logo

Classics and Cash - Guru Dutt’s speaks !!!

Following is an extract from the book Guru Dutt A life in Cinema, an article printed in the annual publication Celluloid (1963)….written by the Big man himself.

Heartfelt thanks to Nasreen Munni Kabir- the author of the book who has so well chronicled Guru Dutt’s life in her book.

————————————————————————————
Have classics and cash anything in common except the first letter ‘c’ ? Do masterpieces and money go hand in hand in the world of filmmaking ? I am often asked. There can’t be any foolproof,infallible answer to the questions as they cover an entire range of relationship betweenart and economics, between experimentation and set formula and between quick cheap success and risky creative endevour.Motion picture production is a complex art with its own peculiar problems,pitfalls and advantages.However the making of a classice here is as full of possibilities and hazards as in any other creative field.If a classic in literature, poetry or painting goes unclaimed or unrewarded monetarily, it is more a reflection on the public which is supposed to patronize it and not on the accomplished genius who created it. The same is true of a film. If it is really a classic and fails to bring in the expected returns, the blame may not lie entirely with its creator. This means that the financial failure or success often depends on the whims, aesthetic standards and the intellectual caliber of an eternally capricious public.

Since centuries, the creators of classics have had to pay the price for rising above the rut of prevailing mediocrity and for their daring isolation from the hot polloi. Let us recall a few examples. A celebrated poet like Homer went begging in his lifetime. It is said -

‘Seven Cities claimed Homer dead, through which the living Homer begged his bread.‘ Goldsmith had to sell the manuscript of Vicar of Wakefield just to pay his rent while Johnson could bear the funeral expenses of a family member only by writing Rasselas. Van Gogh starved for weeks to buy the colours to paint his masterly ‘Sunflowers’ and ‘Cypresses’ on canvas. Rembrandt’s lot was no better.

In our own country, Tulsidas who wrote a classic like Ramayana had to undergo financial hardships. Kabir remained a poor weaver despite his towering poetic genius and Narsinh Mehta who wrote serveral ageless hymns like Vaishnav Jana had to mortgage his favorite Raag Kedar to pay family debts. Coming to recent times, unbearable frustration curtailed the life of Miss Amrita Sher-Gill, one of India’s greatest artists, at the age of 29 in 1944. Shortly before her untimely death she wrote ‘I am starving for appreciation. I am literally famished. My work is understood less and less as time passes.’ Indeed posthumous acclaim has been the tragic fate of many creators of classics.

A stage doyen of our time, Prithviraj Kapoor, who gave such classic dramas to the nation as Deewar and Pathan and whose Prithvi Theaters was the nursery that provided some of its best talents to the film world, had to close down his company due to lack of sustained patronage. In our country we have a peculiar yardstick for appluading a genius. Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore was acclaimed here only after he won recognition abroad and was awarded the Nobel Prize. To quote a more recent example, no one cared for Satyajit Ray till his films were hailed in foreign countries and bagged some of the most coveted prizes.

My intention in giving these examples, streched across a wide canvas of creative fields, is to illustrate the perplexing paradoxes that have left a poignant trail in the history of classics. As I said before, there cannot be a hard and fast rule about the relations between classics and cash. On the other hand, literary giants like Victor Hugo, Thomas Hardy, Bernard Shaw and Somersaught Maugham have made fortunes. A canvas by Picasso fetched millions in his own lifetime. Some of our own noted authors,artists and poets in recent times have prospered while others have had a bitter struggle for existence.

In the motion picture world, foreign film classics like Sign of the Cross, Ben Hur, Hamlet, How Green was my Valley, Random Harvest, A Song to Remember, Wuthering Heights etc have brought tons of cash; while materpieces like Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Shaw’s Devil’s Disciple and Androcles and the Lion, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and a film biography of US President Woodrow Wilson flopped.

On the Indian screen, classics from mythology and history which were turned into film classics like Bharat Milap, Ram Rajya, Pukar, Sikandar and Ram Shastri proved outstanding successes whil film classics in the same spheres like Seeta, Chitralekha, Vikramaditya etc could not get the popular recognition and the financial success they deserved. Thus public fancy plays a very important role in making or marring a film classic. And social film classics are not an exception to this rule.

In spite of that unpredictable factor, we have had several daring iconoclasts who have refused to sacrifice their flair for classics at the altar of Mammon. Among such departed stalwarts the name of Barua remains foremost. A prince by birth, he like peerless princely artist Ravi Verma, did not shut himself in an ivory tower but toiled for the commoners. Barua reflected in his art so much of the lingering social frustration of his time that I am tempted to call him a people’s director. He did not bother about the financial success of his screen creations. I feel it would be wrong to label Barua as an impractical idealist-dreamer. He was so sure of himself. He knew what he was doing. Everything about his film, including the script was scrupulously planned and kept ready before the actual start of shooting. His films had classical dimensions and yet most of them proved very successful. Two of his notable classics which did not click were Manzil and Adhikar. The notoriously capricous public failed to give them the acclaim they warranted. The Indian screen owes much of its glory to stalwarts like Barua, Devaki Bose and several others. It is sad to find some of the neo-realists among our filmmakers today talking as if the Indian film industry is without a past.

The classics of New Theaters, Prabhat and Bombay Talkies did not prove big hits, and yet the closing down of these great concerns is not without its own significance whatever the actual causes for their closure. In the caliber of the of the patronizing class, we have witnessed a big transformation. In the post war inflation period the middle class, which patronized those classics, has been gradually dwindling. Filmmakers attempting off-beat and unconventional subjects have to reckon with this alarming factor. Today the box-office trends are dictated by the working class and the nouveau riche. Hence the popularity of crime, spectacle and cheap musicals on our screen.

In the present financial set up of the film world, the production of experimental films has become more difficult. I believe off-beat experiments could only be possible if we reduce our cost to Rs 4 or 5 lakhs per picture. Inspite of big budgets, star studded casts and costly music, 80 % of our films produced in a year don’t prove a big success and a majority of these fails. This means stars, huge sets, music and over abundance of the so called box office ingredients are not the be-all and end-all of hit making. At a limited cost of 4 lakhs or so we could make new attempts to break the barrier or the present stagnation. By giving more prominence to the stoory and its treatment and by a lesser reliance on the music-at-anycost craze, we could definitely change the patternof present day film-making. I firmly believe that songs seriously hamper the emotional development of a story in a film, however good the literary contents and however brilliant the musical form of the song, unless it is out and out a musical picture. The road to experimentation is paved with many hurdles. When you take up a different subject or make a departure from the set patterns in presentation, the prophets of doom always try to dissuade you from taking any such risks. If you succeed in the experiment, it is well and good. But (Heaven forbid) if the experiment fails, the know-alls come forward with all sorts of suggestions, advice and innuendos.

The audience reaction to particular themes and even particular situations is also an overpowering factor. For instance when i took up Pyaasa for production, my experiment in taking up this frustrative theme and embellishing it with poetic songs was considered hazardous. But the audiences accepted it with remarkable zest. My attempt in giving an off-beat subject in Kaagaz Ke Phool, however, found the audiences cold. There was not even a customary murmur of protest. My decision to take up the novel Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam for filming was also taken with a pinch of salt by film prophets. Of course, the introduction on the screen of a pious wife taking to liquor drinking even for the sake of winning over her husband was fraught with great peril. But i took the plunge, as the base of it all was a fascinating novel. I must saythe press hailed this attempt with an acclaim, which was beyond my expectations. The public reaction was also very encouraging on the whole.

In its early showings at Bombay, there was an uproar against only two particular sequences. The firts of these was the one in which Chhoti Bahu, out of affectionate affinity between them, rests her head on lap of Bhoothnath. The second was the scene in which she tells her husband ‘Allow me to take the last sip of liqour, only for the last time. I have decided to give it up completely.’ We deleted these scenes

I have been ragged by friends and critics for taking up Alibaba as my next film. ‘From a provocative social theme to Arabian Nights ? What a fall Guru?‘ they keep on twitting me. I have to explain every time that I want to show that even Alibaba could be a subject with contemporary signifcance. The characters there are intresting human types with their lifelike counterparts in modern life. In the formula ridden film world of ours, one who ventures to go out of the beaten track is condemned to the definition which Mathew Arnold used for Shelly- ‘an angel beating its wings in a void’. I believe that one who goes out against the winds has to be prepared for bouquets as well as brickbats, for triumphs as well as heartbreaks, whether or not one only makes a classic or collects the cash. It is the baffling unpredictability that gives edge to the thrill of movie making.

3 readers recommend this post  Loading ...	Email This Post To Friends
Related Posts Guru Dutt:Ek Sanjida Filmmaker Guru Dutt : Genius ? Lost To Life: Guru Dutt Guru Dutt : Genius ? Part II CASH IS CRAP Generation Now, Cannes and… Cash the music of CASH: it’s a gas Sunil Dutt : : A real Hero among Hindi film fraternity! “Guru” Pre-Release Activities Show a Different Mani Sir Anjan Dutt - the new ray of hope