Retro Reuse

One day, about ten years ago, when I went to get a signature on a project report from my boss, he remarked dramatically, “Jao, pehle uss aadmi ka sign lekar aao jisne yeh project initiate kiya tha!”. And we both started laughing at the parody of Amitabh Bachchan’s famous dialogue. So, I thought, why not talk about retro themes in Bollywood films.

Retro Bollywood. Illustrated by Ishita: Visual Storyteller at ThisDay

How time flies. It is already 28 years since the release of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and soon, it will be 48 years since the release of Sholay. The dialogues still punch, and our memories of the famous sequences race ahead of the sequences themselves every time we watch them. The vintage evokes nostalgia, and filmmakers use vintage as a hook to keep viewers across generations interested by using retro themes or sub-plots that come with that familiar old taste with a new flavor.

Film remakes make for family bonding — while the moist-eyed elders point out what the original film was like, who the actors were, and the inevitable ‘nothing-can-beat-the-original’ drone, the children enjoy the high-strung drama and action that Bollywood is famous for. For example, when the 2008 Ranbir Kapoor-starrer Bachna Ae Haseeno was released, dads in their early forties tried harder than RD Burman himself would have to explain to their kids why the orchestration in the original track from the 1978 superhit Hum Kisise Kum Naheen was far superior. The same debate between the generations continued over the title track of the 2011 film Dum Maro Dum. Let us explore examples of a few retros.

The recent web series Jubilee, the first half of Om Shanti Om (2007) set in the 1970s, Bombay Velvet (2015) set in the 1960s, or Action Replayy (2010) partly set in the mid-1970s — these are period films featuring the set design, props, and attire typical of the times they are set in. Understandably, the backdrop, the fashion, the cars would look unfamiliar to a millennial audience, whereas it instantly connects with the middle-aged members who either acknowledge the authenticity of the props or are quick to point out the inconsistencies.

Take the case of the three-episode period film Teri Meri Kahani (2012) starring Priyanka Chopra and Shahid Kapoor. In the episode set in 1960, the nostalgia antenna for someone my age can instantly recognize the similarity of Shahid Kapoor’s jaywalk with that of Johnny Walker on the song ‘Ae dil hai mushkil jeena yahan’ from the 1956 superhit film C.I.D. But an equally glaring inconsistency is that, in one of the scenes in this episode set in 1960, we hear the song ‘Likha hai teri aankhon me kiska afsana’ from Teen Devian, a 1965 film. By the way, in C.I.D., Geeta Dutt’s seductive solo ‘Jata kahan hai deewane’ was deleted from the film because it showed a policeman getting drunk and because the lyric ‘fifi’ was perceived to be a tad raunchy. Well, the song finally saw the light of the day 59 years later in Bombay Velvet, in which a cover sung by Suman Sridhar was picturized on Anushka Sharma — and the song was titled ‘Fifi’!

Sometimes, these period films allude to real-life incidents to tickle nostalgia. For example, the film Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai (2010) was a veiled biopic of the life of Haji Mastan, who ruled the Bombay underworld in the 1970s. In the film, the character’s name was Sultan Mirza and in one of the scenes, his wife Rehana (played by Kangana Ranaut) stated that Bombay filmmakers were planning to make a film on Mirza’s life, and that she was thinking of casting a new actor by the name of ‘Amit’ for the role. Wink, wink! She was referring to Amitabh Bachchan in Deewar, which was also purportedly based on the life of Haji Mastan.

Of course, it is the filmmaker’s prerogative to move around real-life incidents a bit to be able to fit them into the story. In Om Shanti Om we see Om rescuing Shanti from an accidental fire that breaks out during the shooting. This was a recreation of an actual incident that happened during the shooting of Mother India (1957), where Sunil Dutt had rescued Nargis from a fire that had broken out on the sets. There have been biopics of the dacoit Sultana Daku, touted as the ‘Indian Robin Hood’. We also see the character in Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), but surprisingly, we see him alive in the year 1941 when he had been sent to the gallows in 1924.

Hansa Wadkar was a Marathi and Hindi actress whose acting career began in the mid-1930s at the age of 13. She worked with several big film companies in the 1940s and 1950s. She had a troubled personal life, including marital woes. Shyam Benegal’s 1977 film Bhumika was inspired by Hansa Wadkar’s autobiography Sangtye Aika, and the journey of Usha, the protagonist of the film, as a singer-actress had strong resemblances to that of Hansa Wadkar. Bhumika was a two-phase period film — one of its phases was set in the 1930s and the other in the 1950s. The near-perfect recreation of the backdrops and the studios of the 1930s, including the vintage car, is worth watching. We even get to hear KL Saigal’s classic song Ek Bangla bane nyara from the 1937 film President in the background in one of the scenes — a perfect choice, given that it was 1939 in Bhumika.

How old should the story be for a film to be called a period film? For example, can Parmanu: The Story of Pokhran (2018) — a story about India’s nuclear testing programme in the 1990s that the US President Bill Clinton tried to thwart — be called a period film? Well, not really. But the 2016 film A Death in the Gunj was set in 1979 — a time when the dads and moms of today’s millennials were in their pre-teens. This one is a period film about a family traveling from Calcutta to the small town of McCluskieganj in Bihar to meet friends.

The holiday starts well enough but soon, the undercurrents between them boil over into open conflicts. And violence. Elements that indicate the periodicity of the film are peppered throughout the narrative, the most obvious being the sky blue Ambassador car. Apart from Kolkata, in which other city can you see an Ambassador car in today’s times? Also notable are Ranvir Shorey’s long sideburns and shaggy hair covering most of his ears — the same Amitabh Bachchan hairstyle of the 1970s for which barbers used to charge a king’s ransom of 3 rupees. In A Death in The Gunj, there was also a reference to ‘annas’, a unit of currency equal to 6 ¼ paise. By the way, for retro fans, the very name ‘McCluskieganj’ would instinctively trigger another 1970 Bengali classic, Aranyer Din Ratri by Satyajit Ray, a film about four friends traveling to Palamau in Bihar and getting into strange encounters and conflicts.

So, why would Gen Z want to watch period films? For one, period films make for experiential learning of history in many ways. People waiting at bus stops with no mobile phones in their hands, people seen smoking even inside cinema theaters, the absence of television sets in homes, the unfamiliar sound of the clacking of typewriters inside offices — indeed, the world has changed so much in the last forty years. Period films also give an audio-visual peep into our political and social history. For example, the backdrop of the Ranveer Singh-Sonakshi Sinha starrer Lootera (2013) was the Zamindari Abolition Act of the 1950s, and we see its impact on the Bengali zamindar Ray Chowdhury. In Bhumika, we hear a news announcement over the radio that America had declared war. It had to be 1939 or thereabout.

So, do we go retro?