Category Archives: Dusted Off

Characters with Books: In English-language cinema

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Six years ago, to commemorate World Book Day, I published a post about characters in Hindi cinema shown with books (not necessarily reading books, but sometimes even just holding a book). My main criterion there was that the book should be identifiable, and (preferably) a real book, not just a fictitious prop bunged into the film. The idea was to celebrate books, even in cinema. After all, the connection between books and cinema goes far beyond the fact that books are often adapted to the screen. Both the page and the screen are media used to tell a story; both can entertain, both can provoke thought, both can be incendiary. And just as characters in books may watch films, characters in films may read books. To underline their own personalities and interests, by way of making an oblique reference to a thematic element of the film itself, or simply to have something to do.

This year around, with World Book Day coming up again (today in the UK, for much of the rest of the world on April 23), I decided it was high time to do another iteration of that ‘characters with books’ idea. This time, it’s characters in English-language cinema: mostly either Hollywood or British cinema. As for my earlier post, the criterion here is that the book should be identifiable: its title should be readable. Also, preferably, it should be a real book, not a fictitious one. And, of course, as for all my posts on this blog, these are all from pre-70s films that I’ve watched.

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Book Review: Manek Premchand’s ‘Director’s Chair: Hindi Cinema’s Golden Age’

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Amongst all the many books on Hindi cinema I’ve read over the years, most have been about actors, or (rather more occasionally) composers, singers, or even lyricists. Biographies, autobiographies, analytical insights into their work. Meena Kumari, Balraj Sahni, Asha Bhonsle, Rajesh Khanna, Ashok Kumar, SD Burman, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Sahir Ludhianvi, Helen, Lata Mangeshkar, Dev Anand, and many others. By contrast with these, I can count on the tips of my fingers the number of books I’ve read about directors. Hrishikesh Mukherjee (by Jai Arjun Singh), Basu Chatterji (by Anirudha Bhattacharjee) and Nasir Hussain (by Akshay Manwani); even an autobiography by Kidar Sharma. But other than that?  Not too many. Or none that I’ve read (though, I will admit, I am yet to read both Nasreen Munni Kabir’s and Sathya Saran’s books on Guru Dutt).

I was keen, therefore, to read Manek Premchand’s ‘Director’s Chair: Hindi Cinema’s Golden Age’ when its publisher, Blue Pencil Publishing, offered to send me a complimentary copy. I am of the firm belief that a director plays a huge role in making a film what it is: yes, everybody plays their part, but how so many disparate elements are brought together, how the sum becomes greater than its parts, is up to the director.

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Talat Mahmood: Ten Solos, Ten Composers

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Today is the birth centenary of the ‘King of the Ghazal’, the inimitable Talat Mahmood. Talat was born on February 24, 1924 in Lucknow, and it was in Lucknow itself that he obtained his initial training in music: at the Marris College of Music, where he learnt classical Hindustani music from Pandit SCR Bhatt. By the age of sixteen, Talat was singing the ghazals of Urdu’s foremost poets for All India Radio Lucknow, and was soon taken on by HMV as well. His first introduction to cinema came through the film industry in Calcutta, where he not only sang songs (under the name ‘Tapan Kumar’), but also acted in several films. In 1949, at the age of twenty-five, Talat moved to Bombay, and the rest, of course, is history: he went on to become one of Hindi cinema’s most distinctive voices, and his songs—romantic, filled with pathos, tender, soulful—still live on.

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Rififi (1955)

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Fact 1: In the 1956 Hindi film CID, there was a song (composed by OP Nayyar, lyrics by Majrooh Sultanpuri) which went Jaata kahaan hai deewaane… kuchh tere dil mein fiffi, kuchh mere dil mein fiffi. The censor board pounced on the song, accusing that ‘fiffi’ word of being obscene. Sultanpuri, Nayyar, and the director Raj Khosla insisted that it was a meaningless word, just put in as a filler to help marry the tune to the lyrics. The censor board refused to change its stance, and the song remained out of the film. In the 2015 film Bombay Velvet, the song was resurrected and sung by Suman Sridhar.

Fact 2: In the 1955 French film (note the year: 1955, a year before CID) Rififi, there’s the title song, sung (and performed onscreen too) by Magali Noël. Though the French word rififi (which is military slang) can be roughly translated as ‘rough and tumble’, referring mostly to the macho strutting of toughs of the like of this film’s main characters, the song’s lyrics give it a differently nuanced spin. Innuendo, through and through.

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Yaadein (1964)

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In its category for Fewest actors in a narrative film, the Guinness Book of World Records begins the list with this:

“Excluding monologues, the only narrative films with a single cast member have been Yaadein (India, 1964), written, directed and produced by Sunil Dutt (India), who was also its only actor….”

(Only two other films are listed in this category; one is the 2002 French-American production Lettre; the other is the 2004 Kannada film Shanthi).

I have known about Yaadein for a long time now; it was aired on Doordarshan when I was a child, and I remember my parents watching it. I wasn’t allowed, because this is one of those rare Hindi films from that era which had an A certificate. I do recall, though, my parents telling me that it was a unique film, with only Sunil Dutt in it.

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Howrah Bridge (1958)

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Aaiye meherbaan baithiye jaan-e-jaan, and Mera naam Chin Chin Choo. Two great actresses, two iconic songs.

When I was doing the Helen tributes last month, I was reminded of Mera naam Chin Chin Choo all over again—and remembered, too, that I had never reviewed Howrah Bridge on this blog. It has also been many years since I last watched the film (before I launched Dusted Off), so I decided it was high time I revisited this.

Howrah Bridge begins very far from the bridge, and in fact from Kolkata: in Rangoon, where Prem Kumar (Ashok Kumar) finds his father (Brahm Bhardwaj) in a flap. Daddy is distraught because Prem’s elder brother Madan (Chaman Puri, in a cameo role) has run off from home, taking with him an invaluable family heirloom, a dragon which has been in the family for generations. We later discover that the dragon was crafted in China many centuries ago, and from there came to be owned by the king of Burma, after which it passed into the possession of Prem’s family.

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Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948)

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This little-known British film was recommended to me by YouTube, and given that I am a fan of train films (The Lady Vanishes is a favourite, as are Murder on the Orient Express and North-West Frontier), I decided I had to watch.

The story starts off with a bang (actually, almost literally: there’s a fatal gunshot in the very first scene). In an unnamed embassy in Paris, a party is in progress, when one of the guests, a Captain Zurta (Albert Lieven) slips out of the ballroom, makes his way to one of the more secluded rooms in the embassy, and having broken into a safe there, purloins a diary. He is caught red-handed by a footman who enters just then.

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Ten of my favourite flower songs

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Over the years, I’ve done several songs that focus on my love—and, it would seem, the love of some film-makers and lyricists, too—for nature. I have done lists of nature songs; tree songs; and bird songs. Over the years, too, I’ve several times been told I should do a list on flower songs. I’ve always ducked that one, because Harvey, years ago, did a superb post on flower songs, and how I could I possibly hope to even match, let alone excel, a botanist writing about flower songs?!

But over the past couple of years, my interest in flowers has grown exponentially, and while I may not know a hundredth of what Harvey knows, at least I can depend upon my enthusiasm to steer me through. So here goes.

Flowers are, to put it bluntly, the sexual part of a plant. Contained in them are the female and male reproductive organs, plus (often) nectar, to entice pollinators such as bees, butterflies, bats, other insects, small birds, and so on.

Flowers are beautiful, flowers are useful (there would be no fruit without flowers), and human beings have admired and used flowers in a myriad ways since time immemorial. We’ve decorated with them, we’ve used their designs to fashion everything from jewellery to embroidery. We’ve painted and carved them, we’ve celebrated them in literature and in song.

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Great Expectations (1946)

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Charles Dickens was one of those authors whose books, I think, might be very difficult to adapt to cinema. Most of his works have a plethora of characters, and characters, too, who are described in great detail: people who play an important part in the proceedings. The books are long and involved, and there’s a style to them that would be more suited, I’ve always thought, to a television series rather than a film.

But every now and then, there comes along a fine adaptation of a Dickens novel that manages to retain the essence of the original, and translate it effectively to screen. Adapted for the screen (along with several other people) by David Lean, and directed by him, Great Expectations was a film I’d approached with some trepidation, wondering how it would work as a film.

The story begins with orphaned Philip Pirrip ‘Pip’ (Tony Wager) running along near the marshes that border the village he lives in. Pip’s parents died years ago, and Pip has been brought up by his very hot-tempered, sharp-tongued sister, Mrs Joe Gargery (Freda Jackson) and her husband, the blacksmith (Bernard Miles). What Mrs Gargery lacks by way of human kindness, Joe makes up for: he’s a sweet, gentle, wise man, who is very fond of Pip.

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Zindagi (1964)

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The main reason I watched this film was because of the songs, which include some very good ones. And Vyjyanthimala, whom I invariably enjoy watching. The two male leads, Rajendra Kumar and Raj Kumar, are not favourites of mine, but they aren’t absolutely unbearable either. And there was a star cast of several other people I like, such as Prithviraj Kapoor and Helen. Ramanand Sagar, who wrote and directed Zindagi, also has to his credit one film I really like (Aankhen) and some (Aarzoo, Ghoonghat, Charas) that I don’t mind too much. I figured there might be enough here for me to enjoy.

The story begins with Beena (Vyjyanthimala) coming home to her mother (Leela Chitnis) with the news that she has found a job, finally. Ma is happy, until Beena tells her what the job is: Beena is now a theatre actress. Ma is very upset and goes into a long harangue of how it’s better to be poor than to be in the theatre; their name will be mud, blah blah.

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