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His cinema was idyllic and idealistic

Ranjit Hoskote

Hrishikesh Mukherjee's strength lay in the collegiality with which he managed his gifted colleagues.

— PHOTO: PTI

TALENT REWARDED: A file photo of President K.R. Narayanan presenting the Padma Vibhushan to Hrishikesh Mukherjee at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

THE GREATEST tribute to Hrishikesh Mukherjee, who passed away in Mumbai on Sunday, is the fact that one or another of his films is telecast by the satellite television channels almost every day. One of India's best-loved filmmakers and a former Chairman of the National Film Development Corporation and the Censor Board, Mr. Mukherjee would have turned 84 next month.

The nation had honoured Mr. Mukherjee with the Padma Vibhushan and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award. His real reward, however, was the esteem he enjoyed among the audiences whose imagination he captivated for the four decades of his active career. He delighted them with witty, elegantly crafted comedies, as well as with studies of emotionally complex situations.

Born September 30, 1922, Mr. Mukherjee belonged to a generation of Bengali cinephiles who discussed world cinema avidly in the coffeehouses of Kolkata during the 1940s. Graduating in science, he joined B.N. Sircar's New Theatres film company as an editor. There, he worked with Bimal Roy, the cinematographer who went on to become a legendary director. When Mr. Roy left for Mumbai in 1951 to join Bombay Talkies, Mr. Mukherjee accompanied his mentor, working with him as editor and assistant director for a number of years.

Mr. Mukherjee's directorial debut was the finely structured and deeply moving Musafir (1957), starring Dilip Kumar, Durga Khote, and Suchitra Sen, among other major figures. The film, which takes the form of a series of stories about the three sets of tenants who successively occupy a house, was distinguished by outstanding performances. Dilip Kumar sang a song in it. The story and screenplay were by Ritwik Ghatak, who would soon become the centre of a cult in his own right. And yet, Musafir was a commercial disaster and Mr. Mukherjee may well have thought it was the end of the line for him.

Fortunately, the film attracted the attention of L.B. Lachman, an influential producer, and of Raj Kapoor. He was invited to direct Anari (1959), which starred Raj Kapoor and Nutan. This was the critically acclaimed and commercially successful film that Mr. Mukherjee needed to establish himself as a director to be reckoned with.

After Anari came Anuradha (1960), the story of a doctor devoted to his work and the travails of his talented, neglected wife, played respectively by Balraj Sahni and Leela Naidu. The 1960s were an indifferent patch for Mr. Mukherjee, and it was not until 1970 that he presented the film he regarded as his masterwork, Anand. Marked by the compelling performances of Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan, Anand also boasted of Salil Choudhury's haunting music; songs from the film are still widely broadcast today. Mr. Mukherjee then directed a sequence of scintillating films built around families at work and play, with the space of the home cast as a subtly contested playground for several generations: Guddi (1971); Bawarchi (1972); Chupke Chupke (1975); Golmaal (1979); Khubsoorat (1980).

Mr. Mukherjee's strength lay in the collegiality with which he managed his gifted colleagues. He coaxed beautifully nuanced, convincing, and memorable characterisations from actors who would later become indelibly identified with their action-hero personae or their superstar mystique. Under his ministrations, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, and Rekha created credible, enjoyable versions of everyday reality. Mr. Mukherjee also generated magical moments of comedy with gifted and versatile actors such as Utpal Dutt, Ashok Kumar, and Amol Palekar. He was blessed, also, in his choice of off-screen collaborators, with script- and dialogue-writers such as Ghatak, Gulzar, and Rajinder Singh Bedi, and musicians such as S.D. Burman, Salil Chaudhury, and Vasant Desai.

Wodehouse-style idiom

Some observers have described Mr. Mukherjee's cinema as a P.G. Wodehouse-style idiom: the evocation of a world peopled by the urban, educated, often propertied middle class, secure in their bungalows, served by retainers, protected from the affrays of history by the values of decency, sociability, generosity of spirit, and an amiable approach to destiny. Mr. Mukherjee's cinema was certainly both idyllic and idealistic. Through the delineation of affectionate, caring relationships and the settings of warm domesticity, he demonstrated that comedy could be civilised rather than crass. His films proved that India could enjoy a popular cinema that was not vulgar.

But there was also a dark side to his reflections on human nature. Aashirwad (1968) was the tragedy of a poet married to a feudal heiress, who sides with the villagers against his wife's tyranny. Satyakam (1969) is a brooding meditation on illegitimacy of birth and integrity of character. Abhimaan (1973) explores the jealousy that nearly destroys a marriage, when a popular singer is outshone by his wife.

Unfortunately, Mr. Mukherjee's style of film-making was elbowed out during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Indian cinema gave way to the Bollywood phenomenon. Crass vulgarity began to masquerade as humour.

A gritty, brutal realism plunged the movies into the raw underbelly of metropolitan life. Dodgy promoters, backed by dubious sources of funding, came into play. The big screen no longer had any place for the absent-minded professor, the Gandhian idealist, the quixotic boss or the erudite gossip. Mr. Mukherjee once said that he tried to make his films "like sugar-coated messages, but the sugar should not exceed the medicine." Happily, it appears that the small-screen audiences have not lost their taste for his line of treatment.

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