Flash Back

OUP

Pages: 223

Rs 495

In todays world of sometimes heavily doctored and tailored bits and bobs of star lives that flash on the television and get Photoshopped in glossies,Anil Saaris Indian Cinema is a refreshing change. These are collections of his detailed interviews with actors and filmmakers,mostly from the Seventies to the Nineties,a distant world in so many ways.

The access that Saari,a pioneering film critic,had to the doyens of Indian cinema,such as Raj Kapoor,Dilip Kumar,Rekha,Nargis,Manmohan Desai and Gulzar in Bombay,and Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Mammooty in Kerala,is brought out through these interviews.

It talks about how stars are created,how actors deal with their stardom and how that is fed into cinemas portrayal of both reality and fantasy. More than that,it unveils their many facets,as they take complicated questions about their work,aspirations and star appeal and how these related to larger issues around them. In his interview with writer Abrar Alvi,who wrote the dialogue of Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam,Kaagaz ke Phool and Pyaasa,among others,Alvi objects to being called merely a dialogue-writer. He says it is a limiting phrase,as it only refers to the spoken words. Alvi insists that silences generally,and what happens in the movie when the protagonist is silent,are vital to the plot and that is also decided by the so-called dialogue-writer.

Talking of silences,Saaris death in 2005,at the age of 60,deprived many cinema-watchers of what would have been his excellent worldview on how stars promote themselves and are portrayed in this decade.

This book,more than anything else,is a powerful reminder of the depth and insight we dont have anymore on the city of dreams.