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Yash Chopra: “Love is the most important thing in life”
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Out of the 19 films that Yash Chopra has directed
in his four-decade-long career, nine were full-fledged love stories,
six family dramas, two formula films and only one, a suspense thriller.
Covering a range of relationships, the
predominant emotion in all his films, remained love. In a rare interview,
Chopra reflects on the different expressions of love portrayed in
his films and when found missing, analyses  the
absence of it.
I believe that if a human being is not in love
and when I say love, I don’t necessarily mean man-woman relationship,
it can be life, work or art, he has no right to live. Love makes
life fascinating...
Everyone has a past before marriage, it’s
what you do after marriage, that matters in a relationship. Raakhee
buries her memories and lives for the present. Amitabh on the other
hand lives in the past
Morality changes with time and our films stand
testimony to that. In my earlier film Dhool Ka Phool, I had a scene
where the bicycles of the hero and the heroine collide over each
other. I was asked to delete the scene by the censors because they
found it vulgar. Today, our definition of vulgarity has changed.
Dhool
Ka Phool  was
about an unwed mother succumbing to societal pressures and abandoning
her child. A noble man enters her life, offers to marry her and
accept the baby. The song ‘Tu Hindu banega na Musalman banega...’
picturised on Manmohan Krishnan, is an immortal tribute to anti-
communalism, particularly relevant in today’s turbulent times.
The story idea was bhaisaab’s (B.R. Chopra) and in keeping
with the BR banner tradition of socially relevant films. Pandit
Mukhram Sharma, an unusually systematic writer of his times, wrote
the screenplay. The lighter moments were my inputs. I lent a philosophic
touch to the romance.
Rajendra Kumar is in the wrong and Mala Sinha the wronged. Nanda,
the woman Rajendra Kumar marries, the innocent, but recipient of
her partner’s crime. Ashok Kumar, the most important character
of the quadrangle, is the crusader. I was only 26 when I made this
film and had to brief Nanda about child birth. “How do you
know about delivery, you’ve never been pregnant?” she
asked.
The film was a runaway success.For the silver jubilee function,
we went to Hooghly and there was a stampede. We were asked to come
out on the theatre balcony and wave out to the audience. As far
as the eye could see, there were only faces. It seemed like the
whole city had come out. It was a terrifying feeling. I was scared
of the future, scared of whether I’d be able to sustain the
magic.
Dharam
Putra is based on a novel by Chatursen Shastri reflecting
on the perils of the Partition. A Muslim girl gets pregnant and
gives away her child to her Hindu neighbour. The child grows up
to be a fanatic, hating the rival community. When the truth is revealed,
he suffers an identity crisis.
It was the most controversial film of the time and both the communities
threatened to burn down the theatres. The exhibitors weren’t
willing to release the film and to give them confidence, Shashi
Kapoor, Deven Verma and I sat in the manager’s room for all
the shows everyday, but the box-office returns weren’t encouraging.
I was feeling very low those days and remember attending a film
function where coincidentally everyone had something to say about
the film. Prithviraj Kapoor, Meena Kumari, Mehboob Khan, but most
of all it was Dilip Kumar who gave me heart! He sensed that I was
low and took me out in his car. We drove aimlessly on the streets
of Mumbai till the early hours of morning. I don’t remember
what he said, but his words provided me solace. When I returned
home, I learnt that we had won the National Award for the best film.
This is some consolation after the rejection of the film at the
box-office.
Waqt was about a family separated in an earthquake,
the first lost-and-found film. It was written by Akhtar Mirza, writer
of several hit films and the father of Saeed and Aziz Mirza. Our
original casting was Prithviraj Kapoor and his three  sons
Raj, Shammi and Shashi. Papaji (Prithvi Raj) was enchanted by the
idea, but wanted to reserve the novel casting for their own banner.
Then Bimal Roy, a dear friend of bhaisaab dissuaded him, saying
that a casting so real would break the illusion. He was right.
We retained Shashi Kapoor and signed Sunil Dutt for the middle brother
after Rajendra Kapoor had declined the role because he was doing
a similar role in LV Prasad’s Beti Bete. Raj Kumar who had
earlier dropped out of Dhool Ka Phool because he had reservations
about working with a new director, was confirmed for the role of
the eldest brother, on the condition that there would be no discussions
on the sets. Any query on his role or character would be dealt with
off the sets directly with the writer of the film. And we stuck
to that agreement.
Waqt was the first colour film of BR banner and I think it was very
generous of bhaisaab to give me the opportunity to direct it despite
my two earlier flops. The film had sprawling sets and elaborate
costumes, two consistent factors in all my films. Dress designer
Bhanu Athaiya, Sadhana and I personally shopped for Sadhana’s
wardrobe.
A few days prior to the release, there was a black-out in the country.
Those were the days of the Indo-China aggression and the audience
wasn’t entertainment inclined. Well-wishers advised me to delay
the release, but the prints were already delivered. Finally, with
the help of an Air Marshall friend, I managed to retrieve the reels
and a few weeks later, when the political clouds had cleared, we
released the film.
It was the first multi-starrer and got a stupendous opening. On
the morning of the release, we performed a havan at home, a tradition
practiced to this day. The entire unit was present. From there,
we went to a press show at Naaz Theatre followed by lunch where
all my artistes played hosts. A while later, we met up again at
the premiere. The men were dressed in identical suits, tailored
from a common fabric. The women were in white. After the show, we
travelled to Hotel Sun‘n’Sand, drank till late night and
dined at dawn. At 5 a.m. all of us jumped into the swimming pool,
not bothering about whether we had spare clothes or not. Soaked
to the skin, we drove to a local restaurant for tea. Our party wasn’t
over yet. We then drove to a newspaper vendor and purchased the
new copy of Screen, delighted to read the news of the premiere.
Such camaraderie can never be regained.
Ittefaq was done as a quickie. When we were at the tail
end of the shooting of Aadmi Aur Insaan, I felt that the climax
needed to be reshot, but unfortunately Saira Banu was in London,
undergoing a surgery and had no dates. We had no  choice
but to wait for her. During this long break, we went to see a Gujarati
play, Dhumas. We were so impressed by it that the next day we went
to see the play again with our entire story department. Ittefaq,
a suspense thriller was scripted in seven days and shot in 28 days
in chronological order. Edited and mixed simultaneously, the film
was released within a record three months.
The film had a number of firsts to its credit. It was the first
non-song, two-hour Hindi film to be released without an interval.
Our first choice for the heroine was Raakhee, but she was under
a contract with the Rajshris for Jeevan Mrityu. Nanda got to hear
of the role from her brother-in-law who was working with us and
offered herself. We needed someone with a traditional image and
signed her on. Rajesh Khanna was under a contract with the United
Producers and so available to us.
On the last day, I still remember, I shot for 28 hours at a stretch
and when I went home, I was exhausted. But I couldn’t sleep
because I was so excited.
Aadmi Aur Insaan: By the time Ittefaq had released
and was celebrating a successful run,  Saira
Banu was back from London and we took up from where we had left
off. Our original idea of the film was corruption in the public
sector. At the time we had thought of a dam bursting, but later,
we altered the public sector
angle to weave the plot around two friends, one honest, the other
dishonest.
Mumtaz wasn’t a conventional heroine, beautiful but not traditional.
As the film grows however you discover that she has a heart too.
It’s just that her priorities are different. Emotions are the
same all over. It’s how you say what you feel that makes the
difference.
Daag: I had just got married and moved out of my brother’s
nest. I was keen on launching my own banner and had met author,
Gulshan Nanda, who had an interesting subject. While on my honeymoon,
I thought of a unique treatment for the film and discussed it with
Nanda on my return. He approved of it instantly. I  summoned
my creative team and we got cracking. Three friends stood by me
like a rock, Sharmila Tagore, Rajesh Khanna and Raakhee. Raakhee
returned my signing amount, saying, “Keep it as a loan, return
it to me when your film is a hit.”
It was a libellous subject and we expected problems with the censors,
but they gave me a clear certificate. While I was returning, Rajesh
Khanna was on a horse making his way to his wedding mandap. The
distributors were sure that the film would fail and released it
with just 11 prints in Mumbai. Almost a dozen of Khanna’s films
had flopped in a row and they predicted doom! But within just four
days, 18 more prints were ordered. The film got an unprecedent opening.
Deewaar: One day Salim-Javed narrated a subject about
a dock worker who  becomes
a don. Inspired from the life of the underworld don Haji Mastan,
the story had a spark. Every detail you see in the film was in the
script. Deewaar was a perfect screenplay with perfect casting, made
at the most perfect time.
Essentially a family story of two brothers, the film also told the
story of their beloveds. Amitabh, an out-law, is attracted to a
call girl while Shashi Kapoor, a police officer, is involved with
a girl from a good family. Their concerns and the undertones of
their relationships are different. The brothers love their partners,
but their first love is their mother.
Kabhie Kabhie was a love story I had been obsessed
with for several years. I often wondered what happened to lovers
married to different partners. Life could either be happy or a compromise.
The film was about two such lovers, Amitabh  and
Rakhee. Rakhee married to Shashi Kapoor, lives happily, while Amitabh
married to Waheeda Rehman, is a bitter man.
Amitabh played a poet. My distributors felt it was a mistake to
cast him in such a role in the wake of Deewaar, but I didn’t
think so.
The wedding fever in cinema began with Kabhie Kabhie. The opening
song is the crux of the story and the deflowering of the bride on
the suhaag raat the ultimate erotica. The picturisation of that
song that one talks about even after all these years was borrowed
from a crude phrase—nath utarna—only I did it aesthetically.
The first rush print had Amitabh in a long shot watching the couple
take the nuptial rounds and with every round, there are inter-cuts
of his fantasy with Raakhee. When I was re-recording however, my
sound-recordist Mangesh Desai commented that it was too artistic
and could be mis-interpreted. So we changed it to Raakhee visualising
Amitabh lifting her veil during the song. I wanted her eyes to reflect
the pain of her beloved and that is why I deliberately kept the
camera angles in a way so Shashi could not see her face except in
the end.
Trishul: This was again a film about an unwed mother,
the story of an illegitimate son settling scores with his father.
I was delving into a complex relationship and the mixed emotions
the boy goes through, so understandably romance was not the focus
of the story. The film is about the family, the other relationships
are  incidental.
During the making of the film, one day Gulshan Rai mentioned that
Mushir-Riaz had suffered a big disaster, Meera. Javed Akhtar, the
writer of Trishul, who was present in the room, with characteristic
humour said, “That’s because we’ve still to release
Trishul...” Javed wasn’t joking. We had shot more than
three fourths of the film, but all of us agreed that something was
amiss. We stalled shooting for a while, reworked the screenplay
and reshot the film for almost 20- 25 days. The change was worth
it. Even Javed acknowledged that. He said that Salim and he should
only partly be credited for the screenplay, for all of us had given
our own inputs to Trishul.
Kaala Patthar: We attach so much importance to the
form that we often overlook the soul. I’m of the opinion that
no matter how fabulous the structure, unless the soul is stirred,
the audience isn’t moved. Kaala Patthar lacked soul. We were
flying high on our success. A number of hits in a row had swept
us off our feet. We believed that whatever we touched would be successful.
Kaala Patthar wasn’t. The film had a terrific opening, but
it wasn’t a grosser. It wasn’t a losing proposition either.
Kaala Patthar was the victim of the star- system. My banner had
a halo around it. I got carried away, hiring technicians from Hollywood
for the special effects, but failed to capitalise on the charisma
of a great star-cast.
Silsila: The film had inherent tensions because of
the casting coup. If I was confident
of the project, it was because all the three artistes had individually
assured me that there would be no problems at their end. And they
kept their word. It was the first film on extra-marital relationship
and call it moral and societal pressures, but at the last minute,
I developed cold-feet and thou ght
that maybe the hero should come home to his wife. The original ended
differently. When and why I changed the ending I don’t know,
but I did so because I felt that the audience wasn’t ready.
But the audience didn’t buy what we gave them
either.
The film is special because it has immortal moments. For Rekha’s
husband I wanted Sanjeev Kumar, but he wasn’t willing. After
Sholay and Trishul he wasn’t willing
to play second fiddle to a script that focussed on Amitabh Bachchan.
He wasn’t willing to even listen to the story, but I insisted
and followed him to Bangalore. We were half-way
through the narration and I was telling him of the restaurant scene
when Jaya and Amitabh take the dance dance floor and Sanjeev asks
me to stop. He stopped me, phoned his secretary to check his dates
and said he was doing the film.
Mashaal: Originally, I wanted Kamal Haasan for the
role of the boy. We thought we would make him a South Indian character
finding his bearings in Mumbai. When we spoke to him however, he
declined, saying he wanted a role equal to Dilip Kumar’s. Anil
Kapoor was the star on the rise those days and we took a gamble.
He was very excited with the offer, more so because it gave him
the opportunity of working with Dilip Kumar. There were times he
got carried away and Dilip Kumar had to take him aside and calm
him down.
The immortal moment of the film is Waheeda Rehman’s death and
Dilip Kumar asking for help. We shot two versions of the scene over
four days and eight shifts, but when you see the film you cannot
tell the breaks. That’s the brilliance of the actor. Shot at
night at Ballard Pier, we had put up Dilip Kumar up at Hotel Taj
to facilitate his travel. He was appreciative of the thoughtfulness,
said his reflexes were slow and needed that much more time for recuperating.
Kamal Haasan attended the premiere and said that had he known the
role was so good, he would never have turned it down.
Faasle: Sometimes the director turns obstinate and
pays a price for it. Faasle was the price I paid for being stubborn.
I was in the mood to make a film with  newcomers.
Then suddenly I had second thoughts about it and contacted Anil
Kapoor. He had no dates, but promised to accommodate me. In the
interim, I changed my mind again. Call it vinaash buddhi or destiny
but the damage was done. Some blamed the debacle on Rohan Kapoor,
some on the characterisation of Sunil Dutt. Critics said that no
matter how bad the son-in-law, the father-in-law wouldn’t whiplash
him. The sad thing about a film’s failure is that even the
good things go unnoticed.
Faasle was about the seasons of love. Raj Kiran abuses his woman,
despite the sanctity of marriage. Sunil Dutt nurtures his partner
without the pressures of society. Farha is the abused one, and Rekha
the recipient of undying love.
 Vijay
was a rehash of Trishul. In everyone’s life there comes a phase
when everything goes wrong. This was my phase and the films I made
during this time are a proof of that. I’m not proud of these
films, but I cannot deny them since I made them. The only consolation
being that everyone connected to the film made money. It set me
thinking however and I made a promise to myself that no matter what
the pressures, I would now only make films I believed in.
Chandni: Kamna Chander had given me a story on the
basis of which I had signed Vinod Khanna, Sridevi and Rishi Kapoor.
On the day of the mahurat  however,
as I peeped through the lens, a wave of depression overcame me.
A premonition that I had made a mistake. Here were three dashingly
good-looking stars and what I had in mind for them was an old-fashioned
regressive story. Next day I told my writer and my artistes that
I was changing the story. The first half was the same and since
all dates were finalised, we left for the shoot abroad. On our return,
I got the second half re-written, made it more vibrant. But even
then, I wasn’t completely satisfied. One day, as I was watching
the final rushes and came to Vinod Khanna’s entry, an action
scene, I felt there was a bitter taste in my mouth. I contacted
Vinod and Sri and told them that I wanted to reshoot the sequence.
The office sequence when she bums a ride from him was an afterthought.
Chandni marked the saturation point of violence in films. The distributors
didn’t think so. One left my film because I changed Vinod’s
entry scene and another because he disapproved of the music. I was
confident that they would come around.
Lamhe: The idea of a younger man being in love with
an older man and not being able to accept her marrying someone else
had been haunting me for years. In my imagination the news of her
death comes through a knock on the door. In the film we show her
sinking in the hospital.
The film was shot in two schedules, London and Rajasthan. We shot
the second schedule first.
The novelty of the romance in Lamhe is that when the heroine is
young, the hero is old and when the hero is young, the heroine older.
Sridevi and Anil complemented each other beautifully, but the highlight
of the film was the dialogue by Dr. Rahi Masoom Raza. They don’t
make writers like him any more.
Parampara was about the sacrifices our ancestors make
to preserve tradition. Anil Kapoor was signed for the role but a
few days before the shooting he backed out of the film. I was in
conflict and contacted Vinod Khanna who was already upset with me
for not getting to do Lamhe, and asked him to help me out. He could
have refused, but he agreed. After that, there was a new problem.
Ashwini Bhave riding high on the success of Henna and signed opposite
Anil, wanted to opt out because Vinod Khanna fell into the older
bracket of heroes. After that it was a chain of things going wrong.
Ramaya’s character belonging to a tribe of gypsies didn’t
make sense, but it was too late to change it. I continued shooting,
though deep down I knew that the magic was missing. I knew it the
day I began shooting and the day I saw the first trial.
Darr was about obsessive love and what it can drive
you to. Aamir Khan was my first choice for the role, then Ajay Devgan,
Sanjay Dutt and finally, Shah Rukh Khan. When I called Shah Rukh
over to my house I told him that it was a  negative
role. He told me that he was already doing two negative roles in
Baazigar and Anjaam and narrated the plots of both. If my film offered
him another shade he was willing to do it.
Shah Rukh’s role was very small, but the impact of the character
was tremendous. After the release of Darr, many women I met told
me of similar traumatic experiences with their anonymous lovers.
Selective stammering was part of Rahul’s characterisation.
Rahul is a normal boy, but gets hysterical only when he takes Kiran’s
name. When I saw the rushes I felt Shah Rukh had overdone the stammering,
but he dissuaded me from altering it during the dubbing. “You
don’t know what a powerful film you’ve made,” he
said, and he was right. The audience applauds Sunny Deol for killing
Shah Rukh, but in an inexplicable way is also drawn to the villain.
Dil To Paagal Hai was conceived as a simple idea that
there is someone for  everyone.
You have to only look for the symbols to recognise him. The original
title of the film was Maine Mohabbat Ki. My son, Aditya felt that
the title was too serious and we should either alter the story or
the title. I liked the plot of musical shows and didn’t want
to alter that, so altered the title for a more breezy effect. Today,
any other title seems inappropriate for the film.
This was my first film where the characters don’t have a baggage
of backgrounds, except perhaps for Madhuri, who is the most stable
character in the film. Karisma’s role was offered to every
actress and turned down. Kajol, Juhi and even Urmila turned it down.
When I met Karisma, I said to her, don’t refuse outright. Think
about it for 24 hours before you say “no”. She said she
didn’t want to think. She said “yes” right away and
never regretted her decision.
Bhawana Somaaya
bhawanasomaaya@express2.indexp.co.in
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