Recent Filmi Geek reviews of Shabana Azmi movies

In recent months I've added a few more reviews of Shabana Azmi movies to the archives at Filmi Geek. 

• Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola (2013) - Vishal Bhardwaj's latest, playing in theaters at the time of this writing.  This is an absolute must-see for any Shabana Azmi fan.  If you liked her character in Loins of Punjab Presents, the corrupt minister she plays in this movie will delight you.  She chews the scenery with obvious relish and is just hilarious to watch.  I could watch Shabana Azmi all day in this kind of role.
• Namkeen (1982) - My review of this touching Gulzar movie gave short shrift to Shabana ji; there was just so much to say about other facets of the movie.  Shabana ji plays a mute character with a penchant for poetry, and her performance is touching, with funny moments.  Late in the movie, however, it turns tragic and disturbing.  This is an excellent movie that's worth seeing with or without the draw of Shabana ji.
• Chor sipahee (1977) - There is always a perverse sort of WTFery in Shabana Azmi's earliest masala roles, before her persona as a mature actor was fully formed.  As with most masala movies of its era, Shabana Azmi and the other female stars of this movie are underutilized.  She does have a few hilarious scenes early in the movie where she outsmarts Vinod Khanna's character.  She also gets an excellent qawwali (link embedded in the review).

As always, you can find links to my reviews of every Shabana Azmi movie I have ever seen in the column to the right.

Janam din mubarak ho! Plus, Hira aur patthar (1977)

It's that time of year again, when Sounds Like Power issues a very, very warm happy birthday greeting to Shabana Azmi.

Don't be bashful, Shabana ji!  We love your smile.  

Shabana Azmi is the sine qua non of my love for Hindi movies and all the amazing events and people that have entered my life since I started learning about them.  So apart from my respect and admiration, I also owe her my gratitude for all of that.  Here is a piece I wrote in 2008, explaining how that happened.

Here's wishing Shabana Azmi a peaceful day and a joyful, productive year.

***

The above screencapture is from the 1977 film Hira aur patthar, a fairly forgettable masala film starring Shabana ji opposite her girlhood idol, Shashi Kapoor.  I've posted a comprehensive review of the movie on Filmi Geek.  Here on SLP, though, we take a narrower view.

It's safe to say that Shabana ji is fairly wasted in this movie.  It's not quite as tragic a waste of talent as Amar Akbar Anthony, but she does get much to do here besides fretting and flitting.  And let's face it, for all her copious gifts, Shabana Azmi was never much of a flitter.

She does give good sari, though.  And so, on to the gratuitous screencaptures.

 Even then, best eyes in all of Hindi movies.

 This is a dream sequence, which is why she's dressed so oddly.

Prettiest sequence in the film, from a song, which I will post as a Shabana-gaana another day.

There is a bit of an opportunity for nautanki before the movie is over.

Shashi's tears revive her.  How romantic!

 

Shabana-gaana! "Rang Birange Nazaare"

This week's Shabana-gaana is from Atithee (1978), a movie I have not seen.

 

"Rang birange nazaare" is a nice enough duet, though I have to admit that Shabana ji's performance in the song is fairly generic and uninspired.  Songs like this really don't play to her strengths, even this early in her career when she frequently played the masala heroine.  She did better hamming it up in the funny songs in Parvarish.  

The real question this video raises is:  Why did the costume designer helmet Shashi with such a terrible wig, when he has such gorgeous natural curls?

"Jaan ab ja rahi hai," - Khel khilari ka (1977)

Remember the Shabana-gaana feature? Back when I used to update Sounds Like Power obsessively, I reserved Fridays for interesting (for better or worse) song picturizations featuring Shabana Azmi.

This week the feature returns with "Jaan ab ja rahi hai," a qawwali from the 1977 movie Khel khilari ka. I'd never heard of this film before and assume that it's thoroughly forgettable - but the song itself is not half bad. I don't care much for Shabana ji's outfit - there seemed in this era to be a lot of dressing tawaifs and female qawwals in Pepto-Bismol colored suits -but she handles herself with reasonable competence, doing something much closer to real dancing than you usually see from her.



I am not sure who all the men are who join her partway through the song - the video quality is too poor for me to tell for sure. I am pretty sure I spotted Shakti Kapoor. And, with the help of Memsaab's incredible resource, the Artist Gallery, I confidently identified a fellow named Dhruv, whom to my knowledge I have never seen before.

Gratuitous screencaps: Chor Sipahee (1977)

Here are some adorable screencaps from another film I haven't seen, Chor sipahee. You can read what Beth, who provided the screencappy goodness, has to say about the film here. It seems Shabana Azmi did not have an enormous part - but she did ride a motorcycle.



The outfit is questionable, the hair is interesting:





Tawaif routine, with Shashi Kapoor for company:





Glam, and quite lovely:



Listening carefully with Vinod Khanna:



No comment!

Gratuitous screencaps: Shaque (1976)

I'm still a couple of reviews behind at Filmi Geek so it will be some time before I get around to writing about Shaque. But there's no reason to make you wait for the harvest of screencaps!

Shaque was, I believe, Shabana Azmi's first move with Vinod Khanna, and it shows the great potential of the pairing: Vinod is manly yet sensitive, and he matches appealingly with Shabana's slightly edgy femininity. Here, though, Shabana is very, very young, and the character is quite weak and naive. It's not her best character ever, but at this early stage in her career I think that's forgiveable.

At any rate, there are some nice visuals in the film, as well as lots of cuddling between Shabana and Vinod. As to the latter, Shaque includes a very steamy scene between the two of them, brief (and interrupted by the police!) but well worth waiting for. Enjoy the screencaps.

Memorabilia

I just bought this via eBay:



This was an unaccountably silly purchase. I don't usually buy items like this, but I think that signature threw me off my game. It's not even a real autograph - it's printed! But I temporarily lost my head.

At any rate the good news for all of you is that along with the stupid not-autographed picture I also bought a couple of old movie magazines with stories about Shabana Azmi in them, and that means unusual pictures and interesting features for you, here on SLP in the coming weeks.

"Pal bhar mein ye kya ho gaya," Swami (1977)

Today's Shabana-gaana is a cute bit of sweetness from Swami - "Pal bhar mein ye kya ho gaya." In this song a besotted Shabana has fallen in love with the guy-next-door - who actually does love her for her mind, believe it or not - and she finds herself here distracted by daydreams, unable to concentrate on hanging on the washing, making garlands, or even whatever Proust or Milton she is trying to read.



I like this song because it highlights some of the cuter aspects of this character that are on display in the first 45 minutes of this film, before it all goes wrong for the poor girl. She's a little bold, a little awkward, smart, curious, girlish, and sweet. She doesn't look half bad, either. In fact the entire film is a parade of one simple but beautiful sari after another. I had wanted to do a screencap post of "The saris of Swami" but I never finished preparing it; I got tired out at around the twelfth.

"Tota-maina ki kahani," Fakira (1976)

I am in my office doing some research, and I have some music playing quietly in the background. This song came on, and it made me think - it's Friday, I haven't done a Shabana-gaana in a while, and it will only take a couple of minutes to find the song on YouTube and post it. So here you go: "Tota-maina ki kahanai," from Fakira, in which an almost impossibly young Shabana Azmi romps in a meadow with a plaid-jacketed, airplane-collared Shashi Kapoor and declares: "Main Fakire ki rani ho gayi" - I have become Fakira's queen.



I love Shabana ji's mainstream juvenilia. I love the trademark hairstyle she wore through the 70s, with those short bits curling down the sides. I love her bashful non-smile, betraying self-consciousness about her teeth. I love her youthfulness, lean and strong but awkward, and really not much of a dancer. I just love the roughness of the whole package, and the air that Post-Punk Cinema Club interprets as "What the hell am I doing in this film?" There may be no film that embodies this spirit better than Fakira. Of course I know what the hell she's doing in this film - if you're 25, and trying to establish yourself as an actor, do you turn down the chance to star opposite one of the biggest heroes of the era, and your girlhood crush to boot? But that doesn't make it any less endearing to watch this somewhat nervous and slightly unsteady proto-Shabana, still figuring out who she is and where she's headed.

"Thoda pyaar chahiye," Lahu ke do rang (1979)

Today's Shabana-gaana is a trippy and manic number from Mahesh Bhatt's Lahu ke do rang. I haven't seen this film, though I recently acquired a copy from Indiaweekly, who couldn't wait to get rid of it - it was cheaper to buy new than to rent it! Cryptic comments from one SLP reader lead me to believe that it will be best enjoyed with generous quantities of liquor.

Anyway on to the song, which features an indifferent and irritable Shabana Azmi, aggressively and quite dashingly pursued by Vinod Khanna.

Swami (1977)

My 25th Shabana Azmi film (if you don't count the execrable Son of the Pink Panther; I would certainly prefer to blot it from my memory) was Basu Chatterjee's 1977 film Swami.

You can read my comments on Swami here, at Filmi Geek. I enjoyed the film, but I was troubled by its message - succinctly put by Filmi Geek commenter Amodini - that "a woman's mind came second to 'homeliness'."

I think the film's arc would have been easier for me to take with another actor in the lead role. Probably at age 25 or so, at the delicate nascence of her career, Shabana ji did not make a habit of turning down meaty starring roles just because they weren't feminist enough. Or perhaps she simply didn't care, having not yet internalized her parents' view that "art should be an instrument for social change." Either way, it was tough for me to see the character she gave us in the first 45 minutes of the film spiral and sink and ultimately be broken.

I had a thought as I was writing this that there might be another, subversive reading to Mini's sadness at the end of the film. A film that wanted to make the pro-traditional, pro-homeliness point might show her being happy and relieved that her ordeal is over; instead, *Swami* shows her misery precisely because she knows what has been taken from her. I will have to watch again.

And it won't hurt me to watch again, I must say, because as a piece of Shabaniana Swami is completely delicious. She looks lovely, young and girlish and sweet, and she wears a terrific array of simple but colorful cotton saris - so many that I completely lost count. She's simply beautiful, or beautiful simply - not glamorous, just lovely. There's a poutiness in her face that she extends to her body language as well, something in her Filmfare-award-winning performance that is natural and girlish and not entirely graceful, yet very enchanting. Have a look (click on the pictures for larger versions).

"Main tujhe bita ke", Fakira (1976)

In part because of the trajectory of Shabana Azmi's career, and in part because of what's available on YouTube, my Shabana-gaana offerings are generally focused upon Shabana ji's earliest work. No matter, since the 1970s are full of adorable exemplars of proto-Shabana in her masala heroine avatar.

The 1976 masala potboiler Fakira is a rich source - the songs are cute and romantic, with lots of rolling in the grass and dancing around trees, and between the elfen young Shabana and the gorgeous Shashi Kapoor there is plenty of pretty to go around. Today you can watch "Main tujh ko bita ke," a tender song with a picturization that is humorous and even downright naughty for its time. Though the picturization doesn't shy away from the details of the couple's romp, the clip doesn't show you what the film does the next morning - the bed broken in two as a result of the evening's frolic!



Enjoy the song, and watch out for something that looks an awful lot like a real kiss ...

Smoking hot

My Umrao Jaan post earlier today, combined with a re-watch of Shatranj ke khilari this evening, reminded me of this fact: smoking a houkah is smoking hot.






This is as true today as it was thirty years ago.

Does anyone know of any other films in which Shabana ji takes up the houkah?