the same year, boasted of an explosive performance from Amitabh as a man torn between his friendship with blue-collared worker Rajesh Khanna and his capitalistic ideology. Amitabh continued to work with Mukherjee over the next decade doing seven films in all.

A certain prolificity in Mukherjee's career graph (he had three releases in 1975, Chupke Chupke, Mili and Chaitali), unfortunately led to his reworking several pet themes. Anand's dying male protagonist was transformed into a female cancer patient in Mili. Rekha's exuberant Khoobsurat persona found a faint echo in Jhoothi.

His latest film, Jhooth Bole Kauwa Kaatein was a tepid reworking of his Golmaal.

After two sparkling comedies, Golmaal (1979) and Khoobsurat (1980), Mukherjee's career went into decline. He dabbled with television, was chairman of the National Film Development Corporation and, in 1999, attempted a comeback with Jhooth Bole Kauwa Kaatein.

Ill-health has increasingly curtailed his activities. But this 80 year old, who has been awarded the Padma Vibhushan and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, can afford to rest easy on his many laurels.

Which Hrishikesh Mukherjee film do you like best and why:
 Name:

 Email:

 Comments: (characters remaining)

 Your Views:



You might also want to read:
The perceptive camera of Bimal Roy


Design: Uday Kuckian

 

rediff.com
© 1996 - 2002 rediff.com India Limited. All Rights Reserved.