ANDAZ
(“Style,” Hindi, 1949, 148 minutes)
Directed by Mehboob Khan
Story: Shums Lucknavi; Screenplay and dialogs: S. Ali Raza; Music: Naushad;
Songs: Majrooh Sultanpuri; Photography: Faredoon A. Irani
Like many films of the immediate post-Independence era, this tragedy of manners
focuses, in a darker than usual register, on both the allure and danger of modern
western lifestyles and modes of social behavior. Though their allure would appear
to be felt by all, their danger is unequally shared between the sexes: since
nationalist ideology posits woman as the embodiment of tradition as well as
the guardian, through her chastity, of male honor, she incurs the greatest risk
in any flirtation with the modern—a flirtation which (given the dictum
that her sole God must be her husband) is tantamount to adultery. The suspicion
of this sin, nurtured by innocent misunderstandings and repeated failures of
communication in a world governed by verbal codes that discourage straightforward
speech, lies at the core of the strange and destructive “love triangle”
in this film.
As the spoilt only child of a doting millionaire, Neena (Nargis) divides her
time between palatial homes in Shimla and Bombay. We first see her in her hill
station lodge, being dressed in riding clothes by attentive servants, surrounded
by amenities (including a salon-style hair dryer) connoting the last word in
westernized luxury. Yet the supplier of all this, Neena’s devoted “Daddy”
(Sapru) displays, in their first exchange, a hint of reticence about their lifestyle
(complaining of sore limbs from excessive horseback riding in his “old
age”) that is suggestive of deeper unease to come. Moreover, in implying
that his nineteen-year-old daughter is approaching marriageable age (when she
complains that she does not like to ride alone, he quips “That can soon
be remedied…” causing her to blush), he also alludes to his traditional
responsibility to insure her chastity and supervise her transfer to the oversight
of another man. Soon after this, the headstrong Neena loses control of her horse
and is rescued by a dashing stranger, Dilip (Dilip Kumar); her horse’s
fall to its death from a high cliff prefigures the plight into which the principals
will soon plunge, driven by Neena’s heedless disregard of social propriety.
For when Dilip introduces himself to Neena’s dad (who has come to the hospital
to fetch her after her mishap), we sense a definite chill: the old man appears
dismayed by Dilip and Neena’s flirtatious exchange and her invitation to
Dilip to come visit them at home. Later, when Dilip sings of his budding love
for Neena (Hum aaj kahin dil kho baithe, “Today I lost my heart
somewhere”), and she apparently reciprocates with a lovesong of her own
(Dar na mohabbat kar le, “Don’t be afraid to fall in love”),
her father begins showing his disapproval, cautioning her that there are standards
to which “the world” adheres that are not taught in college (an indication
of Neena’s own level of education). Neena pouts and accuses him of holding
views “from 150 years back”; in the matter at hand (the question of
whether to invite Dilip to her birthday party) she again manages to get her
way. Viewers may wonder why her father seems so disapproving of an apparently
genteel boy of comparable social status. This mystery lingers until after the
old man’s unexpected demise from heart failure. The stricken Neena is helped
through this loss by Dilip, whom she rewards by making the manager and co-owner
(with her) of her father’s corporate empire: a partnership that appears
to Dilip (and to viewers) to promise a yet more consummate merger to come. But
his hopes are dashed one day when Neena takes him to the airport to meet Rajan
(Raj Kapoor), who has been away in London for several years, yet who is, it
turns out, her fiancé and one true love. It gradually becomes clear that
Neena’s allusions, in previous coy exchanges with Dilip, to being in love
in fact referred to Rajan and not to Dilip.
However, such careless words, and the exchanges of looks that accompanied them,
have had an unintended effect: Dilip is now hopelessly in love with Neena. The
breezy, self-confident Rajan (an early incarnation of the narcissistic husband
of Kapoor’s later SANGAM, which will repeat several motifs from this film,
including a little wooing scene he performs here using a snakecharmer’s
reed-pipe) is at first unaware of these complications, as is Neena herself,
who considers Dilip merely a close “friend” (dost). But Dilip
is sufficiently tortured by unrequited love to nurture the crazed hope that
Neena may yet transfer her affections to him. When Neena and Rajan are finally
married, Dilip can restrain himself no longer and, soon after the ceremony,
confesses his love to Neena. The horror that this admission inspires in Neena
appears to have multiple causes: fear that her husband may learn of Dilip’s
love and suspect that she returns it; guilt over the realization that she has
inadvertently encouraged Dilip; and dread of her own suppressed attraction (conveyed
through her glances and body language) to the intense and sensual Dilip. She
attempts to tell her new husband about Dilip’s confession, but Rajan misunderstands
her and cockily changes the topic (as always, he thinks she is talking about
him!), and the frustrated Neena resorts to various forms of denial: repeatedly
professing her love for her “only God,” Rajan, fleeing with him to
Shimla and refusing to return to Bombay, and stubbornly urging Dilip to marry
her own girlfriend Sheela (Cuckoo), who is herself in love with him. Though
uninterested in Sheela and desperate to leave, Dilip remains in Bombay running
Neena’s business out of concern that an abrupt departure on his part, so
soon after her marriage, might tarnish her reputation. He remains, too, in Neena’s
consciousness, haunting her dreams and slowly chilling her relationship with
her husband. When a daughter is born to the couple, Neena becomes troubled by
Rajan’s adoration of her, fearing that he too, like her own father, will
“spoil” the child’s character with excessive indulgence and freedom.
Dilip waits until the baby’s first birthday for his own exit, concealing
a note to Neena (explaining that he now understands that, as an "Indian
woman," she can have only one man in her heart, and that is Rajan) inside
a toy he presents as a gift. A power failure during the party affords an opportunity
to Neena to give a verbal message to Dilip, likewise begging him to leave, but
in the dark she accidentally addresses her own husband with what Rajan now mistakes
for a profession of love for Dilip. It’s all downhill from here, as Rajan’s
insane jealousy provokes him, through several bouts of grandiose self-pity and
biting sarcasm, to frustrate every effort by both his wife and Dilip to clear
the record. Eventually, he attempts to kill Dilip with a blow to the head; the
resulting concussion causes Dilip to go temporarily insane and to threaten Neena,
both violently and sexually. Assailed, in effect, by two madmen, Neena commits
a desperate act, resulting in her arrest and dramatic public trial.
Within this grim story,
diversion of a sort is provided early on by one Professor Devadas Dharamdas
Trivedi (a.k.a. "D.D.T."), a bogus academic with a childhood link
to Rajan, who insinuates himself into the household as a freeloader. Trivedi
is a classic vidushaka (the comic sidekick of the hero of classical and
folk theater): a dim but pretentious Brahman with outspoken opinions and uncontrollable
appetites. Here he functions especially effectively as an exaggerated mirror
image of the principal characters: like them, he is a creature caught between
worlds, wearing a western style suit and solar topee, yet spouting Sanskritized
Hindi and denouncing the decadent “foreign” lifestyle of his hosts,
even as he greedily partakes of it.
Although voyeuristic delight in the westernized lives of the rich was (and remains)
standard in Bombay films, Mehboob seems to dwell with particular intensity on
surface signifiers of stylish modernity: Neena’s bob of permed hair, which
she languorously fondles while talking to Dilip, her English-style boudoir and
lap dog, and the Shimla round of horseback riding, tennis, and big-band soirees.
The culturally corrosive effect of such amenities, earlier (hypocritically)
decried by the buffoon Trivedi, is (even more ironically and hypocritically)
declared by Rajan in his self-pitying speeches during Neena’s trial. Indeed,
although Neena is ultimately driven to commit an act of violence, her real “crime”
(apart from being involved in a series of misunderstandings, coincidences, and
mistimed communications) appears to be her taste for "style". The
film implies that there is a slippery slide from such taste to a disastrous
non-adherence to norms of feminine modesty and non-assertiveness (displayed
in Neena's repeated expressions that she doesn’t care what “worldly
people” think about her behavior), and her error in boldly supposing that
it is truly possible for a young woman to have a young man as a close “friend”
(dost) without him and others getting the wrong idea.
Though the film appears to endorse Neena’s father’s often-recalled
warnings about girls keeping within decorous limits, Rajan’s insufferable
self-centeredness suggests just how much "good" Indian women may have
to put up with (his assault on Dilip follows the latter’s—patently
correct—assertion that Rajan has never really understood his own wife).
And though the film is at pains to maintain the purity of Neena’s friendship
with Dilip (which will eventually be distorted, by Rajan and society at large,
into the manipulations of a lustful temptress), it also hints at the possibility
of underlying erotic attraction, playing on the often sensually charged word
dost. Rajan finally learns—when it is too late—the truth about
Neena’s relationship with Dilip, and so presumably has to face his own
measure of guilt. Indeed, there is guilt aplenty in this haunting, complex film,
which ultimately implicates itself, and all its viewers, in Neena’s “crime”:
succumbing to the irresistible attractions of alien “style” (and its
attendant promise of new kinds of freedom, especially in male-female relationships),
while maintaining the pretext of unwavering loyalty to an assumed “Indian
tradition."
ANDAZ boasts a very strong score with ten songs, mainly sung by Dilip and Neena.
In addition to the two mentioned earlier, memorable tunes include Dilip’s
romantic Tu kahe agar (“If you but say…”), his melancholy
ode to Neena and Rajan’s wedding, Toote na dil toote na (“Don’t
break, O my heart”), and Neena’s mournful chronicling of Rajan’s
gradual rejection of her in Uthaye ja unke sitam (“Take away his
oppression”) and Tor diya dil mera (“He has broken my heart”).
[The Gurpreet Video International (GVI) DVD release of ANDAZ offers a decent
quality print of the film with good sound. Superior-quality subtitles accompany
the dialog, but unfortunately none are included for the songs.]