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on 2006/7/17 6:12:41
The recent downpour brought back memories of films in which the rains played a crucial part.
Barsaat
Raj Kapoor's first major success as a director is a moody film that effectively uses rain clouds to denote pain and longing.
The film explores the conflict between two aspects of man -� sensitive Pran (Raj Kapoor) falls deeply in love with Nargis, while Gopal (Premnath) seduces a shy maiden (Nimmi) with cold-hearted precision. The rains celebrate the lovers' bond during the joyous Barsaat mein tak dhina dhin, but when you see Premnath callously eat peanuts while Nimmi sings Yeh sama hai jaa rahe ho kaise manoon, you know he is going to go back on his promise to return with the next monsoons.
Positioned against billowing clouds, Nimmi spends a lifetime waiting for her beloved to return. Raj-Nargis' love story also follows a chequered course. The characters' agony is captured in songs that repeatedly play on the allegory between weeping clouds and eyes through lines like Aansoo ki barsaat balamwa dil mein aag lagaye, and Sharmayee meri aankh se sawan ki ghatayein.
The film opens with images of clouds and closes with them, mutely watching over the pain below them.
Amar
In Hindi cinema, the romantic high point of a film often takes place during the rains -� whether it is the lead pair dancing during a song or a high-voltage passion-filled scene.
In this, Mehboob Khan�s Dilip Kumar-Madhubala-Nimmi-starrer, the story turns around an incident that takes place between Dilip Kumar and Nimmi one stormy night.
Village belle Nimmi is in love with educated Dilip Kumar and shuns her rustic admirer Jayant. When the latter chases her through the rain-splashed woods, she seeks refuge in Dilip�s house. The beast within him is unleashed at the sight of a drenched Nimmi. The result: Pregnancy for Nimmi and a shot at martyrdom for Dilip�s fianc�e (Madhubala).
Barsaat Ki Raat
It begins with the Roshan-Sahir Ludhianvi gem Garjat barsat sawan aayo re playing against the rain-drenched titles and setting the right romantic mood.
The reason for the title is provided later when the rains form a backdrop for the lead pair's first meeting. When hero Bharat Bhushan takes shelter from the rains in a canopied refuge, he finds a wet Madhubala there after her car breaks down. All the plot conventions we now know so well follow -- the heroine clutching at the hero when there is a flash of lightening, wringing water out of her clothes and fluttering nervously.
The meeting, of course, alters the course of their lives. Madhubala doesn't know that the man she met in the rains is the poet she so admires, until she hears him on the radio singing Zindagi bhar nahin bhulegi woh barsaat ki raat...
Anokhi Raat
A stormy night sees a strange gathering of human beings thrown together while they take shelter. It is always an interesting premise and each character has a history.
Heroine Zaheeda has to decide whether to save the family honour and marry an old millionaire ( Tarun Bose), especially when she sees the plight of Aruna Irani trapped in a May-December alliance. Among the heroes, the cynical but sensitive artist (Parikshit Sahni) is counterbalanced by a dacoit (Sanjeev Kumar) who rediscovers his humane side when he sees Zaheeda. Sanjeev is struck by Zaheeda�s resemblance to his deceased wife. More flashbacks follow, including the philosophical song Oh re taal mile.
Director Asit Sen orchestrates the elements to a frenzy, mirroring the characters� states of mind.
Ittefaq
'It was a dark and stormy night' � this is not just literary clich�. Many Hindi filmmakers too have incorporated it.
Ittefaq is a B R Chopra production that was directed by Yash Chopra. Like Anokhi Raat, it is also a one-night story. Accused of his wife�s murder, Rajesh Khanna makes his escape on a rainy night while police jeeps splash into puddles and chase him through the wet streets of Mumbai. He barges into heroine Nanda�s house and holds her hostage even as the rains pour and policemen in raincoats prowl outside.
Thunder is effectively used to heighten the tension at key turning points in this taut thriller.
Monsoon Wedding
Dark clouds loom large over Mira Nair's film as a boisterous Punjabi family readies itself for a grand Delhi wedding. There are tricks galore as the bride (Vasundhara Das) is still in love with her ex lover. And an unspeakable secret that the bride�s cousin (Shefali Shah) has squashed for several years finally comes out and threatens to disrupt the proceedings.
But the family shows courage to stand up for its own, and the rains pour down like a cosmic blessing.
The rains also make for great cinematic images -- remember the sea of black umbrellas in the overhead shot during the chase scene in Arjun? The memorable image from Monsoon Wedding comes towards its end, when Shefali, Vasundhara and the family greet the baraat in the rain.
Chameli
From the black-and-white days of Pather Panchali to colour-splashed contemporary films like Chameli and Raincoat, art house films have skilfully used rains as a player.
Apple-cheeked Kareena is a rather improbable prostitute, but then the film is pretty much a Pretty Woman-like fantasy. Aggressive but golden-hearted streetwalker Kareena meets an investment banker (Rahul Bose) in Mumbai's Flora Fountain one rainy night... and love blossoms.
As Kareena frolics in the rain and helps out people galore, the man realises that the prostitute has retained her pocket of grace in the midst of the slime of her surroundings. Bose has his own demons to fight (he lost his wife to an accident on a rainy night), but director Sudhir Mishra uses the rains to communicate his eventual admiration for Kareena�s philosophy -- on the streets she is vulnerable to the elements, yet she exults in them.
source:rediff
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