But with Shantaram, who played Lord Vishnu in a film but also insisted on single-handedly carrying a bulky camera to a location some distance from the studio because “no work should be considered too low"-in other words, someone so invested in cinema that he could be God and coolie at the same time-you can believe he meant it. With most other people, this would seem like an old man’s distracted ramblings. And in his own mind, he wasn’t close to being done: Jasraj mentions that Shantaram proclaimed his intention to live till the age of 150, so he could complete a 50-film project about Indian society from the time of the Mahabharat till today, even projecting into the future. Most of all, this book is a comprehensive record of a prolific career that began in the silent era (for perspective, consider that Shantaram was acting in and assisting on films before Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt were born!) and stretched right till the 1980s. Black and white images-screen grabs as well as private photographs-are effectively used alongside the text: I was particularly moved by the picture of Shantaram’s guru Baburao Painter, which appears exactly at the point in the text where we are told of the young Shantaram’s first glimpse of this venerable-looking, bearded man. This is a tidily written, well-produced book, though Jasraj does get overenthusiastic at times-as in her claim that a lengthy single-take scene in the 1946 Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani “was the first time something like this had ever been achieved in national and international cinema" (similar things had been done in Welles’ Magnificent Ambersons and Preston Sturges’ Miracle Of Morgan’s Creek, among other films). In 1933, he travelled to Germany for the processing of India’s first colour film, Sairandhri his use of trolley shots and extreme close-ups became famous, as did the hints of show-offish Expressionism in scenes such as the one of an old man’s reflection laughing at him in the shards of a mirror in Duniya Na Maane. Films like Padosi (about two close friends, a Hindu and a Muslim, who fall out) and Dahej (about the evils of dowry) wear their good intentions on their sleeves, while Do Ankhen Barah Haath-though celebrated for its prison-reform theme-is allegorical and sometimes pedantic, hence vulnerable to being derided by those who champion narrow definitions of realism.Īnd through it all, there were Shantaram’s innovations, such as the use of bold advertising (“Love Scene Between Tukaram and Jijau Under a Banyan Tree") to build a buzz for the 1936 Sant Tukaram, the decision to shoot a short film that would be screened before a main feature, and the creation of a fox named Jambu Kaka for an animation film. Much of his other work, including the devotional films he and his production company Prabhat were associated with, is perceived as being a little quaint, and falls within a tradition of home-grown social drama that many sophisticated viewers are now uncomfortable about. By the 1950s and 1960s, when directors like Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy and Guru Dutt had become leading names, Shantaram was still highly respected, but was mainly making flamboyant musicals like Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje and Navrang (one of my all-time favourite Hindi films).
#SHANTARAM REVIEWS MOVIE#
Young movie buffs-those who watch the edgy “multiplex films" made by Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee and their protégés-rarely speak of him. This can be a little hard to believe now, because Shantaram is no longer exactly a fashionable name.
I have heard grandparents and their friends (all born in the 1910s or 1920s, a youthful audience for such celebrated films as Ayodhya Ka Raja and Amrit Manthan) reminiscing about the special excitement of “a Shantaram movie".
Twenty years before the international “auteur" debates focused attention on a director as the principal creative talent, Shantaram occupied a rare, top-of-marquee position among Indian film-makers, comparable to that of Frank Capra and Ernst Lubitsch in the Hollywood of the same period. If a casual viewer watching a Hindi movie in the 1930s knew the name of its director, that name would very likely be V. It is the sort of slick, anecdotal detail one might take with a pinch of salt.
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