India's first ever 'Romeo and juliet (1947)'

The Indian Film Industry has greatly adapted Shakespearean Plays through time, giving them a new meaning all the time, however little do many people know that the tradition was started in 1947. The year when the country lost so much and gained Independence. The year when Bollywood made history by adapting the most famous of Shakespearean play, 'Romeo and Juliet'.

The Tragic love of Romeo and Juliet, Source: Pinterest

William Shakespeare, Source: Google Images

Romeo and Juliet (1947), Source: Google Images

Ram Leela, the most recent adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, Source: Google Images

In the context of Romeo and Juliet, the India Film Industry has flourished with legendary tales of adaptations, with the first-ever adaptation coming out in the year of 1947, undoubtedly a year of land-marking importance and change for the country. Let’s see how this adaptation can be counted as the first, most astonishing and unique of all the Romeo and Juliet adaptations ever made in the history of Bollywood.

It was the year when the country was undergoing a change of the most distressing types, as the country was torn up into India and Pakistan, people leaving the country in huge numbers eventually leading up to massacres because of the greatest communal discords of all times. While Partition ravaged the country during 1947, the Britishers were ready to leave allowing India its most cherished Independence. It was the year of blood-shed, freedom and it was the year when Nargis was just fifteen, starring in a film as a heroine which was based on Shakespeare’s most phenomenal play, Romeo and Juliet.

So little evidence has survived of the movie that very little could be said about its specifics. Not even a still image of the movie is present on the internet except the poster, which shows Nargis in all her young grace, staring at her Romeo, D.K Sarpu.

Both of them started from the same phase, young foolish lovers on screen, during the country’s most turbulent year. Romeo and Juliet (1947) was an ambitious project and was directed by Akhtar Hussein. It would be surprising to know that the album lyrics were written by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the great Urdu Poet, whose writings also document the history of India during different ages. It was an iconic movie in another respect though, the movie was an Anglicized portrayal of Shakespeare’s original play.

Though Sarpu lives his Bollywood career seemed to have trodden downhill, as after starring in this movie Sarpu only appeared in movies as the bad man, con man, and villain roles. He would go on to eventually work in the Indian television Industry in his aging years while Nargis would become a successful yet controversial superstar and die of cancer in her later years.

The most recent adaptation of the play was ‘Gooliyon Ki Raasleela, Ram-Leela’, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, starring Bollywood’s most iconic actors like Deepika Padukone as Juliet/Leela and Ranveer Singh as Ram/Romeo. This Romeo and Juliet Indian version revolves around the rivalry of two tribes and the chaos that follows when the members of these tribes fall in love inviting doom into their lives. The Bollywood spice is evident in the movie with quirky item numbers and beautiful romantic songs comprising its album. Other adaptations include Ishakzaade and Dhadak, etc, bringing Indian issues of Caste and class differences between lovers who become the victim of honor killing.

Hence, Romeo and Juliet would remain the greatest obsession of Bollywood, forever beloved by every generation of India, but it's very first adaptation would have been a wonder to behold. The first-ever attempt to bring forward a western love story, draped in an Indian version was surely a lesson for future Filmmakers and artists and a treat for the Indian Audience of all times, creating a legend in the history of Indian Cinema.

The fable of two lovers, drenched in passion at the tender young age of thirteen and fourteen, belonging to rival families is known and praised around the world as ‘Romeo and Juliet’, a play written by William Shakespeare, who is called the greatest playwright of all times.

Romeo and Juliet is no ordinary love story. It’s a story that deeply disturbs and saddens the heart as it’s a tragic romance with the young lovers dying at the end, in each other’s arms because of a futile confusion surrounding forcedness and misery. But above all, the story of these two lovers concludes with the message that to be in love means sacrificing and being sacrificed all the time. This is the reason why this story has been loved and adapted all over the world in its different versions and alterations. In the case of India, Romeo and Juliet remain the film Industry’s most beloved play to be adapted into modern Bollywood movies, even to date.

Shakespeare’s plays have always been a subject of great interest for Indian Filmmakers, primarily because the plots of his plays have so much scope for exploration and moderation which guarantees the fact that the audience would love it, in whatever way the story takes shapes and melts into. The Bollywood spice can doll up every foreign subject in its colors and flavors, presenting something new every time. The most prominent Filmmaker who has brilliantly captured the essence of Shakespearean plays into Indian costume is Vishal Bhardwaj who so far has made three super hit movies based on Shakespearean plays. Maqbool is based on Macbeth, Omkar is based on Othello and the most recent is Haider based on Hamlet.