Magic Moments in Silver Screen

Part 1

One of yesteryear’s Hindi film actors, Danny Dengjongpa. He was a student of Pune’s Film Institute. He then transversed his journey from Pune to Bollywood. He worked in quite a number of films, became a popular figure among the Indian audience, in a way fame, recognition touched him. Once he was approached by a Hollywood director. Talks went on for a possible Hollywood venture for him. The director asked Danny to hand over some scenes from his films to be shown to the Hollywood director. Danny narrated this experience of his in one of the interviews. This is what Danny had to say, “Even after being associated with films and acting for so many years, yet I could not trace out any such scene from any film of mine which I can call my best so far”.

These words do sound unbelievable isn’t it? Right from ‘Kalicharan’ to ‘China Gate’, Danny enthralled the audience with so many films, yet why he could not single out even one film which he feels is his best?

While watching a film, a lot of emotions take shape in the minds of the audience. The emotional waves as created by the story, other capturing elements of the film- all these and more come together to create a lasting impact on the minds of the audience. All these elements play vital role in a film. It’s true that a film does help in heightening the career graph of an actor, but need not necessarily always give the actor a chance to act out his/ her most memorable acting prowess, and in most cases that is a fact.

The audience gets a taste of an actor’s most memorable performance when the actor becomes an indispensable part of the film, when the actor through his/ her performance can take the film to scaling new heights altogether. Example: the film ‘Pakeezah’. The audience cannot distance Meena Kumari from the film. Most recent example is ‘A Wednesday’ by Niraj Pandey and the performances of Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher. Needless to mention yet, Guru Dutt’s ‘Pyaasa’ and his immortal performance in it.

Romantic hero and yesteryear’s superstar Rajesh Khanna. It was through his movie ‘Aradhana’ when he created a kind of euphoria among the female brigade of the country. Once Amitabh Bachchan also quoted, “Rajesh Khanna created history at the box office with his films primarily because of his ecstatic smile; but his popularity among his female fans cannot be measured with the popularity graph of his films at the box office”.

But Rajesh Khanna’s most important film in his life is Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s ‘Anand’. But he was not playing a romantic hero in it; neither there were any heart rending love scenes in it; rather he played the role of a patient who was at the threshold of his untimely death, which he finally acts it out at the last death scene in the film. This film stands out to be his best performance till date. Apart from this film, Rajesh Khanna has done many films in his career, and which were equally more successful at the box office, but the way his name is taken at the same breath with ‘Anand’, this is not the case with his other films.

Translated from original Assamese by KADAMBINI THAKUR