First Impressions
Sitting on my porch. It is a very windy day. I am watching a combination of students, healthcare employees and various others parade down my street, as I dawn my headphones. You see, my street is the sort of place that is close enough to the University to walk to but far enough for the city to not bother with parking permits. If I lived 200 meters west of where I’m currently sitting I could cross the street without having to slide over the hoods of the tightly pressed vehicles parked in a rush... but I digress.
I am listening to the songs sequentially. Smoke in Your Eyes, Don’t Fence Me In, White Christmas... BAM! O Zindagi Ke Denewale! I try to put it in order.
A work gang chanting, a train chugging, something strangely mechanical and cold. I feel as though I am orally witnessing a prison work gang swinging pick axes in unison. The music demands my attention. Perhaps the rhythm of chanting so closely resembling the beating of a heart is the reason I find it initially mesmerizing; my emotional buy-in grows exponentially when the vocals begin.
The voice begs and pleads in contrast to the incessant chugging. In my minds eye I see the voice as a lone person walking against the crowds. Enslaved and helpless; struggling for something that I know deeply and of which I do not know at all. The music has movement but it’s mechanical and methodical. I wonder what type of love he must by dying from.
Background: O Zindagi Ke Denewale
The 1954 film Nagin has been described as a “primitive love fantasy” (Rajadhyaksha, and Willemen 337) in which the heroine, actress Vyjayanthimala and her male counterpart Kumar, both “play professional snake catcher[s] for different tribal groups” (Rajadhyaksha, and Willemen 337);the love of these two characters result in their “respective clans go[ing] to war” 337). In dramatic Bollywood fashion, the “snake sent to kill the hero bites the heroine instead, he then rescues her by sucking the poison out of her body” (Rajadhyaksha, and Willemen 337). Coupled with the storyline, both the music, camera angles and lighting further accentuate the dramatic flare that Bollywood films are accustomed too.
O Zindagi Ke Denewale was originally recorded for “one of the biggest post-Independence musical hits” (Rajadhyaksha, and Willemen 113) in Bollywood. The 1954 production of Nagin highlighted the talents of Bengali-Hindi composer Hermanta Kumar Mukerjee*. Born in Varanasi, Kumar “[l]eft school to become a professional singer” and “[f]rom the 50’s onwards his voice incarnated Bengali’s middle class romanticism, having an enduring influence on all male playback singers in the language ever since” (Rajadhyaksha, and Willemen 236). The dramatic music of Hermant Kumar, in particular O Zindagi Ke Denewale is complemented by the films lighting and camera angles.
Nandlal Jaswantla, a Hindi director born in Bardoli, was further “[a]dmired for his sophisticated lighting. Used extreme close ups and unusual angles creating disjointed but dramatic and sensual spaces” (Rajadhyaksha, and Willemen 113). A prime example of this is the visual desperation is captured in figure 1. The face of the hero, angled upwards and bathed in light as the shadows of marching people position him as if behind prison bars. This insinuates entrapment, adding to Kumars expressive O Zindagi Ke Denewale.
Works cited
Mukerjee, Hermanta Kumar, Perf. Nagin. Dir. Nandlal Jaswantla."
Perf. Vyjayanthimala, , and Pradeep Kumar. Filmistan:
1954, Film.
Rajadhyaksha, Ashish, and Paul Willemen. Encylopaedia of Indian
Cinema. New Revised Edition. New Delhi, India: Oxford
University Press, 1994. Print.
*Commonly referred to as Hermant Kumar
Great blog entries. Really comprehensive, and combining research with more personal writing. Good work.
ReplyDelete