My views on how the portrayal of love has changed in our CINEMA over the past century....
In the late
40’s and 50’s ,the portrayal of love was idealistic. It was full of heavy
dialogues bursting with emotion leading to excessive use of glycerine, studded
with lines penned by poets(who were failures in love themselves). The locale
for action was not Switzerland or Venice, it was an apocryphal garden with the
Heroine holding a tree branch or clutching the end of her saree, while the hero
rendering(read wailing) the song of love. The leading ladies were the perfect wives/
girlfriends that might even put a “sati savitri” to shame while the leading pen
were the quintessential devdas who just wanted their women at any cost. The
audience, which was relatively new the nuance of love on screen, shed more
tears than the actual charactes portraying the emotions leading to utter
melodrama. It was the pristine love without any shades of grey. The likes of
Dilip Kumar and K.L. Saigal portrayed the roles of alcoholic lovers dying to
the pain of separation and societal pressure while the Meena Kumaris and
Vyjanthimalas vehemently trying to overcome all odds and embrace their love;
their elixir of life.
The advent of
love and relationships in Indian cinema has been since the days of yore. From
the time of the very first talkies by Dadasaheb Phalke and Sohrab Modi to the
Guru Dutt/Bimal Roy classics and the Raj Kapoor- Nargis enigma to Yash Chopra
and Karan Johar histrionics, Indian cinema has seen a tremendous eclectic mix
of characters and concepts pertaining to the evergreen emotion of love.
As fate would have it, efforts of both the men and women
go down the drain as the circumstances rule the roost. Nahinnnnnnnnnn…… K.L.
Saigal’s nasal yet melodious piece rightly summarises this foundation period,
“jab dil he toot gaya, to jeeke kya karenge” *sob sob*.
to be continued....
Udit Bhatia
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