Piyush Roy
Howrah Bridge (1958), a classic whodunit is a film, about which the only thing most of us would remember is Madhubala seductively crooning in the song Aaiye meherban baithiye jaanejaan. In fact, so mesmerising is the ‘welcome’ act of the ‘Venus of the Indian screen’ in the now iconic song, wooing impressed brown sahibs in a colonial era pub with a pout thrown here and a glance lost there, that the song has managed a standalone nostalgia of its own with the film recalled only as a vehicle for its showcase. Cinephiles may remember the film for another memorable song too – Mera naam chin chin chu… that gave Hindi cinema its most loved vamp. A far cry from the femme fatale that she would become, a young and innocent looking Helen gets her career’s first ‘hit dance number’ in Chin chin chu that has her graduate to being the lead from just another chorus dancer in previous films. There was no looking back for Helen after Chin chin chu, which also is one of its singer, Geeta Dutt’s most loved dance songs. And no listing of the most erotic song moments in Hindi cinema is complete without Madhubala’s Aaiye meherban, a rare early career gem of the veteran of cabaret songs, Asha Bhonsle, which got picturised on a heroine. Shamshad Begum too gets few melodies to sing in this ‘vintage’ O.P. Nayyar album, that but naturally has no songs by then reigning playback queen Lata Mangeshkar. Nayyar and Mangeshkar’s fall out is one of Hindi cinema golden era’s most talked about fights, but that’s another story.
The above two iconic songs were reason enough for me to sit it through a recent impromptu viewing of Howrah Bridge. The songs happen in close proximity to one another and get done within the first half hour of the film. And yet, I sat clued in, until the end of this simple thriller that takes few languorous detours through myriad sub-plots featuring a motley group of characters and many more melody moments before it lands up at its dhishoom-dhishoomstyle end, shot literally on the Howrah Bridge. Ashok Kumar is the hero of the film, and one’s fondest image of him as a wise and affable patriarch hardly upsthe excitement around his fight scenes. The actor, nearlytouching his fifties at the time of the film’s making, somehow gets around those necessary action moments with pretty discernible doubles. Kumar in the pre-independence blockbuster Kismet (1942), incidentally was Hindi cinema’s first anti-hero long before Amitabh Bachchan or Shah Rukh Khan happened in the 1970s and 1990s respectively.
A pleasant surprise is the fact that Howrah Bridge is directed by Shakti Samanta, the master auteur behind some of Hindi cinema’s most memorable romantic musicals like Kashmir ki Kali, Aradhana, Kati Patang, Amar Prem, Anuraag, Amanush, Anurodh… An ear for good music is showcased by Samanta in this early career outing, his fifth in a formidable filmography of 30 plus films. If the 1950s’ best remembered thriller specialist Raj Khosla gave Mumbai its famous filmic ode in Aye dil hai mushqil jeena yahaan picturised on character actor-cum-comedian Johnny Walker in CID, Samanta gives a lesser known but no less significant tribute to Kolkata in the song Yeh Calcutta hai (also sung by Mohd. Rafi), picturised on another lovable character actor Om Prakash. Prakash’s tongawallah character is both a philosophy dispensing all observant aam aadmi, and a dependable Mr. Watson to Ashok Kumar’s Sherlock Holmes inspired act. Kumar’s private detective role however reminded me more of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot than Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes, but his foibles were far endearing than a much agile, younger and charmer looking Sushant Singh Rajput in Dibakar Bannerjee’s recent retelling of anotherwhodunit set in a Calcutta of a decade before in Detective Byomkesh Bakshy.
I would any day bat for Samanta’s then existingCalcutta to Bannerjee’s imagined Kolkata in retrospect, the imperfect Ashok Kumar of Howrah Bridgeto the too perfect to be relatable Sushant Singh of Byomkesh Bakshy. The then newcomer Shakti Samanta didn’t have the clout of a studio or the might of an auteur’s reputation to reconstruct a city in the sets of his imagination. He just shoots Calcutta as it was; Howrah Bridge’s outdoor locations in retrospect are visual recordings of actual lived days in the life of a metro changing fast.
As I keep pondering over what really endeared me to this simple thriller with a fairly open plot, a list of attractions come to mind – uncomplicated characters, relatable relations, natural settings, melodious music, evocative lyrics, logical narration, identifiable motivations… Are these courtesy that inexplicable feeling of jealous nostalgia for the relatively safer, honest and seemingly less complicated lives and lifestyles of an era gone by, even if the narrative trigger, as in the case of Howrah Bridge is a violent act like murder.
What is it about a classic or a good period film that touches us, stays with us and inspires us even if we know that the very medium of its telling – the cinema – is aselective representation of someone’s imagination?Could it be in that felt assurance that what we are seeing or experiencing in all its simple imperfections, technical limitations and black and white photography, still exude a greater degree of authenticity, relatability and honesty, vis-à-vis the far more perfect looking digitally recreated spectacular but unnatural cinematic cities and backdrops of today.