OLD IS GOLD

My friends know me as an unforgiving critic of Bollywood movies-someone who brands a movie as worthy of piracy if it is found that it had been copied in a shameless manner from some Hollywood flick. Just to give you an idea, I had never watched any English movie before my college days and after only 4 years of movie watching I can easily name the Hollywood movie which has been plagiarized in a hindi movie, and it really pained me to see so much of good music (now I am not a good judge of that so sometimes I forgive them for copying music) wasted on copied stories. Even you will realize that after 5 or 6 years most of the movies are remembered for its music and not plot et al.
Well we have been through a time which has little witnessed the talent of the showmen of millennium like Raj Kapoor, Satyajit Ray, and Gurudutt - the pioneers of Indian cinema. So I thought of going back to classics to at least appreciate what these gentlemen created and what has been dragged endlessly into today’s cinema. Recently while watching some of the classics I observed some comparisons b/w the classics and today’s movies:

• The classics are more poignant than most of the modern movies which are an absurd mélange of 2 or 3 Hollywood flicks. (obviously with certain exception in the movies of both the era’s)


• The acting in the classical movies might seem very mechanical, in short to say not much refined acting and directing skills but then they were the ones who were creating original and different from Hollywood, as even they knew that a complete aping of Hollywood in Indian context would be absolutely absurd.


• The actresses in these movies (like Waheeda and especially Nargis in Awara) had more of an aura of grace, something which makes them look sexier than their modern day counterparts who prefer to leave less to imagination and more to description.


• The story line seems to be too boring and cliché but then that’s one disadvantage an old classical movie or old classical thriller novel have. So oft they have been told through different “inspired” sources that the very original source starts to sound/appear cliché and out of the place.

Lastly it’s these movies which I feel are the gems of the Indian cinema and are worth a try before being branded as outdated or not worthy of watching. Move over to the next blog to see what my mantra to enjoy an old classic movie is.