This was James Ivory's fourth film with all of
them taking place in India. The first was the very low budget drama The Householder
which starred Shashi Kapoor of the famous Bollywood Kapoor family. The second
was the breakthrough film Shakespeare-Wallah, which put Ivory and his producer
Ismail Merchant along with their German born writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
on the global cinema map as this film played in fests around the world. The
three of them were to work together continuously for decades. In that film
Shashi was again to star and his female co-star was Felicity Kendall, the
sister of his wife Jennifer. There is an interesting love story there. The
Kendall family had similarly to the film created a troupe of actors who put
on Shakespeare's plays all over India. Shashi came to one, met Jennifer and
they fell in love. Neither family liked the idea of them getting married
for cultural, racial and religious reasons. But in 1958 they did and from
all readings they had a very happy marriage till she passed away in 1984
from cancer at the age of 50. Here they star as lovers.
After Shakespeare-Walla Ivory directed The Guru which most critics say is
best forgotten. That one did not have Shashi but now Merchant went to him
and asked him to star in this one about Bollywood. Shashi brought up the
fact that that he had yet to receive payment for the other two films and
wanted that before signing on to this one. Merchant as usual in these early
years had no money but Jennifer secretly came to him and said here is the
money to pay Shashi. It was Ruth's idea to write a script about the inner
workings of Bollywood and it certainly looks to have a higher budget than
the earlier films - even getting Shankar-Jaikishan to write a few songs and
to once again get the services of Satyajit Ray's cinematographer, Subrata
Mitra. A few other Bollywood actors have small roles as well.
The first 30 minutes of the film are rather magical. The opening credits
are fabulous as they begin with a long shot of men on foot carrying a large
sign in the middle of traffic and as the camera zooms in we see it is a poster
for this film, And it has different signs for the other credits all being
carried about. Movie posters were an art once in India. Hand-painted and
often gigantic. I love their old posters full of color and images. Now like
everywhere else they are computer generated, photoshopped and dull as hell.
A lost art that Japan and Thailand also had. Why has the modern age gotten
so crude. The camera then follows an English woman into a Bollywood shoot.
Lucia (Kendall) is an internationally known novelist after a book on Hollywood.
Now she is thinking about one on Bollywood. That she thinks she may know
enough to do that is the first hint of her character. She is a bull in a
cultural china shop. Inside they are practicing a musical number on a giant
typewriter with the legendary Helen dancing with a group of female dancers
- to the song Type Writer sung by Kishore Kumar and Asha Bhosle. The
song was later used in The Darjeeling Limited.
Lucia is being shown around by the film scriptwriter Hari (Zia Mohyeddin)
who is clearly smitten with her and also quite a bitter person. He feels
denigrated writing film scripts when he wants his poetry to make a living.
Lucia meets up with the star of this film being shot - Vikram (Shashi) and
goes into a tizzy. He has a wife (Aparna Sen - a famous Bengali actress and
director) but she goes after Vikram like a tigress and he is easy taking.
Both are used to getting what they want and both are unpleasant people. They
fall into a desultory affair of ups and downs, break-ups and make-ups, recriminations
and apologies. And Hari is always waiting for the fall-out.
These are not people you want to spend much time with and the film sinks
slowly into a sordid dull morass. And it started so well. I was hoping that
at the end they would have actually done the type-writer number and that
would be shown. No such luck. We never see Helen again. After this film Ivory
and Merchant made the move to America and made a series of films that should
have ended his career - Savages and the absolutely atrocious The Wild Party.
Finally, he got on solid footing in 1979 with The Europeans.
