Technicolor fantasies

Details of the earliest use of colour in Indian cinema are a little unclear. As a trivia-seeking film buff in the pre-Internet age, I remember being under the impression that Mehboob Khan's 1952 film Aan - a florid costume drama with Dilip Kumar in an unusually energetic, even show-offish performance - was the first Indian colour film. I learnt later that it was only the first Hindi film in Technicolor - which doesn't, of course, take anything away from the eye-popping splendour of a movie that was the biggest hit of its year and offers the never-to-be-forgotten sight of one of our most understated actors bounding about an ornately designed palace in tights, mocking a haughty princess.

It is usually accepted today that the 1937 Kisan Kanya (directed by Moti Gidvani, though its principal creative force may have been its producer Ardeshir Irani) was the first Indian colour film to be locally processed. A few years earlier, the Marathi film Sairandhri had been shot in colour, but the print was processed in Germany, and by most accounts the attempt was not successful. There is something fitting about this when you consider how important the concept of swadeshi was in those years. And also when you consider that the man who directed Sairandhri, V Shantaram, would develop a reputation as one of our most patriotic directors, his films rooted in national pride and indigenous culture.

Shantaram would, many years later, direct a film that for my money represents one of the most brilliantly over-the-top explosions of colour in Indian cinema. The 1959 Navrang begins on a deceptive note though, with a subdued black-and-white title sequence and a song with the refrain "Rang de de" ("Give colour"). It is more like a hymn actually, as if the singers are beseeching God (or the film's director) to give a fresh coat of paint to this monochrome canvas. And he obliges: appearing on screen, addressing us directly, Shantaram relates how he nearly lost his vision while shooting a scene in his previous film. "A strange thing happened when my eyes were bandaged," he says, "I began to experience colours more vividly than before, and through this new movie I want to share some of those visions with you." Upon which the screen transforms into a cornucopia of colours.

Set in the late 18th century, Navrang is about Diwakar, a struggling poet, who is disheartened by how quickly his wife Jamna has slipped into her mundane domestic roles, and wants her to be more indulging of his fantasies. Since she doesn't comply, he starts daydreaming about Mohini, an enchantress with Jamna's face but a markedly more playful attitude to romance, music and dance. This imaginary woman becomes his muse and leads him to professional success as a court poet. What follows are some intriguing scenes about the nourishing (but also potentially harmful) role of fantasy in a relationship, along with reflections on the link between art and the marketplace - which was a theme in another major film of the time, Guru Dutt's Pyaasa.

But to discuss Navrang principally in terms of its plot might mean overlooking what a visual and aural feast this film is. C Ramachandran's score is full of gems, from the Holi song "Arre ja re Hat Natkhat" to the ever-popular "Aadha hai Chandrama". And no other film I can think of has anything comparable to the clothes worn by the actress Sandhya in the many fantasy dance sequences: (if you could weave random images from the psychedelic Star Gate sequence in 2001: A Space OdysseyA Space Odyssey together into an outfit, and then stitch a few unconscious peacocks on it, you might come close to replicating some of these costumes).

Martin Scorsese once made a list of his favourite "colour films", defined not as best films that happened to be in colour, but films that in his view made the most impressive use of colour photography - such as the British classic The Red Shoes, the most famous scene in which was an exuberant 15-minute ballet production. Navrang is similar to The Red Shoes in the sense that it is grand theatre (look away now, all ye who demand starkness and studied "realism" in your cinema). If you have no taste for the deliberate artifice of Shantaram's staging, or if you can only take so much of dancing ponies, peacocks and elephants spraying coloured water about, it won't work for you. I loved most of it though. It must have been some big-screen experience back when it was released.

Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer