For a nation that loves watching films so much, our indifference to film restoration is rather bewildering and unfathomable. The reason perhaps lies in its times of origin when our movies were largely seen as a fanciful escape, a technological version of ‘Nautanki’ maybe, despite having caught the nation’s fancy — and hence were not perceived as ‘works of art,’ negating the need for any preservation.
While over 80 percent of our films from 1931-1950 stand today to be either lost or destroyed, the remaining ones survive in barely presentable conditions — a tragedy that is particularly ironic in the case of the 1946 film Neecha Nagar, one of those remaining films of its times, the one that captured a grim socio-political reality of its times, and also continues to be relevant even 75 years after its release (It was the first Indian film to premiere at Cannes, on this day, 29 September, in 1946).
Neecha Nagar, which also marked the directorial debut of Chetan Anand (elder brother of Dev Anand), tells the story of a town that is distinctively divided into two parts — upper-city and lower-city, and how the barrier becomes deal-breaking when Sarkar (Rafi Peer), the capitalistic municipal chief, decides to greenlight a township construction project, at the cost of redirecting the upper-city drainage which would inevitably lead to water contamination for the lower-city residents.
This could be the plotline of any contemporary film or a newspaper headline for that matter. And there is not a better testament to the timelessness of conflict at the core of Neecha Nagar’s narrative.
The parallels to our present times go beyond the plot-skeletons. There is a constant attempt by Sarkar to manipulate the oppressed ‘Neecha Nagar’ people, goading them to have a positive outlook. When the lower-city residents, led by Balraj (Rafiq Anwar), protest against the diversion of drainage, Sarkar gaslights them instead, insisting not to call it a drain in the first place — for it is actually a 'canal' — and places the blame on Balraj for instigating everyone. At another point, upon hearing about the ensuing disease outbreak in the lower city, he casually says, “Only God can cure diseases, after all.” Watching these scenes unfold, one cannot help but be reminded of the ‘Sab changa si’ discourse that runs through the veins of our WhatsApp groups these days.
When Sarkar refuses to put a stop to his township project, despite the rising number of deaths in the lower city, one cannot help but recollect the news from earlier this year of Rs 20,000 crore being thrust in the Central Vista project, right amidst the COVID-19 peak. Similarly, when you watch Balraj and Yakub Baba decide to set up a small relief center of their own, to help ailing residents, you are reminded of the brief time period a couple of months ago when many took to Twitter, exasperated by the apathy of the powers-that-be, and harnessed its power to help each other generate crucial resources in their collective battle against COVID-19.
But the most striking aspect of the narrative is the radical aggression with which Anand portrays the underdog's fight. It was 1946 when the film released. Our nation was not independent yet, but the air was clearly brimming with a strong need to carve a distinct identity for ourselves.
Even though Mahatma Gandhi’s name is never mentioned in the film, his presence looms all over the narrative as Balraj, our protagonist, calls for a complete boycott of the hospitals established by Sarkar after he realises the hospitals are funded by the very money minted off the construction project, the root cause of all the hardships his people are struck by. It is both Gandhian and aggressive in approach, where the non-cooperation tactic is employed to another extreme. One cannot remember such depiction of anger and power of the radical left in Hindi cinema, at least until the arrival of the new wave in the early '70s.
Chetan Anand, in collaboration with cinematographer Vidyapati Ghosh, makes no effort to keep it soft or subtle for the viewers. His style of narrative is a fascinating hybrid of realism and expressionism. At one point, we see a young boy, who is really thirsty, crawl on his fours, and lick a small puddle of mud water on the ground. Anand follows this visual up with a montage of hyper-zoom closes of the villagers’ faces to convey their utter plight. They remain nameless, but when strung together, their sad hapless faces smack us in the plexus. And in the most affectingly enacted scene of the film, Rupa runs from door to door to find some water so that a neighbourhood kid can be saved, only to be refused by her own sister-in-law. The impact is brutal.
The visuals hurt all the more because Anand almost always chooses to play with contrasting visuals of the merry and the morbid. From an official discussion about the drain diversions under the comfort of four walls, we straight cut to untouched, upfront shots of streams of filth and sewage water flowing down into the river. After a visually striking montage of the lower-city residents’ hardships, Anand crudely cuts away to a lavish, celebratory gathering at Sarkar’s resident. And in the most striking use of expressionism in the film, the fire of a funeral pyre morphs into a fire-torch, which our protagonist Balraj uses to light the lamps, symbolically birthing the revolution from a new end.
The narrative also makes great use of songs (composed by the legendary Ravi Shankar, who also made his debut with this film), to create an emotional, rousing charge as the rebelling lower-city residents lend each other solace by singing about a hopeful tomorrow and the perennial need to rebel against the powerful.
Neecha Nagar leaves us with a hopeful message, but not before ravaging us. The legendary matinee idol Kamini Kaushal, who made her debut with this film, plays Balraj’s sister Rupa, who reluctantly gets drawn in his brother’s revolutionary mission. But then we witness Rupa gradually become emotionally invested in the cause despite everyone else losing hope including Balraj, as she refuses to back out. Like all great stories of courage and revolution, Neecha Nagar leaves you battered because it shows us all kinds of ripples a great revolution causes sometimes, giving us inspiration at the cost of lost innocence.
On the parallel, we have Maya (Uma Anand, Chetan Anand’s wife), Sarkar's sister who is established early on as an educated woman with a mind of her own. Maya is also the voice of conscience, stuck between her brother's Machiavellian tactics and her ex-lover Balraj's rebellion. In an interesting intercut play towards the end, we show a flabbergasted Sarkar struggle to deal with the boycott interspersed with the plight of Maya who is hassled and bullied at the club she frequently visits, bearing the brunt of her brother's deeds. However, in the climax, when the municipal committee is convinced of zero-toxicity in the water stream, Maya dramatically arrives there drenched in mud, returning from the lower-city where she fell in the supposedly clean water-streams, and simply stands on the stage, yet making a silent decision on everyone’s behalf. It's a bold image where a woman sheds every bit of dignity she had in this battle, in order to make a point and stand for the right.
However, the film’s most interesting decision arrives in the form of its antagonist’s name — Sarkar. Here, we need to remember that Neecha Nagar was made under British Rule when perhaps you could not openly defy or protest against the British Raj in your stories. So with a name as generic as that, Anand reminds us that no matter which era we live in, it is the ‘Sarkar’ that will always remain the one to oppress and manipulate the common man, and hence the one accountable at all times. That makes a strong impact as when you hear the mention of 'Sarkar' even while watching the film today or 50 years later, you will always remember who needs to be questioned, confronted, and protested against.
It is rather ironic that a film that made such timeless statements was at first lost in the whirlpool of its own industry’s transitory tendencies. Despite having won a Cannes award in 1946, Neecha Nagar could not find distributors for the longest time. After it finally saw a release, Neecha Nagar was rejected by the audience, and found itself at a grocery shop in Kolkata, where Subrata Mitra, one of the most loyalist collaborators of Satyajit Ray, found its last surviving reel and sent it to the National Film Archives.
And today, Neecha Nagar continues to survive as a watershed moment in our film history whose significance has only become stronger thanks to its story that, perhaps, unfortunately, will never get old. It is a story about the immutable divide between the haves and the have-nots.
from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/3iiOdf7
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