Filmi Geek

Suhaag (1979)

सुहाग

Manmohan Desai has a knack for satisfying masala.  His movies are packed to the gills with his choice wacky elements and overloaded symbols - brothers separated in childhood, medically improbable blindness, gentleman rogues, grudges held for decades by heroes and villains alike.  Suhaag ("good fortune," particularly the sort of good fortune supposedly enjoyed by a married woman) is no exception, and if you check your brain at the door you will be rewarded with an amusing and goofy masala escape.

Durga (Nirupa Roy) is ruined when her husband, a gangster called Vikram (Amjad Khan), refuses to recognize their marriage and rejects their twin infant sons.  Matters get worse for Durga when a rival gangster Jaggi (Kader Khan) kidnaps one of the babies and sells him to a small-time crook (Jeevan) who makes his living exploiting child beggars.  Durga does her best to raise her remaining boy on her own, and he grows into Kishen (Shashi Kapoor), a devoted son and police officer of sparkling integrity.  The other boy, raised among petty thieves, becomes Amit (Amitabh Bachchan), a drunk and a con-artist.  Coincidence brings Amit together with Kishen and Durga, as he helps engineer a romance between Kishen and Anu (Parveen Babi), a sweet-hearted student who falls for Kishen.  For his part, Amit is in love with Basanti (Rekha), a recalcitrant tawaif with a secret connection to Anu. And things become very tangled indeed when Vikram resurfaces - he hires Amit to assassinate the meddling police inspector Kishen, unaware that either young man is his son. 

That plot, such as it is, is almost more trouble to describe than it is worth, something Suhaag has in common with other Manmohan Desai films like Amar Akbar Anthony and Parvarish.  It's enough to hang on to while it's happening, though.  After all, crazy coincidences are the bread and butter of masala - especially coincidences involving long-lost family members, which are particularly numerous here.  And for all its adherence to masala formula, Suhaag does offer a few rarer treats. For instance, Rekha's Basanti is one of the most appealing characters I've ever seen her play.  I am not a fan of Rekha's ephemeral, will-o-the-wisp persona, and in Basanti she offers a gutsy, earthy, worldly woman in sharp constrast to the aloof tawaif she played in Muqaddar ka sikandar - Basanti could have been a repeat performance of that character, and I was delighted that she was not.  

Durga, too, is a departure from Nirupa Roy's typical "Nahin!"-screaming maa roles - at least for the first half of Suhaag.  There, she is bold and forceful, taking charge and muttering snarky commentary; the sequence of scenes in which she meets Anu and tries to arrange Anu's marriage to Kishen is particularly wonderful.  Unfortunately, Durga's story is bookended by simpering devotion to her singularly undeserving husband Vikram.  This is Suhaag's great weakness; the movie lacks Amar Akbar Anthony's charming syncretism and paeans to Indian unity, as well as Parvarish's wry commentary on nature vs. nurture.  As a fan of Manmohan Desai's hearty message-masala, I felt baited and switched when the promising Durga was in some ways more Sita than Durga. 

Still Suhaag is fun when masala is on the menu - nothing else quite matches the buddy chemistry of Shashi and Amitabh ("Shashitabh," as the jodi is affectionately known in among Bollybloggers), who alone are worth watching for, and they plus the splendid songs ensure a satisfying, if silly, experience.  Of these, Parveen Babi's intoxicated turn in " Main to beghar hoon" and the buddy-jodi song "Ae yaar sun" are standouts, along with the hysterical "Tere rab ne bana di jodi," in which Amitabh and Rekha dance bhangra in disguise.

Gumnaam (1965)

गुमनाम

Gumnaam ("unnamed, anonymous") is a slapdash, inadequately scripted, totally non-suspenseful mystery. It is nevertheless great fun to watch, thanks entirely to a passel of thoroughly entertaining songs and fun comic performances by the likes of Helen and Mehmood.  

A group of strangers at a masquerade party are delighted when they are chosen, apparently at random, as winners of an exciting foreign vacation.  The trip gets off to a rough start, however, when an emergency forces their plane to land in a remote wilderness.  And things take an even more sinister turn when the plane takes off, leaving them stranded.  Soon they find an isolated mansion, tended by a valet (Mehmood) who knows their name and seems to have been expecting them.  A mysterious diary in the mansion reveals the reason they are there:  It says they are each responsible for an unjust death, and will be forced to pay the ultimate price.  And sure enough, one by one the travelers begin to die violently ... and the murderer must be among them.  

Gumnaam takes Agatha Chrtistie's Ten Little Indians as its inspiration. It follows that classic story fairly faithfully, but Gumnaam is very light on the plot details that made the original tight and compelling.  There is no real payoff - the killer's motivation for assembling this particular group is stated, but with a few exceptions we are told neither whose deaths they caused, nor why the killer thinks justice is his responsibility.

One result of the slapdash plotting is an utter lack of suspense, which is compounded by the travelers for the most part not behaving as if they fear for their lives. The other filmi touches, like Mehmood's broad South Indian caricature and other roles (like Pran's and Madan Puri's) played for laughs, don't bolster the story.  But unlike Raat aur din, where filmi touches detract from what could have been a taut psychological drama, in Gumnaam they are the saving grace of what would otherwise be a dreadful film. 

The best thing about Gumnaam is the film's songs, most of which are upbeat, splendid fun.  Helen, as one of the doomed guests, gets three of these, including Mehmood's fantastic dream sequence, an adorable beachside romp, and the rare treat of a drunken buddy-song in which the revelers are both women (Helen and Nanda). And no discussion of the songs of Gumnaam is complete without mention of the wild, mod goodness of "Jaan pehechaan ho".

Gumnaam is a masala film, and so of course a romance thread is woven through as well.  This thread is wasted, though, on the film's milquetoast hero and heroine, Manoj Kumar and Nanda.  Greta (of Memsaab Story; thanks to her for the screencap) commented that Gumnaam would have been a totally different movie if Shammi Kapoor had been the hero, and I have to agree.  It could possibly have been an all-time classic on the level of Teesri Manzil or Kashmir ki kali - with Shammi as the hero and Asha Parekh, Sharmila Tagore, or really anyone else as the heroine.  Nanda and Manoj's songs are entertaining enough, but they pale in comparison to the other songs in the film; Manoj attempts Shammi-like moves, but even though he's younger and slightly less chubby, he lacks the energy and charisma that Shammi brought to his best movies.

In the end, though, even to critique a movie like Gumnaam is to ask too much of it. It is thoroughly amusing while it's happening - at its best moments, it shines - and that's all it sets out to do.    

Bombay to Goa (1972)

It is sometimes commented that if you took all the extraneous side-elements out of a masala movie and focused on the plot, you'd be left with a streamlined tale that would be done in an hour. The road movie Bombay to Goa goes the other way - it dispenses with a plot almost entirely, leaving little but gags and silliness, and it clocks in at less than two hours.  While it lasts, though, it's a pretty enjoyable ride.

Mala (Aruna Irani) is beside herself with excitement when a man called Sharma (Shatrughan Sinha) promises to make her a movie star.  Her parents are not quite as thrilled, though; her father (Nasir Hussain) pops a gasket when he sees her picture in a flashy magazine.  His concern is to lock up her marriage to the young man they have chosen for her, Ravi (Amitabh Bachchan).  In the dead of night, Mala steals all her parents' cash and runs away to Sharma, handing over the bulk of the money for his bogus "production".  She soon learns that Sharma is not what he appears to be, and after she witnesses his murder of a compatriot over the loot he swindled from her, she flees.  She finds herself on a bus to Goa, under the care of its conductor, Khanna (Mehmood), and surrounded by an outrageous and rag-tag bunch of fellow-travelers.  Much wacky hijinks ensue.

Unfettered as it is by the requirements of a well-developed story, Bombay to Goa is free to focus on its humor, which derives for the most part from broad comedy strokes - slapstick and stereotypes.  The mish-mash of ethnic and regional archetypes paints a bus-bound microcosm of a nation that feels a bit like Mr. and Mrs. Iyer on crack.  But they are an awful lot of fun, and diverse and cleverly-rendered enough that it doesn't feel like ticking off the boxes on an Indian stereotype bingo card. Very funny comic performances by Mehmood, his real-life brother Anwar Ali as Conductor Khanna's bus-driver brother Rajesh (get it - Rajesh?  Khanna?), and the likes of Manorama, Lalita Pawar, Yusuf Khan, and Keshto Mukherjee as passengers ensure that the laughs keep coming. 

I'm a big fan of Amitabh Bachchan too, of course, and his earlier films are a particular pleasure.  Here he is in fine form - though I wish there had been more of him - especially in the manic song "Dekho na hai".  (His chasing down the bus on his motorcycle to rescue his lady from peril is almost certainly referenced by Arjun Rampal's similar ride in Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd., another film that packs a busload of diverse Indian personae off to Goa for comedy fun.)  A delightful cameo by the adorable Kishore Kumar - with a song, of course - rounds out the fun.  It may be light on substance, but all in all, Bombay to Goa is a thoroughly entertaining way to kill a couple of hours.   

Chhupa Rustam (1973)

छुपा रस्तम

It's not quite as stylishly perfect as Jewel Thief, nor does it achieve the sublime mod-noir heights of Teesri manzil.  But if you are a fan of Vijay Anand's unique brand of caper film, Chhupa Rustam (perhaps most pithily translated here as "hep cat," but used to mean a person with a hidden or unexpected talent) is definitely one to look out for.

Greedy Vikram Singh and his hapless son Bahadur are searching for ancient treasures in the mountains of Himanchal Pradesh.  To leverage their position Vikram Singh and Bahadur have captured the wife and son of a millionaire who holds the digging rights to the valley where the ancient city is nestled - hoping to force the millionaire's daughter Ritu (Hema Malini) to marry Bahadur, giving them access to the gold.   Ritu capitulates to the cruel captors' demands, only to be spirited away from her own wedding by the qawwal hired to perform there, Natwar (Dev Anand).  Sparks fly between Natwar and Ritu despite her anger and mistrust of him - but soon it becomes clear that he is not what he appears to be, and her warm feelings for him are not misplaced.  Together with Natwar's sidekick Jimmy Fernandes (Vijay Anand), Natwar and Ritu plot to give Vikram Singh and Bahadur their just deserts. 

The plot is unmemorable, but it is of little import; style and fun are the raisons d'etre of Chhupa Rustam.  As the performers romp through their roles they seem a hair's breadth away from bursting into irreverant giggles.  Hema Malini is as adorable as ever, and Dev Anand once again somehow manages to be an engaging hero despite being old enough to be her father - and despite the air of dirty old man that lingers about him every time he unleashes his leering grin. Prem Chopra's Bahadur (the name means "brave" or "gallant") is anything but; he's a delightfully hateable mix of smarmy and stupid, tough-talking and weak.  

But the film's real treat is Vijay Anand himself, who not only lends his directorial vision to the film (see Greta's review for a generous look at the film's fantabulous style) but is also laugh-out-loud hysterical as Natwar's big-hearted pal Jimmy.  He falls in love with Bahadur's moll (the delectably curvaceous Bindu) and the pair's two scene-stealing songs are among the highlights of the movie.  Actually all the film's songs are delightful, including this one in which Natwar wins over a recalcitrant Ritu with his ode to the humble bedbug.

Mr. India (1987)

What happens when two masters of populist, allegorical, entertaining screenwriting and a gifted, creative, intellectual director put their heads together with the goal of creating a film that is over-the-top even compared to the most outrageous masala Hindi films have to offer?   Mr. India is what happens.  Screenwriters Salim-Javed and director Shekhar Kapur, with some intrepid help from a terrific cast, pulled out every stop in this all-out goofy entertainer.  It's self-conscious, it's ridiculous, and it's riotous fun - but there's a patriotic moral, too. 

Arun Verma (Anil Kapoor) is a musician with a cheerful disposition who looks after a houseful of adorable orphans.  When his natural charm ceases to satisfy the shopkeepers and landlords from whom he wrangles rice and credit, he sets out to find himself a paying guest to supplement his income.  He rents a room to a persnickety, child-hating reporter named Seema (Sridevi) and they proceed to get on one another's nerves.  Soon Arun learns that his father, a scientist who died when Arun was a small boy, had been killed by some goons intent on stealing an invisibility formula the scientist had devised.  Now the goons are back, at the behest of their despotic boss, Mogambo (Amrish Puri), and they want not only the invisibility formula but all of India to boot.  Arun learns of the terrorist tactics of Mogambo's thugs, who use such nefarious tools as tainted food supplies and explosive-rigged toys to sow the seeds of fear in the populace, and he decides to use the invisibility formula to mete out justice against Mogambo's army of evildoers, transforming himself into Mr. India, the invisible avenger of the people.

The best parts of Mr. India are the moments that are crafted with no purpose other than to showcase the stars' first-class shtick.  In one delightful sequence, for example, Sridevi launches into an extended Charlie Chaplin impression that highlights her talent for adorable physical comedy; in others, she flings her dangerous curves across the screen in both a comical dance sequence and a passionate one.  Amrish Puri is at his bug-eyed, scene-chewingest best in every one of Mogambo's scenes, preening and strutting and ingeiously crafting a seemingly limitless number of ways to utter the villain's signature phrase, "Mogambo khush hua." ("Mogambo is pleased.")  These elements are brazenly, unabashedly entertaining in the manner in which Hindi films are particularly excellent; it is art without artifice.  Even the big-hearted sweetness Anil Kapoor shows nurturing his passel of adorable orphans is calculated more to win the hearts of the audience than to support the story. 

But for all its wanton crowd-pleasing, Mr. India is still a Salim-Javed film, and so the masala can be expected to be served up with an edge and with a generous side helping of social message.  The former manifests in Salim-Javed's willingness to kill even some of their most loveable characters; the latter in Arun Verma's declaration, as the invisible force called Mr. India, of the power of the "aam hindustani," the ordinary Indian.  The film's central message that larger-than-life forces of bloodshed and terror - represented by the larger-than-life Mogambo - can be stopped by the invisible yet undeniable power of the compassionate Indian citizen who looks out for the interests of his compatriots.  Mogambo's critical error is to presume that Arun Verma loves his own life more than he loves his country; Arun's patriotism and his love for every citizen of India, is Mogambo's downfall.  That's a heavy message indeed, that the commitment of the aam hindustani can defeat the devil himself; Mr. India works by lightening the load, delivering it in an outlandish and fun package. 

Mr. India was my (long overdue) first Sridevi film, and for the record I absolutely can see what all the fuss is about.  The three segments mentioned above - the Charlie Chaplin scene, the fantastic comedy number "Hawa Hawai," and the sensual song "Kaate nahin kate yeh din yeh raat" together represent a very nice sampling of her abilities.  She is adorable and precise, thrillingly sexy and at the same time uproariously funny.  It is Sridevi's misfortune that she reigned during a particularly bleak period of Hindi films, but I am nevertheless eager for more of her. 

Om Shanti Om (2007)

ओम शांति ओम

God bless Farah Khan.

This nervy director proves in her reincarnation saga Om Shanti Om what I already suspected after Main hoon na - that she knows better than anyone how to use Shah Rukh Khan.  Om Shanti Om is not without its warts, but it's a solidly entertaining film, pure modern masala in the tradition of (and with cheeky homage to) the likes of Manmohan Desai and other masala greats of the past. 

Om Prakash Makhija (Shah Rukh Khan) is a two-bit actor, struggling to rise above his junior artiste status in the competitive melee of the 1970s Bombay film scene.  Advised by his sidekick Pappu (Shreyas Talpade), Om throws himself into his small parts, dreaming that someday, he'll be a revered hero.  He has other dreams as well - he is in love with a young superstar heroine, Shantipriya (Deepika Padukone), and spends his free time pining before her three-storey effigy on a film hoarding.  After a mishap on a film set, Om bravely saves Shanti from a fire, and the two become friends.  Shanti has dark secrets, though, some of which involve the shady producer Mukesh Mehra (Arjun Rampal), and these lead to a calamity from which Om cannot save Shanti - or even himself.  On his death Om is reborn into the body of Om Kapoor, the scion of a filmi dynasty, who grows up to be a spoiled, vapid diva of a superstar known in the biz by his initials, OK.  Circumstances conspire to jog OK's memory of his past life, and he resolves to right the wrongs that led to Om Prakash and Shanti's premature demise.

Om Shanti Om is stuffed to the gills with self-referential humor and filmi references.  The jokes come fast and thick, especially in the first half, and some of them are ingenious.  A constant barrage of filmi jokes might or might not get tiring to someone who grew up with Hindi films, but to me it is a pure delight even to be able to get as many of the jokes as I do.  There are hilarious spoofs of filmi conventions and filmi lore, clever uses of footage from classic films, and an absolutely uproarious Filmfare Awards ceremony in which nothing is sacred - everything is skewered, from Shah Rukh Khan's penchant for bubblegum romance to the recent trend toward sequel-mania to industry nepotism to the big egos of the stars.  Even my beloved Shabana Azmi is not above the fray, joining a lengthy parade of superstars who give cute, self-deprecating cameo appearances. 

And at the center of all the self-referential humor is Shah Rukh Khan himself, who cuts loose with all the body language and exaggerated range of facial expressions that his fans find so charming and the rest of us so irritating.  But in Om Shanti Om, subtlety is not the order of the day, and Shah Rukh's special style fits right in, working well as broad, scene-chewing, physical comedy; as his character notes:  "overacting mere khandan mein hai" - overacting runs in my family.  This is the special intelligence of Farah Khan, and it's what makes her movies with Shah Rukh Khan great watching even for this non-fan - she knows not to use him in earnest.  His excess of lover-boy intensity may induce eyerolls in a romance, but it's perfect for a Farah Khan musical dream sequence.  Same for his lip-quivery emoting, which doesn't always pass for acting in a serious movie; it's perfect in comedy, as in the hysterical sequence where Om tries to tell Shanti his feelings - his poetically-formed thoughts come out in voice-over, while his eyebrows wobble and lips tremble, unable to form the words. 

For all its side-splitting cleverness, the film has been criticized as a series of genius bits in search of a soul, and this criticism is not without merit.  The reincarnation-revenge plot doesn't offer much to sink one's teeth into, and yet the film's second half drags in service of its resolution.  And, as Beth points out, as fearless and terrific a woman as Farah Khan is, she doesn't give her heroine a whole lot to do.  Deepika Padukone, here in her debut, is pretty and elegant as Shanti, and serviceable in her acting, showing the right mixture of innocence and melancholy.  She fades in the second half, though; she has a few comic turns that she handles adequately but there's little of substance in her role.  Arjun Rampal as the villainous Mukesh fades as well; an amusing homage to slick Danny Denzongpa characters in the first half, he recedes in the second half, losing his villainous edge just as good storytelling would demand that he get nastier. 

If such weaknesses deny Om Shanti Om masterpiece status, though, they don't detract from the good solid fun to be had throughout most of this stylish, witty comedy.  After an outstanding opening it will surely go on to reach blockbuster status in India, and it deserves to be seen and enjoyed; any fan of Hindi films should find something to laugh at within.  And I remain a steadfast fan of Farah Khan and her special cheeky brand of spectacle.  Here's to many more. 

Kashmir ki kali (1964)

कश्मीर की कली

When discussing Kashmir ki kali ("Blossom of Kashmir"), it's essential to get this out of the way:  The plot is unimportant.  The twists are absurd, the coincidences unlikely; the storyline swirls in the film's second half into over-the-top madness. But Kashmir ki kali is a complete delight nevertheless, thoroughly fun and stupendously entertaining.   

After Rajeev Lal (Shammi Kapoor) inherits the reins of his family's massive industrial empire, his mother decides that it is time for his marriage.  Rajeev, uninterested in surrendering his bachelorhood, flees to the family's lakeside bungalow in Kashmir.  There he meets a local flower-seller, Champa (Sharmila Tagore), and instantly falls in love.  He woos her aggressively, but to avoid intimidating her he hides his identity, telling her that he is Rajeev Lal's driver.  Champa warms to him quickly.   But their romance is thwarted by a scheming lumberman, Mohan (Pran), who wants Champa for himself.  He blackmails Champa's father (Nasir Hussain) by threatening to disclose dirty secrets of Champa's parentage.  But there are surprises in store for everyone before the rivalry is resolved.

The pleasures of Kashmir ki kali are entirely star-driven.  I'm not completely on the Shammi Kapoor train - he's too pudgy and spastic to really have much appeal for me.  Here, though, he is quite loveable, chasing Sharmila with an intensity that is entirely sweet, not creepy-stalkerish as filmi romance can sometimes be.  His comedy antics as he avoids engagements by feigning drunkenness - or even madness when expedient - are genuinely - sometimes hysterically - funny.  His gyrations seem spastic but they are clearly not uncontrolled - he is talented at physical comedy, and uses it to great effect in set pieces and songs alike. 

And if Shammi is amusingly charming, Sharmila - here in her first Hindi film - is adorable beyond compare.  Though her Champa is an ingenue, she's spirited and game for adventure.  Some of the most delightful scenes come when she submits to Rajeev's antics, as in the fabulous balle-balle song in which they give Mohan the slip by spontaneously joining a dance troupe at the local fair.  I've been nursing a growing crush on Sharmila Tagore and this film was just the thing to goose it along; she's good enough to eat as Champa, wearing traditional Kashmiri costumes and smiling with delight and wonder at the whirling dervish of romance that has burst into her life.

Indeed, the songs are far and away the best thing about Kashmir ki kali, the delightful songs come fast and thick in the O.P. Nayyar soundtrack, and each picturization is more colorful and energetic than the last.  Even if I never watch this film straight through a second time, I know I I'll be watching the songs again and again.  Many of them, like Rajeev's anthem "Kisi na kisi se" and his manic declaration of impatient love "Tarif karun kya uski," in addition to the appeal of the Shammi and Sharmila, also showcase the unparalleled beauty  of the film's uncredited star - the gorgeous Kashmiri landscape itself.  It is the songs and their picturizations, more than anything else, that makes Kashmir ki kali a sparkling gem.  (See Sanket's concurrent post at Bollywood Music Club for more.)

The Great Gambler (1979)

With its exotic locales, scheming baddies, long-lost brothers, nonsensical plot, and smitten heroines, there is little to set this film apart from dozens of other masala movies of its era.  Yet the charisma of its stars - Amitabh Bachchan in a dashing double role, and Zeenat Aman as smoking hot as ever - is enough to seat The Great Gambler solidly in the category of light, fun timepass.   

Jai (Amitabh) is a gambler, a man with the power to make the cards dance for him, hired by casino owner Ratan Das (Madan Puri) to separate rich businessmen from their money.  Ratan Das hatches a scheme to marry Jai to Mala (Neetu Singh), the daughter of another wealthy businessman (Iftekhar), and sends Jai to Lisbon to meet her.  Jai doesn't know that Ratan Das is engineering a scheme to steal the plans for the government's powerful new defense technology and sell it to the highest bidder.  His contacts in this scheme include a gang boss named Saxena (Utpal Dutt), whose henchmen Ramesh (Prem Chopra) and Marconi (Sujit Kumar) carry out his dirty work. 

Meanwhile, a police officer named Vijay (also Amitabh) is hot on the trail of Saxena's gang and eager to recover the stolen secrets.  Vijay is a dead ringer for Jai, of course, and when Saxena's gang realizes this they - with the help of their moll, Shabnam (Zeenat Aman) strongarm Jai into taking over Vijay's identity and helping them complete their transaction.  While Jai is diverted from his journey to meet his betrothed Mala, she finds Vijay instead and - once she's mistaken him for Jai - sparks fly. 

The story is much less coherent than that description, with numerous details, twists, and complexities that don't fit together and make little sense.  But the plot is not where The Great Gambler's entertainment lies.  It lies rather in odd scenes and fun moments, driven by Amitabh and Zeenat looking their best.  The henchman Marconi, who lives in Rome, speaks Hindi with a lilting Italian accent.  Jai and Vijay, once united, pull of a hysterical bamboozle in the guise of an impulsive emir and his bumbling secretary.  There is a stomach-churning fight scene that takes place in a meat locker.  Zeenat melts the screen with a hotter than hot belly dance in "O Rukasa mera naam".  Asha Bhosle sings the plaintive "Do lafzon ki hai," gorgeously picturized on a Venetian gondola.  Moments like these are the glue that holds The Great Gambler together when the plot gets too nonsensical or the chase scenes and fight scenes too repetitive. 

Amitabh did not do enough with his double role - it was too difficult to tell his characters apart, unless there were some linguistic cues that escaped my rudimentary Hindi comprehension.  But that didn't detract too much from the fun of watching Amitabh just do his thing.  If you're a fan of his, or of Zeenat's, there are worse ways to spend a rainy afternoon than watching The Great Gambler.   

Fakira (1976)

फ़क़ीरा

Following close on the heels of Parvarish, my investigation of the masala portion of Shabana Azmi's resume continues with Fakira.  This tale, with its overtones of the legend of Robin Hood, has all the elements of what Beth would call the Recommended Masala Allowance:  brothers separated in childhood, a roguish hero with a heart of gold, a plucky heroine who yields to the demands of her heart, and a bit of social commentary in the form of a corrupt politician who gets what's coming to him.  Fakira takes a few interesting twists on those standard tropes, though, and that sets it apart among its masala brethren - that, plus a hearty helping of young Shabana that is just as tasty a meal as Parvarish. 

A pair of brothers are separated in childhood when their parents are killed by smugglers.  One of the brothers grows up to be the bandit known as Fakira (Shashi Kapoor).  Fakira, who takes target practice on a dummy bearing a placard reading "smuglar hamare dushman hain" - smugglers are our enemies - makes it his mission to redistribute among the poor the loot from his attacks on rich bandits; but money stolen from the government he returns tot he police.  Meanwhile the other brother grows up to be Toofan (Danny Denzongpa), a heavy-for-hire employed by a corrupt politician to put a swift end to Fakira's career. 

Geeta (Shabana Azmi) - or Neeta, her name keeps changing - is a police inspector's daughter and a police officer herself  who infiltrates Fakira's gang with the intention of bringing him to justice.  Her plan is to seduce him to gain his confidence, but she soon finds herself confuzzled by Fakira's Shashilicious charm - she's really in love with him, and, before she knows what hit her, really married to him too.  All of this is to the distress of Neelam (Aruna Irani), one of Fakira's sidekicks who has tried, repeatedly and unsuccessfully) to seduce him for herself.  While Neeta makes up her mind as to whether she's with Fakira or against him, Neelam takes matters into her own hands, forcing a confrontation between Fakira and his nemesis.

Fakira is principally just a good, solid masala timepass.  Fakira and his gang don disguises as he pulls off his capers, so there's plenty of comedy antics to go around, and the songs are light and fun.  The bad guy relies on Rube Goldberg-esque plots in attempts to do away with Fakira, leaving ample opportunity for heroic, exciting escapes.  And there's even an acrobatic catfight between Neeta/Geeta and Neelam.  Even in this kind of potboiler fare, though, Shashi and Shabana are understated in comparison to some of their contemporaries, giving Fakira a somewhat more restrained feel than the most outrageous films of the era.  The only unfortunate element of the film's plotting is that its heroine, Neeta/Geeta, is a non-factor in the film's resolution; for a character who started out with such promise - a gutsy police officer, trained in martial arts, "raised like a boy" in her father's words, it is frustrating to see her stuck in a "Perils of Pauline" routine at the film's climax.

Fakira's glorification of vigilante social justice through its dashing Robin Hood hero is the clear social message of the film.  But there are some fun twists on the usual masala cliches as well.   Here it is the hero, not the villain, who dwells in a luxuriously-appointed secret underground lair equipped with high-tech gadgetry.  The bad guy is just a corrupt politician, not a criminally insane mastermind.  And Fakira really pushes the envelope with some deliciously naughty sequences surrounding Fakira and Neeta/Geeta's first night together (after marriage, of course) - jokes about the noises emanating from the newlyweds' room, a bed broken in two thanks to a vigorous romp, and so on.  I briefly thought that Fakira got away with such ribaldry in part due to the art-house credentials of both of its principals, but it then occurred to me that Shabana Azmi was so young at this time that Fakira may have contributed to her edgy reputation rather than drawing upon it. 

Fakira's music (by Ravindra Jain) is fun, if not instantly memorable; the songs themselves are definitely dwarfed in this reviewer's mind by their picturizations; the joy of watching young Shabana dance around trees pretty much overwhelms anything else that might be going on. 

Obligato (click for larger pictures):

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Parvarish (1977)

परवरिश

Sometimes, when I finally get around to watching a film that has been sitting on my shelf for months and months, I kick myself for waiting so long.  That happened recently  with the delightful Chalti ka naam gaadi, and it happened again with Parvarish ("Upbringing"), Manmohan Desai's hysterical, nutty fugue on the question of nature versus nurture.

DSP Shamsher Singh (Shammi Kapoor) has captured the notorious bandit Mangal Singh (Amjad Khan) just as Mangal's wife is about to give birth.  She dies, but not before extracting from the DSP his promise to take care of her son.  DSP Singh raises the boy alongside his own.  Ironically, DSP Singh's natural son Kishen has a wicked streak, while Mangal's son, Amit, is endowed with an honest, sweet nature.  After a misunderstanding, Kishen comes to believe he is actually Mangal's son and falls under the bandit's influence, though he continues to live in the inspector's home. 

Fast forward 20 years.  Amit (Amitabh Bachchan) is a police inspector himself, while Kishen (Vinod Khanna) runs a school for the blind - but only as a front for his real business, running smuggled goods for Mangal's gang.  Amit and Kishen encounter a plucky pair of orphaned sisters who make their living as pickpockets.  The thieving sisters - the eponymous Neetu and Shabu (Neetu Singh and Shabana Azmi) - are smitten with the guys and half-heartedly resolve to go straight in order to win them over.  But the girls have their own debt to settle with Mangal Singh as well.  And when Amit starts to suspect his brother is not the upstanding guy he appears to be, family loyalties are pushed to the breaking point.

Parvarish is not as grand in scope as Manmohan Desai's blockbuster classic Amar Akbar Anthony (released the same year), which sounded the resonant theme of religious and cultural unity for the protection of Mother India, over a continuo on the notes of family, loyalty, and justice.  But there are ways in which Parvarish is even more fun.  Its bad guys are completely over the top, explicitly invoking and amplifying the decadence of James Bond villains and the complete freakishness of Batman's nemeses.  Mangal Singh's lair features a sunken pit of quicksand with spiked walls that close menacingly inward toward anyone unfortunate enough to find himself stranded on the tiny platform at its center; all of this is set before a backdrop of colored panels behind which silhouetted women dance provocatively and, apparently, tirelessly.  As if that weren't insane enough, Mangal and Kishen's uber-boss (Kader Khan) is named Supremo and lives on a submarine.  All this criminal excess juxtaposed against the earnest resourcefulness of Neetu and Shabu's small-time cons make for a very enjoyable ride. 

Parvarish's songs, too, are among the cleverer I've seen in the genre.  Shabu and Neetu introduce themselves via a communist screed, in which they justify their livelihood by declaring of the loot they steal, "sab janta ka hai" - everything belongs to the people.  In another side-splitting song, Shabu and Neetu threaten suicide if the guys refuse to marry them, while the guys, for their part, follow them around cheerfully offering the would-be instruments of their demise, wishing them well on their journey.  There is a truly bizarre qawwali-with-firearms in which our heroines stomp out a hearty mujra while pointing revolvers at themselves, at one another, and eventually at their audience.  And Neetu has a cheeky number in a naughty maid's uniform, in which a disguised Amit chases her around a hotel room. 

Finally, Parvarish holds the surefire key to my heart:  Shabana Azmi.   Even after twenty of her films I wasn't fully prepared for the full-court masala press of her role in this film.  It's not that she was exceptionally good at it - she was adequate only, and if I were not already in love with her, this is not the film that would change my mind.  Indeed, without the weight of the rest of her career, I might not even notice her as a masala heroine in the shadow of her zestier contemporaries like Zeenat Aman and Hema Malini.  And yet for every moment she was on the screen - running, climbing, pouting, conning, scheming, and dancing - I just beamed in delight.  While I knew intellectually that she played many roles like this one, I suppose I imagined they were all along the lines of Amar Akbar Anthony - a third-string heroine with next to no screen time and only a tiny fraction of one song.  I had no idea.