JHANAK JHANAK PAYAL BAAJE 1954
The film
With Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje, V. Shantaram once again proves his ability as a master filmmaker as he combines an extremely well written screenplay with the dance element of the film. With this film, his first foray into technicolour Shantaram, proves that you can turn to your own culture and come up with a superb, engrossing, thought-provoking and well crafted film. Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje is a film which propogates that India must preserve her artistic purity and not be swayed by 'westernization'. . The film is a tribute to the Classical Dances of India. From lessons in Kathak to Yaman Raag to Dance of the Seasons to the Shiv Tandav sequence, the film is a series of sparkling vignettes and gorgeous ensembles of Kathak, Bharatnatyam and Manipuri. The nascent romance is keyed to the performance of the romantic Radha-Krishna number in traditional Kathak style and as it grows it exposes itself in the wild joy of the Bhil dance staged in association with the late Thakkar Bapa's Varanasi Seva Mandal Troupe. It blossoms amid the ecstasies of Bhartanatyam in Mysore's famous Brindavan Gardens. True, the film is a feast of Indian Dance but never moving away from the story and is in fact an essential part of a tender romance of the Guru's disciple, which ripens into love and is turned into drama and near tragedy before resolving itself happily at the end. Certain sequences intermingling with the dance and drama are extremely well conceptualized and carried off with flair. This intermingling of life with art also heightens the drama and gives the film more depth and layering making for enriched viewing.
The highlight of the film is the Shiv Tandav sequence as Gopi Kishen sets the screen ablaze. Gopi Kishen and Chaube Maharaj create a virile dance crowned by the best that the glory of dancing, youth, beauty and vigour can give it. It is enhanced immeasurably with its perceptive camera angles and skilful use of spot lighting. Gopi Kishen is the life and soul of the film as long as he sticks to what he knows best - dancing. His dances are the films's strengths as he makes the viewer realizes the richness and artistry involved in Indian Dance. Shantaram who was a perfectionist made Sandhya train for two years before he began the film. Sandhya tries hard but lacks the natural talent in both acting and dancing and one cannot help thinking what wonders a seasoned actress - dancer like Vyjayantimala could have worked with a role like this.
The brilliant choreography, sets and costumes of the film deserve a mention even if admittedly the team did get carried away with the fact that the film is in colour and admittedly the look is garish with saturated colours reminding one more of Indian Calender Art but Shantaram makes great cinematic use of it with dynamic camera movements and takings that highlight his mastery over the medium.
The other strong point of the film is its lyrics and musical score. Hasrat Jaipuri has done some of his best work in this film with soulful lyrics like Nain so Nain and Ae Mere Dil Bata and the film is a triumph for Music Director, Vasant Desai. Vasant Desai was a regular with Shantaram. He began his career at Prabhat as an actor and a studio hand in 1929. He became assistant to the music directors there like Keshav Rao Bhole, Master Krishna Rao and Govingrao Tembe. Desai is best known for mainly adapting traditional Maharashtrian musical modes of Powada and Lavni and made several polemical statements calling for Marathi Cinema's return to regional music traditions. It is said that following the success of Baiju Bawra (1952) where Naushad so successfully incorporated Indian Classical music Shantaram was advised by well-wishers to take Naushad to score the music for the film but Shantaram was adamant and stuck to Vasant Desai who responded with perhaps his career's best score! The music mingles the rhapsodies of the flute and soft outpourings of the sitar to highlight and subdue as the case might be the interludes in which the lovers hold the stage as lovers. An interesting point is the absence of Raag Bihag which is actually associated from time memorial with separated lovers and here the film refrains from using it even though the lovers do get separated before reuniting at the end. Vasant Desai proves how accessible Indian Classical music can be and repeated his success story in Goonj Uthi Shehnai (1959) which had the great Bismillah Khan playing the shehnai!
Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje was written off by some critics but the public responded most favourably to the film as it ran for over two years at a theatre in Mumbai and even went on to win the President's Gold Medal for Best Feature Film of 1955. In 1959 Shantaram returned to another film combining dance this time with fantasy - Navrang about an artist who glamorizes his wife in his fantasies as his muse. Though critics like Baburao Patel of Filmindia dismissed the film as 'the mental masturbation of a senile mind', the public once again responded enthusiastically to the film making it a success at the box-office! Oh well...To each his own!
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