The filmy chronicler

Legendary filmmaker, screenwriter, novelist and film critic Khwaja Ahmad Abbas wrote the screenplay for the Chetan Anand-directed Neecha Nagar (1946), which became the first Indian film to win the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He also won four National Film Awards — for Jagte Raho (1956), Shehar Aur Sapna (1963), Saat Hindustani (1969), and Do Boond Pani (1971) — and launched the star of the millennium Amitabh Bachchan, who called the late artiste “Mamujaan”.

Being both an insider and outsider, Abbas wrote extensively on cinema, raised critical questions about the increasing commercial interference in the art of moviemaking, and reviewed movies. It’s said he wrote 74 books in his lifetime. Sone Chandi Ke Buth: Writings on Cinema (Vintage) is an edited volume of a collection of his works translated into English by Abbas’s niece, renowned writer and Padma Shri-awardee Syeda Hameed and writer, film journalist and scholar Sukhpreet Kahlon.

Comprising four sections — Funn Aur Funkaar, Kahaaniyaan, Articles, and Bombay Chronicle Articles -- the book includes profiles of film stars, the debate on whether moviemaking is an art or business, short stories, and select articles on cinema. The book celebrates Abbas by showing how this “boy from Panipat, land of Sufis, land of battles” introduced the small-town sensibilities to Indian cinema.

Abbas “came from a family of poets and writers.” The influence is visible in his writings. His sensitive and nuanced understanding of the socio-political landscape of India — its abject poverty, gender disparity, and unequal distribution of wealth — helped him earn the social-realist filmmaker tag.

While there’s loads to learn from Abbas as a connoisseur of world cinema or chronicler of Indian social realities on celluloid, the way he wrote about film personalities or reviewed movies was less appealing. For one, he used to reveal the whole plot. His critiques often felt superficial, lacking the depth one would expect from an experienced film personality. At least that’s the impression from reading the translated version of his pieces.

In the first section of the book, Abbas writes about film stars, filmmakers, and screenwriters. While he’s borderline obsequious when writing about his frequent collaborators such as Raj Kapoor, he over analyses the output of contemporaries such as V Shantaram and Satyajit Ray, both of whom are, in my humble opinion, far greater filmmakers than Abbas.

This is how Abbas “criticises” Ray: “There is, however, one weakness in his [Ray’s] films, if I can call it that. Ray shows people speaking only in Bengali with a few English words thrown in. But Calcutta is a metropolis; besides Bengali you also hear Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu. However, there is no trace in his films of anyone speaking these languages.”

According to Abbas, had Ray done this, it’d have added a “dimension” to his movies. Perhaps as a writer, Abbas put a premium on words and the spoken language. But the success of a filmmaker or a movie isn’t based on the accurate representation of all the languages spoken in the region where that movie is set. It’s about communicating its characters’ motivations in a context, which Ray did exceedingly well.

While I understand that this was written decades ago, and even if we let it go, the interesting thing to note in the book is how the critic reacts to the criticism of his work. There’s an account that leaves a bitter taste in your mouth if you’re an admirer of Abbas’ works. It also makes you want to doubt whether he reviewed or criticised objectively.

In his profile on Dilip Kumar, Abbas narrates an incident. After the screening of Gyara Hazar Ladkian (1962), the late actor asked Abbas “a question in front of a crowd of people, ‘Abbas Sahib, why did you make this inane film?’” This naturally hurt Abbas’ writerly and filmy sensibilities. But if you read this chapter, then you’ll find Abbas not only asking why Kumar is making “inane films” like Azaad, Kohinoor, Leader, Dil Diya Dard Liya, Ram aur Shyam but also accusing him of becoming business-minded and forgetting his brilliance as an actor. It’s a knee-jerk reaction by the critic, whose assessment of the fine actor is now marred by his focus on Kumar’s blunt question in “front of a crowd”. Abbas was known for calling a spade a spade, but he seemed to be sensitive to honest and no-filter criticism.

In another piece, Abbas writes, “Good films illuminate the hearts and minds of people while bad films infuse them with gloom.” This is also true for writing. When one finds Smita Patil mentioned as Smita Patel, Devika Rani and Devaki Rani used interchangeably, and “out of these four”, while the sentence above includes a list of five movies, one wonders how invested the editor-translator duo was in producing this volume. No matter how “inane” such editorial misses may appear, they certainly leave the reader questioning the credibility of the work.

What the editor-translator duo does manage to preserve, however, is Abbas’ voice: it’s consistent and authentic throughout. And in that voice, one can find Abbas expressing his discontent towards the commercialisation of the art of moviemaking, which he believed should only serve one purpose — showing a mirror to society — and demonstrating his unique understanding of cinema and the glamour world. Through his incisive commentary on the power structure that gets created on a set, the enterprising mindset of select people, and the increasing reliance and use of technology as a substitute for real storytelling, he easily establishes himself as someone writing about things ahead of his time with candour. His short stories in this collection are, however, cliché-driven, which is why they are bland and uninteresting. This goes to prove again that screenwriting and literary fiction writing are two different skill sets. One is rarely a pioneer in both.

Title: Sone Chandi Ke Buth: Writings on Cinema

Author: K A Abbas

Edited and translated by Syeda Hameed and Sukhpreet Kahlon

Price: Rs 599

Pages: 232

Publisher: Vintage