Popular Hindi film music in the seventies was a musical mélange of Shankar Jaikishen, R.D Burman and Kalyanji – Anandji. But come the 80’s and a whole new genre exploded into the Hindi music scene – the Disco era. Cinema for Change does a bit of digging into the disco depths of Hindi cinema.

As far as music goes, Bappi Lahiri is the unquestioned leader of the Disco pack. The man with a singularly unique fashion style, Bappi Da breathed fresh energy into the music scene with his Western disco inspired beats. In 1982, Vijay Benedict crooned to Bappi’s I am a Disco Dancer giving India its first dance idol - Mithun Chakraborty. Disco dancer was India’s answer to Hollywood’s Saturday Night Fever. Needless to say, it was a humongous success, and has the record of an impossible feat – winning an award for its music in China.

Closely following on Bappi’s heels is Biddu. Responsible for introducing the Pakistani based brother-sister pop duo Nazia and Zohaib Hassan to the Indian audience. Rumour has it that swashbuckling actor/producer Feroz Khan tracked down the London based Biddu to compose a song for his 1980 movie Qurbani. The song Aap Jaisa Koi not only gave India its most legendary sex symbol in Zeenat Aman, but also a taste of what’s to come in Hindi cinema in the heroine Vs vamp dichotomy. It also paved the way for 15 year old Nazia Hassan to pursue a career beyond playback singing with her multi-selling pop album Disco Deewane in collaboration with Biddu.

Such was the appeal of disco that even Kumar Gaurav (son of popular actor Rajender Kumar) tried his hand at a full fledged disco movie Star (1982) with disastrous results. Star was a box office dud, but it had one of the hottest soundtracks of the 80’s with Nazia’s Boom Boom and Zohaib’s Oiee Oiee. The music was given by none other than Biddu thus cementing another musical combination which will go down in cinema history.


The disco trend was not limited to music; it stamped its presence on camera angles, choreography, costumes and lightning. Amitabh Bachchan’s disco inspired light bulb lit costume for the hit song Sara Zamana Haseeno Ka Deewana from Yarana (1981) put the seal of approval on disco as a genre with far reaching influence.


The best amalgamation of this genre into the Hindi filmscape was through Subhash Ghai’s Karz (1980). A typical disco era movie with a storyline revolving around a singer/entertainer’s life, coupled with reincarnation twists and revenge saga, Karz was the mother of all pot boilers. A shiny jumpsuit wearing Rishi Kapoor does his thing on a Sudhendu Roy designed giant turntable with the spinning record and stylus for the song Om Shanti Om and walks into the Indian moviegoers heart and some more. So much so that 27 years later when director Farah Khan does a Karz inspired Om Shanti Om with Shahrukh Khan, the appeal of disco still holds true. Of course, the turntable has been replaced with a six pack, but we still have the Dard-e-Disco.

The essential hypocrisy that Bollywood & India’s censor board have shown when it comes to on-screen nudity has been quite frustrating and mostly absurd. But the scissor happy puritanical souls at the censor board too an off this week as debutante Pravesh Bharadwaj's Mr Singh Mrs Mehta was released with more than its share of scenes depicting “female nudity”, It is another thing that the film has been panned by the critics, but the fact that the censor board has accepted the fact that nudity can be part of the narrative of a film is good news for film lovers. One hopes this precedent goes a long way in empowering Indian filmmakers in translating their dreams on celluloid as they wanted it to be.

Imagine what Stanley Kubrick would have done had some censor babu asked him to cut the “objectionable scenes” from Eyes Wide Shut.

Over a period of more than three decades, Amrish Puri portrayed characters of many colours and hues on the celluloid, but his most iconic performance by far has to be that of the megalomaniac Mogambo. In an industry that churns out 100s of mediocre films every year, even an above average flick gets branded as “good cinema”, hence most of them hardly have any recall value. It indeed becomes very rare for people to remember the characters, and more so the villains.
But Mogambo and Gabbar Singh are arguably the only two villains in the history of Hindi cinema who have stood the test of time and their respective catchphrases – “Mogambo khush hua” & Gabbar’s “Kitne Aaadmi the” – have become part of the public lexicon. While Amjad Khan’s cave-dwelling, horse riding Gabbar was more relatable to the Indian audience, the missile-totting Mogambo was somewhat of a novelty that the Indian audience had come across.
Now, it is not an easy task to introduce a character to the Indian viewers, but Shekhar Kapur’s excellent direction and of course Amrish Puri’s over the top, larger than life performance of the maniac, hell-bent on bombing India, enthralled the Indian viewers like never before. From 1987, when Mr India was released, till his last day, he was loved and revered by the fans as Mogambo. All of his roles, irrespective of their quality, were relegated to the corner of the mind where random memories dwell, but never surface.
On his 78th birth anniversary (June 22, 2010), his director Shekhar Kapur tweeted: “Happy Birthday Mr Amrish Puri/Mogambo wherever u r, on this earth u r irreplaceable”. This would have pleased Mogambo for sure.

A report in today’s Times of India celebrates the fact that political cinema is back in vogue amongst the audience weaned on candyfloss cinema. But is that so?
Rajneeti, even by Bollywood standards, hardly qualifies to be counted as “political” and “realistic” cinema. In real-politic, people are more often than not likely to be bought off rather than bumped off as they are in Prakash Jha’s latest. What happens there is mob violence, and not politics. But the fact that Rajneeti indeed has become perhaps the first blockbuster of the year after collecting a staggering Rs 54,00,00,000 in its opening week and is likely to earn more than all of Prakash Jha’s past films put together. Ironies of the box office are not lost to anybody.
But the fact that crowd lapped up this masala image of political machinations in the country is a worrying trend, as at one level it points out the fact that the common man on the street considers politics to be dirty, full of sex, violence and corruption. Although one might find himself to be hugely outnumbered while trying to be an apologist for the Indian politicians, all I want to say is hold back on your cynicism for a bit.
For any democracy to flourish and function a litany of checks and balances need to be in place; these help in ensuring that the lawmakers (the politician) as well as the law enforcer (from a beat constable to the police chief) toe the line of propriety. A film like Rajneeti has portrayed the worst that the Indian polity has to offer, while the redeeming act is just too weak to register with the audience – haven’t met anyone who has seen Rajneeti and spoken about the climax, most talk about the dropping pallu and exploding cars.
The ringing bell at the cash register of the Box Office points out towards a sense of vindication that the public felt while watching an otherwise lacklustre film; people went inside the theater, saw what they thought Indian politics was and came out with a smug sense of triumph that told them, “you know it all”.
This self validation might have the producers and distributors grinning ear-to-ear but the fact that perception of Indian polity within the minds of the electorate is so glum does not bode well for a functioning democracy. In a country where calls for separatism, coupled with militant Naxalism, are growing by the day, a dejected electorate is the last thing that the country needs. For someone who expects nothing out of their leaders, someone offering two hoots might turn out to be the man who gets the vote. The TINA (There is no alternative) factor ensconced within the minds of the people needs to be fought with vengeance by the civil society and artists alike. Hopelessness can prove to be a really fertile soil for human hope to take root, but for that to happen someone needs to be around to play the part of a watchful gardener.

Last week Martin Scorsese’s psychological thriller ‘Shutter Island’ was released in India without any fanfare. The critics praised it, mainstream audience (by and large) thought about purchasing a ticket to watch the master and his favourite actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) come together before deciding on catching Rajneeti, again.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s story beyond the celluloid has been something on the same lines. The boy who caught everybody’s eye as Johnny Depp’s autistic younger brother in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape before touching superstardom as the doomed lover in James Cameroon’s Titanic has surprisingly never found favour with any major award jury.
Be it the role of an Irish thug returning to America to avenge his father’s murder [Gangs of New York - Scorsese] or the young fraud who baffled the FBI for decades before joining the ‘feds’ [Catch me if you can – Steven Spielberg], Leo just could not get the jury to nod in his favour. These two were films where young Leo was an understudy to seasoned thespians like Daniel Day Lewis (GONY) and Tom Hanks (CMIYC), and understandably despite Leo’s eye catching performance, it were the senior pros who made the headlines.
Next in line was The Aviator (Scorsese again!) where Leo played the role of eccentric and delusional millionaire Howard Hughes with absolute conviction and panache, also getting nominated for the Best Actor Oscar in 2004. Jamie Foxx trumped him that year, while unfazed Leo went on to join forces with his favourite director Scorsese to come up with a scorching performance in The Departed.
Sharing screen space with heavyweights such as Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon and Mark Whalberg, Leonardo’s portrayal of Billy Costigan, a smart undercover cop who is in tatters psychologically while he risks his neck every time he comes out of his apartment to play the double game won accolades all over. With Blood Diamond also coming out that year, 2006 was destined to be his year. The Golden Globes and Broadcast Film Critics Association nominated him in the Best Actor category for both Blood Diamond and The Departed. More importantly he also earned an Oscar nomination for lead actor in Blood Diamond and a BAFTA nod for lead actor for The Departed. Needless to say, he won none of them. Judging fine arts, more often than not, is based on parameters which are mostly abstract which you can feel but can’t gauge. Leo, I guess, has suffered by strutting in the gray zone unapologetically.