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Journalism of Courage
This Diwali, hold your breath for the old sparkler. Mughal-e-Azam is being re-released, this time all in colour. There have been agitated murmurs already about the audacity of tampering with the original vision of its creator by pouring colour into it. But as four decades promise to melt away in the darkened hall, could we please just savour the moment?
It is, after all, a rare invitation to revisit on the big screen the magic and the technique that went into making a classic that has stood the test of time. In these days of shrinking cinema halls and flopping films, in times when filmmaking seems so much the business of the extremely tough-minded, fore-armed with a clear map of the specific audience niche and segment they plan to target, K. Asif’s epic is a reminder of breadth and vision. In 1960, it was made at the rumoured cost of about Rs 1 crore, when a film could be made at one tenth that price, but it was more than that. It was in the making for nearly a decade, but it was more than that. It starred some of the legends of Indian cinema and a lead pair whose romance and then the souring of it had set imaginations alight, but it was more than that. Mughal-e-Azam’s enduring appeal can be glimpsed in that famous sequence in which Dilip Kumar caressed Madhubala with a single feather and not a word was spoken. It is also there in the spectacular opulence of the Mughal court, the breathtaking Sheesh Mahal that framed Madhubala’s defiant “pyar kiya to darna kya”, Naushad’s musical score that included the two songs by Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, a coup of sorts. Mughal-e-Azam remains a classic, most of all, for its unmatched fusing of the grand and the intimate. K. Asif told the story of the doomed love between the prince and the commoner with uncommon extravagance but he never let the big budget run over his film’s tender heart.
India has changed since the film’s first outing in the ’60s. Apart from its epic sweep, Mughal-e-Azam’s unselfconscious treatment of religion — the film notes Akbar’s tolerance without making a point of it — will seem odd today. And, yes, the sceptics may have a point when they say that colour will be an unwelcome intrusion into the shadows that are cast in a black and white film. But, in the end, when Salim and Anarkali come alive again on the big screen, nothing else will really matter.
