AWARA
("The Vagabond")
(1951), B&W, Hindi, 170 min.
Directed by Raj Kapoor. Lyrics by Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri.
Music by Shankar-Jaikishen.
This much-discussed film was Kapoor’s first to feature his
trademark Chaplinesque character "Raj/Raju" ("little Raj,"
though the homage to Chaplin is less pronounced than in the sunnier SHRI 420),
here a hapless "vagabond" (avaaraa) who, as the film opens, is on
trial for the attempted murder of a pillar of society, Judge Raghunath (brilliantly
played by Prithviraj Kapoor, R. K.’s real-life father). He is defended
by a beautiful young lawyer, Rita (Nargis), an orphan who also happens to be
the Judge’s ward. Her interrogation of the latter leads to a long flashback
that occupies most of the film. Its opening segment evokes the Ramayana, with
Judge Raghunath (an epithet of Rama) abandoning his pregnant wife Leela (Leela
Chitnis) because he wrongly believes she has been raped during a brief abduction
by the robber Jagga (K. N. Singh), and the Judge’s conviction that the
"seed" of a criminal necessarily seals the fate of his offspring (ironically,
we learn that Jagga only became an outlaw after being wrongly convicted of rape
by the same Judge). Leela raises her son in the Bombay slums, slaving to send
him to school so that he may become a lawyer and judge like his father, but
with Jagga always hovering in the background, intent on luring him into a life
of crime. As a schoolboy, Raj falls in love with the carefree Rita, despite
the class gulf between them, but Judge Raghunath (a friend of Rita’s father
who takes an instinctive dislike to the "wayward" boy) contrives to
separate them. Jagga and the Judge’s struggle for Raj’s soul –
a variation on the nature-vs.-nurture debate, with resonances of caste ideology
– continues when Raj and Rita reconnect after twelve years.
The film, generally considered one of Kapoor's finest, is notable for its darkly
surreal sets, especially the Judge’s baroque-deco mansion, and for its
remarkable dream sequence, which echoes this architecture in an evocation of
heaven and hell. Despite its ultimate vindication of patriarchy and capitalism,
the film became an enormous hit in the U.S.S.R. and, thanks to Chairman Mao’s
reputed fondness for it, in China (to this day, millions of middle-aged Chinese
can hum its title song).