What would you say of a young school teacher who happened to win a Grand Prix Award at Cannes International Film Festival with his first directorial venture? That he was precocious, talented and a visionary of rare pedigree...well yes and a lot more if you desired to define the persona of Chetan Anand.
Far ahead of his times, Chetan Anand belonged to that rare category of filmmakers who believed in the supremacy of a story rather than the box office draw of stars and while he certainly used all the standard props like song, dance, drama and comedy to unfold his narratives, he never allowed them to usurp the eminence of the script.
Alas, for all his prolific abilities, wide body of work and inimitable style of portraying a story on a moving canvas, critics have not done justice to the quality and depth of Chetan Anand's craftsmanship. While his life and achievements have been chronicled several times over, not many have highlighted the lyrical cinematic art and beauty of his film craft which was highly regarded by his contemporaries like Satyajit Ray and Francois Truffaut or his extraordinary experimentation and genius in devising sound as a major tool of his hypnotic story telling.
Perhaps, Chetan's stint as a radio anchor at BBC and a teacher at Doon School in Dehradun made an inadvertent contribution to his comprehension of the importance of sound just as it also made him learn the significance of brevity in communication. Observe any of Chetan's film sequences and you never feel they are too verbose; dialogues exist but minimal to the extent required and in a language that is most appropriate and desirable. Perhaps, the two brief careers, along with his intrinsic ability to play the violin and his proficiency over English, Hindi and Urdu made him evolve meaningful relationships with words and sounds that never failed to arouse an emotional chord within his audiences.
Synchronised rhythm
Right from his first film “Neecha Nagar” to several well known ones like “Haqeeqat”, “Aakhree Khat”, “Heer Ranjha” or “Hanste Zakhm”, we see Chetan's camera moving in ‘synchronised rhythm' with the sound encapsulated in the throes of emotion. Unlike others who utilised high pitched background scores to emphasise an event, Chetan Anand used natural sounds or “silence” to convey the poignancy of a situation.
Watch “Haqeeqat” when hordes of Chinese soldiers walk across the bleak landscape towards Indian borders and see how Chetan uses just the sound of the wind to convey the harshness of the terrain and hopelessness of impending danger. As the camera moves back and opens wide to show the gigantic number of “Chinese wave”, the “whispering winds” convey the desperation and fatality of the landscape in no uncertain terms. Satyajit Ray termed it as India's greatest war film ever.
“Aakhree Khat” is another masterpiece example of movement and sound as it explores the helplessness of an abandoned child on the roads of Bombay. So exquisite is the director's exploration that ordinary every day situations of the metropolitan acquire meaningful ‘countenances', opening vistas of wisdom and understanding. Even though his films abounded with great music (by Madan Mohan, Ali Akbar Khan or Ravi Shankar), he wasn't lured by music to emphasise important segments of his story.
Recall the climax in “Aakhree Khat” where there is no music except Rajesh Khanna's cry of anguish in response to the child's desire for mother's milk and you realise how right from “Neecha Nagar”, “Andhiyaan” to “Kudrat”, the master knew how to build an atmosphere to unleash the moment! Unlike most Indian directors, Chetan Anand denoted death with a lot of dignity and pregnant pauses. If the hero's death is followed in “Haqeeqat” by a blinding scream of a child, in “Heer Raanjha” it just merges into silence from a previously built up crescendo of gaiety and laughter. In “Hanste Zakhm”, death lurks behind a poignant union to enhance the void and you cannot help agree with producer-director Johnny Bakshi that Chetan Anand's film making came thorough “his deep understanding of the cultural ethos of the period he depicted in a story. Not a single movement of camera was frivolous or illogical because he was a keen student of life.”
Perhaps, constriction of camera or sound was something unknown to him and that is why he could challenge the frontiers of film making by undertaking an entire film in verse like “Heer Ranjha”. While it speaks volumes about his confidence in his cameraman Jal Mistry and writer Kaifi Azmi, it also reveals Chetan's outstanding zeal, courage and passion to make a film of his own mind, disregarding conventional forms of filmmaking. And with his deep commitment to truth and resolute perseverance, he knew he could always re-create the apt environment for his films as per their needs in terms of the story. So whether it was creating Punjab for “Heer Ranjha” or pastoral India for life of Gautam Buddha in “Anjali”, his ingenuity played as much role as his passionate knowledge of life and history. In fact, his inspired work in “Anjali” moved noted French film director and critic Francois Truffaut so deeply that he bought a personal print of the film for his own study!
However, just as “no legacy is so rich as honesty”, Chetan Anand's enormous lineage of versatile geniuses from Dev Anand to Shekhar Kapur and Zohra Sehgal to M.S. Sathyu as well as a host of other artists are probably the greatest gifts to an otherwise impoverished Hindi film industry. Moreover, as we see the themes of his films being as relevant as they were earlier, there is no reason to believe that there would not be many to carry the name forward to greater glory with his style and substance.
