A tribute to Raj Kapoor as one of our finest song-actors

[Wrote this piece for a special, Raj Kapoor-themed issue of Frontline magazine]

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This is something every serious cineaste knows: most films of a certain vintage – especially those made by a director with a sense of visual composition, movement and use of space – are very different beasts when viewed on a big screen in a dark hall. This is also true of melodrama, of the larger-than-life movie that reaches for heightened emotion and grand gesture, the sort of thing that can make a modern viewer, weaned on “realism”, squirm – but which seen in the right environment reveals all its emotional depths and layers. Allowing even the most rational of us to tap into the mysterious, atavistic sides of our own personalities – to be stirred in ways that a grittier work may not achieve.

Last year I watched Awaara and Shree 420 on a big screen in immaculate prints, in the company of a receptive audience. I believed I knew these films well; but experiencing them in these conditions, I realised I had never actually seen them at all. What I had seen were pale simulacra – imposters, smaller than life. Here, now, was the magic show, the circus, the sorcery.

Of course, you expect the Big Moments in a Raj Kapoor-directed film to land a punch. Even in the videocassette era of the 1980s, my generation of viewers grew up with the education that he was the ultimate showman, bigger than Subhash Ghai who had recently appropriated that term. Later, watching RK’s early work, especially Aag and Awaara, I thought about a quote attributed to another wunderkind, Orson Welles, about getting complete freedom to make Citizen Kane at age 25: “I felt like I had been given the best toy-train set a boy ever had.”

So, with Awaara in the hall, I was prepared to be thrilled by those great shots of Prithviraj Kapoor’s remarkable face caught between shadow and light, the tumultuous play of emotions flitting over him (Raj Kapoor’s father was his Muse here, more so than any of his heroines were), or the scene by the window with the rain-water pouring down the glass. And later, the famously opulent dream sequence featuring Raj and Rita (Nargis) – a scene I have showed students in a darkened room that could only partly replicate the big-screen experience.

But equally, the dark hall amplified things I hadn’t expected to be amplified. I found myself just as captivated by the subtleties in Raj’s performance – in the “Dam bhar jo udhar munh phere” scene, for instance.

There is plenty here that shows the eye of Kapoor the director: the beautiful visuals of the boat in the water, the reflections of the lovers, the dark clouds and the moon that frees itself from them. But Raj the actor is in full fettle too. Take this vignette. Rita has just sung the opening lines of the song, and now it is his turn. The camera switches to his face as she concludes “… baatein hazaar kar loongi”, and in those couple of seconds we see him moving his lips silently to her singing – before commencing his part.

This can be interpreted in diegetic terms: a young man appreciatively mouths the words to his girlfriend’s song, in kinship. Or it could be Raj Kapoor – connoisseur of music, maintaining full control over his vision – lost in the moment, counting the beats before his own lip-synching. Either way, it works beautifully. It is one of those small moments (in a grandstanding, symbolism-laden film) that the critic Manny Farber alluded to when he described a non-essential gesture by Humphrey Bogart (in The Big Sleep) bringing alive a whole world outside the specificities of the film’s narrative.

But also note how the ground has been prepared for Raj’s silent lip-moving earlier, in a playful little exchange before the song begins, a melody of “Hmms” and “Uhhs”, where Rita and Raj’s voices almost overlap. (She is trying to find out what he is thinking about, he is replying distractedly; he is passionate about her but also melancholy and uncertain, conflicted about his circumstances.) In the song sequence itself, Nargis is in the disadvantaged position of performing gyrations and coquettish gasps to express girlish enthusiasm (including what looks like a mercifully truncated pole dance of sorts) – but the scenario allows Raj to be introspective, and what he achieves here is something rare: a quiet psychological realism in performance, even while operating within the contours of an upbeat romantic song (the sort of number that literal-minded viewers refer to as synthetic).

“Dam bhar ke” represents a Raj Kapoor skill-set that one tends to overlook. When we think of Raj the actor, we don’t think of subtlety: we think of the displays of animal passion in romantic scenes (even the “Dam bhar ke…” scene was preceded by Raj smacking Rita around), or showy self-pity mixed with KA Abbas-penned lectures about the state of the world. But here is an inward-looking restraint, something Raj did rarely, but very effectively: another example is in the “Duniya Banane Waale” scene in Teesri Kasam, where he is as subdued as Waheeda Rehman, as he sings gently for her.

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When it comes to the more flamboyant Raj Kapoor, the man with the flourishes – running the gamut from Chaplin-esque slapstick to Chaplin-esque pathos and beyond – it is obvious why a song sequence provided a full canvas for him. In a straightforward dramatic scene with regular dialogues, Raj could become a bit hard to take – even if he was being truthful to a loud character. In such cases a viewer’s sympathy can easily veer towards the quieter, more understated performer – say, Dilip Kumar in Andaz, or Ashok Kumar in Bewafa, or even Rajendra Kumar in Sangam. But when a Hindi film moves into the magic realm that is the song-and-dance scene, the bench-posts shift; in this exalted meter, everything becomes more palatable if done with conviction – and few did it with as much conviction as Raj did. Watch “Awaara Hoon”, or “Kisi ki Muskuraahaton Mein”. If this isn’t rigorous acting, what is?

(One can also point out – and apologies if this sounds facile – that Raj’s own voice in normal dialogue scenes could be gratingly whiny when he was playing the narcissistic man-child or the inspirational joker concealing his pain. Mukesh or Manna Dey were easier on the ear.)

In my view there is no equivalent elsewhere in Hindi cinema of an actor-director who so brilliantly filled both roles – behind the camera and in front of it – while orchestrating song sequences. Guru Dutt and Manoj Kumar were, in different ways, very skilled at visualising songs, but neither of them was the song-performer that Raj was. And while this is most evident in the first decade or so of his career – when he was relatively lithe and spry – it can be glimpsed in later films too, including Mera Naam Joker and Dharam Karam, and even in his small cameo as himself in the “John Jaani Janardan” song in Naseeb, playing the accordion to the delight of the other guests at a film party.

For me, and for many others, Exhibit A of Raj as great song actor is Shree 420’s “Dil ka Haal Sune Dilwala” – which I also had the pleasure of watching on a big screen last year. In a fairer world, I texted a friend after the scene was over, he would have walked off with an Oscar for best actor in a short film.

The sequence has the protagonist, who recently made his way to Bombay, settling down with a group of footpath-dwellers who ask to hear his life-story – which he elaborates through song. But that description doesn’t begin to capture the quality of this extraordinary scene, which builds in tempo – moving seamlessly from the intimate and personal to big-picture motivational speak and social commentary. Much credit must go to the combination of the lyricist Shailendra, music directors Shankar-Jaikishen and the other performers in the scene. But holding it all together, controlling its tempo, is Raj the director – and its beating heart is Raj the actor.

Here he is, drawing on his theatre training in the comical interludes such as the one where he mimics a “budhaa darogaa” (old policeman); then he returns to a more conventional mode, playing a dafli like a romantic hero (or a Mr Tambourine Man of the streets) while a shy young woman dances alongside him. In keeping with the rising pace of the music, he spins the dafli above his head like a sudarshan chakra (or like a playful Abhimanyu using a wheel as a weapon against the world’s slings and arrows), then deftly recovers in time for the song’s next stanza – the one with the hint of pedantry, words of wisdom about the crooked ways of the world, and about the nature and craft of protest. (Meanwhile the rich man in the house nearby has called the police to stop this ruckus.)

As the writer and film historian Pavan Jha puts it, this is a classic street anthem and protest song, very Indian in style, with dancing at its heart. Watch Raj’s footwork here – also shown to great effect in “Ichak Daana Beechak Daana” where he combines Little Tramp mannerisms with a Hindi-film-song idiom, tapping and pirouetting from a distance as Nargis sings riddles to children. The repeated tipping of his hat to the children, the cutesy pratfalls and attempts to mimic the Chaplin-duck walk… these can get grating when overdone, but to watch sequences like this one, or “Mera Joota Hai Japani”, is to see how adeptly tics borrowed from an earlier screen God can be incorporated into an Indian form of storytelling, and into a particular cultural milieu. If Raj’s character can sing “my clothes and shoes are from other lands, but my heart and essence are Indian”, this is true of his appropriation of the Chaplin persona too.

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In his memoir Khullam Khulla, Rishi Kapoor relates how he had to tell his son Ranbir the importance of actually singing a song on the sets out loud while shooting a musical sequence – as opposed to silently moving his lips, which would dilute the performance’s credibility. Rishi also mentions that during his own years as a leading man, he made an effort to be convincing in musical scenes even when playing instruments that he didn't actually know how to play.

It's easy to posit that this trait came from Raj – apart from the genes he bequeathed to his children Randhir and Rishi, he must also have influenced his younger brothers Shammi (one of our most uninhibited and rambunctious musical performers) and Shashi, who would have watched him as they were coming of age.

In the 1959 Anari – directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, but a Raj Kapoor film in many ways, with many of his regular crew-members involved – there is a scene where Raj is finding it hard to express his romantic feelings to Aarti (Nutan) in dry prose; she asks him to sing instead, which is the cue for the song “Dil ki Nazar Se”. Nearly 60 years later, in Jagga Jasoos, his grandson Ranbir plays a stuttering protagonist who needs to sing the things he wants to say, so that it “comes out smooth”. (“Mere words bhi so-so ke nikalte hain / Isliye gaa ke bolta hoon.”)

Whether or not this was a conscious homage, it feels like a symbiotic link between two very different types of cinema, calling out to each other across the decades, bound by a belief in the idea that music and rhythm could achieve things that regular conversation could not. However far we think we have moved from the quaint language of old Hindi films, the freshness of Raj Kapoor’s song performances will remain, and will remain accessible to those lucky enough to seek them out. As the Joker sang, “Jee chaahe jab hum ko awaaz do / Hum hain wahin, hum thay jahaan.”