When movie scenes struck a different kind of chord: The Way We Were by Poonam Saxena

One of the few good issues about not with the ability to exit nowadays is that you are able to do issues like watch your favorite movie repeatedly, guilt-free. I used to be watching Waqt (1965), for the nth time, after I paused on the tune Chehre Pe Khushi. On the face of it, there’s nothing uncommon concerning the tune. The setting is a get together in a sensible, upper-class house, with potted crops, wealthy carpets, heavy curtains for décor, and a bunch of friends standing round, clutching their drinks.

Sadhana, in a pink churidar-kameez, is at a piano, singing. Her suitor, Sunil Dutt, in a cream-coloured go well with and darkish pink tie, is watching her ardently. There’s a second hopeful within the image — Raaj Kumar, in a black go well with, none too happy on the smiling glances being exchanged between the 2 lovebirds.

Why was the get together tune (usually involving a piano) such a fixture in Hindi movies? For starters, I believe it was merely a chance for the director to insert a ‘song situation’. It additionally gave the characters a likelihood to precise their emotions for one another (often a declaration or reiteration of their love); if there was a love triangle at play, it was a likelihood for the viewers to see the interaction of feelings between the three.

It additionally allowed us a vicarious glimpse into what was often a glamorous, rich setting. (And the piano made for nice cinematic angles!) The tune Chehre Pe Khushi meets all these standards. As do a whole bunch of different such songs. Like the Shankar-Jaikishan quantity Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega from Sangam (1964), the place the characters that kind the love triangle — Raj Kapoor, Rajendra Kumar and Vyjayanthimala — sing at a get together, surrounded by well-turned-out friends, in a luxurious house that includes pillars, ornate chandeliers and oil work.

The romantic color movies of the ’60s had been the excessive midday of the get together tune, although it existed earlier than that as effectively. Mehboob Khan’s Andaz (1949) is a wonderful instance. Dilip Kumar sings Tu Kahe Agar with Nargis draped throughout the piano, whereas Cuckoo does a mesmerising dance and the friends stand or sit round, watching. Andaz, by the way, was a refined movie for its time, with a fashionable younger miss for a heroine, whose friendliness was mistaken for love by Dilip Kumar, setting in movement a catastrophic chain of occasions.

To get extra perception into the get together tune, I known as the writer and filmmaker Nasreen Munni Kabir, one of probably the most perceptive commentators on Hindi cinema. She had an fascinating take; she known as it a “performance within a performance”. “The cinema audience is watching the performance of an audience on screen watching a performance,” she says. “The party guests are immobile, like spectators in a theatre. Take the 1963 film Mere Mehboob, where Rajendra Kumar sings about his chance meeting with Sadhana (Mere Mehboob Tujhe Meri Mohabbat Ki Kasam) in front of an audience of which she too is a part. The presence of the others allows the hero to declare his love in plain sight without fear of rejection or society’s critical eye, while the beloved knows the song is directed at her. Folk and classical theatre, the mushaira and musical recital, with their inherent presence of an audience, seem the ancestors of the settings of such songs.”

The get together tune, sadly, is lengthy gone. But it stays a charming, enduring motif of Hindi motion pictures of a specific time. And the songs had been virtually at all times so stunning!