Book Review: DIRECTOR’S CHAIR

DIRECTOR’ CHAIR
Hindi Cinema’s Golden Age
By Manek Premchand
Published by: Blue Pencil 2024
ISBN: 978-81-956660-8-9; Pages: 571
Price (Paperback on Amazon): ₹750

Manek Premchand is a familiar name to the readers of Songs Of Yore. He has written a number of books on Hindi film music and music personalities. The title of this book and the picture on the cover of a chair with ‘DIRECTOR’ written on it makes it clear that it is about film directors.

If you take films as broadly comprising two verticals – creative and business – the director is the master of the first part, while the producer, who has the purse-strings and who is concerned with box office sales and profits, is in-charge of the business part of film-making. It would appear that a film should be identified more with the producer as he is the ‘owner’ of the product, but when the audience sees it, it impacts them as a creative work: the acting, story-line, its treatment, cinematography, music, editing etc. Even during the studio era, many classic films were identified with the great directors. This was formalised as ‘auteur theory’ by French film critics and directors like Truffaut and Godard which held that a great director does not merely ‘stage’ a script or a novel on to the screen, but he infuses it with his distinct touches and nuances. Thus he has the greatest influence on the film, making him the ‘auteur’ (author) of the film.

This massive book contains mention of over 530 directors from the silent era to 1980. The author has divided the directors into three segments: The Early Masters; The Significant Virtuosos; and The Honourable Others. In addition, the book contains other sections titled: Special Notes; Index of Directors; and Bibliography. Not all the directors in the book get equal space. Some are just mentioned in a list of names. Some are covered in a few lines or paragraphs. Some whose contribution is immense are described in a number of pages. This is how you would expect it to be.

The Introduction briefly describes the process of film making and the central role of the director in the process. Manekji mentions the challenging task he has taken upon himself. His main interest and books have been on the audio world – singers, lyricists and composers. While sitting in the recording room the author wondered how it would be to venture into the visual world where the director straddles as the Master of the Universe. He  also states that at times there is a blurring of roles between the producer, director, music director, hero when personalities exercise influence beyond their defined roles.

The Early Masters starts with Dadasaheb Phalke, the father of India cinema. His expertise was in painting and photography. He got obsessed with films after watching some silent films in France on the life of Christ. On return he made a documentary of Delhi Durbar and, subsequently, by borrowing heavily and pawning wife’s jewellery, he made what was credited as the first Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra (1913). Its success spurred him to make more mythologicals. There is a controversy if the credit for the first feature film should go to Raja Pundalik (1912) directed by RG Torne a year earlier. As this film had an English cinematographer, the credit was given to Raja Harishchandra, being a completely Indian enterprise. Some pioneer Dadasaheb Phalke was!

The next profile is of another milestone man, Ardeshir Irani, who is credited with making the first talkies, Alam Ara (1931), which pipped Madan Theatres of Calcutta to the post by less than a month. These great studios straddled both the silent and talkies era. The transition from silent to talkies was viewed with some scepticism, as it was also in Hollywood. Finally, Irani had his day. Though no print of Alam Ara exists, De de khuda ke naam par de de sung by WM Khan is etched in history as the first ever song of Hindi films. (WM Khan happened to reprise this song much later in his own voice, so we are familiar with the tune.)

The profiles of the early masters in this section, such as Baburao Painter, BN Sircar (New Theatres), Chandulal Shah (Ranjit Movietone), Debaki Bose, Himanshu Rai (Bombay Talkies), Mohan Bhavnani, PC Barua etc. show a common thread that there was no clear break between silent and talkies. The early pioneers after making talkies continued making silent films, too, for some years post-1931.

Thus this section is a veritable history of the infancy of our cinema. You also get interesting trivia and idiosyncrasies of the early Masters. For example, the actor-director PC Barua, who was from a princely family, had a leopard as a pet. Homi Wadia wanted to marry the Fearless Nadia, but his mother could not brook his son marrying a firangi Hunterwali (she had a son too from her previous marriage!). They waited for decades, and married only after his mother passed away. They were into their fifties at the time of marriage. A very poignant balance between filial love and romantic love.

The book also describes in detail the disturbing times in the wake of the World War II when the German director and technicians of Bombay Talkies were first interred and, subsequently, deported to Germany. This shocked Himanshu Rai a great deal and he died on 16 May 1940. This sparked an internecine war within the Bombay Talkies. Devika Rani tried to manage it under the dual control of Amiya Chakravarty and Sashadhar Mukherjee. This also didn’t last long. Ironically, the super success of Kismet (1943) brought the differences to a breaking point. Sashadhar Mukherjee along with his brother-in-law Ashok Kumar and other associates broke out to form their own production house, Filmistan.

While on this, Manekji’s narrative suggests that Sashadhar took the help of Ashok Kumar, who was already well-settled in Bombay Talkies, to get a foothold in the Studio. My recollection from readings is the other way round; it was Sashadhar who helped Ashok Kumar, and his other brothers to get entry into Bombay Talkies and the film line.

The Significant Virtuosos contains substantive profiles of Amiya Chakravarty (he made appearance in the earlier section too), AR Kardar, Asit Sen (not the comedian; but the comedian Asit Sen who was senior, also directed a couple of films), Baburao Patel (of FilmIndia fame), Basu Bhattacharya, Basu Chatterjee, Bimal Roy, BR Chopra, Chetan Anand, Dev Anand, Gulzar, Guru Dutt, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, K Asif, KA Abbas, Kamal Amrohi, Kidar Sharma, Mehboob Khan, Nitin Bose, Raj Kapoor, Sohrab Modi, V Shantaram, Vijay Anand, Yash Chopra etc. This is a Roll of Honour of all the great directors and others.

This section is the meat of the book. The profiles are not only descriptive sketches of their lives and works, but are also about their styles and nuances – by illustrations from their famous films. For example, while talking about Seema (1955), Manekji describes how Amiya Chakravarty’s camera shows Nutan’s moral dilemma by focusing on the coin on the street, and her feet and her face. She is hungry, she looks around, since no one is watching she covers the coin, then retracts her feet. Finally, she gives the coin to the urchins. Similarly, you get to understand Bimal Roy’s Point of View shot in the climax of Do Bigha Zameen (1953) when the rickshaw-puller Balraj Sahni is made to race against another rickshaw faster and faster for money. The wheels of the rickshaw start coming off, and you hear his ‘aah’. You know what has happened, but instead of focussing on the accident, Bimal Roy shows wobbling Victoria Memorial. The audience sees the scene through the injured rickshaw puller’s eyes.

AR Kardar was among the very few people who directed films at all the three centres, Lahore, Bombay and Calcutta. Post-Partition, Kardar along with Mehboob Khan went over to Pakistan, but soon they were disillusioned and came back to Bombay to have a very successful run.

The Honourable Others mentions a number of others, some with a few lines, but they are hardly left-overs. The names cover a wide span from the vintage era to the current time. It includes people like Jaddanbai, Leela Chitnis, Master Vinayak (Nanda’s father), Motilal, Prithviraj Kapoor, to Govind Nihalani, Muzaffar Ali etc. In fact you can quarrel with the author on his choice of celebrities for longer profiles and lesser importance to some you may consider more illustrious.

The last section Special Notes packs a lot of interesting information and trivia in 18 pages. One interesting trivia is about the song Dukh bhare din beete re bhaiya (Mother India, 1957), sung by Rafi, Manna Dey, Asha Bhosle and Shamshad Begum. You would imagine the song to be picturised on two men and two women. But in the first part Raj Kumar lip-synchs both Rafi and Manna Dey, and Nargis, both Asha Bhosle and Shamshad Begum. Similarly, in the second part of the song Rajendra Kumar and his lover Kumkum, each get to lip-synch the same two singers. Shakeel Badayuni-Naushad-Mehboob Khan committing such errors! Greatness does not necessarily mean perfection.

Many readers of this blog have been requesting for reviews of interesting books relating to films and music. DIRECTOR’S CHAIR fills up an important gap, and is a worthwhile acquisition. You would like to browse through it again and again. Both the author and the publisher, Blue Pencil deserve our compliments.