Guide (1965)
Director: Vijay Anand; Writer: Vijay Anand; Producer: Dev Anand; Cinematographer: Fali Mistry; Editor: Vijay Anand, Babu Sheikh; Cast: Dev Anand, Waheeda Rehman, Leela Chitnis, Kishore Sahu, Anwar Hussain (Actor), Ulhas, Gajanan Jagirdar, Rashid Khan
Duration: 02:50:43; Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1; Hue: 12.807; Saturation: 0.182; Lightness: 0.295; Volume: 0.192; Cuts per Minute: 12.329; Words per Minute: 57.366
Summary: Adapted from a classic novel written in English, the plot is structured around two processes of transformation. Rosie (Rehman) who belongs to a family of courtesans, is seduced away from her tyrannical archaeologist husband Marco (Sahu) by the brash tourist guide Raju (Anand). Raju helps her to realise her dream of becoming a successful dancer, realising his own ambition to become wealthy at the same time. Their life together is ended when he is jailed for forging Rosie’s signature on a cheque. Released from jail, he becomes a drifter and is mistaken for a holy man. Raju uses his newfound respectability to provide a school, a hospital and other facilities for the villagers. Forced to demonstrate his messianic status when there is a drought, he manages to fast for 12 days and the rain comes, confirming his holy status in the eyes of the villagers (and of the audience) as he dies of starvation. The film can be seen as a regressive comment on ‘national culture’ e.g. the shift from colonial tourism to capitalist enterprise to religious faith, from mass cultural commodification and spectacle to pre-colonial naivety and ritual. There is also a discourse about stardom: starting out as a man of the people, the hero transgresses conventional moral codes and fulfils his dream of wealth, then finds this unsatisfying and, having been freed from material possessions (and women), he ends up fulfilling others’ wishes and finds apotheosis as a god in death. The film’s quasi-expressionist, garish use of colour and of calender art sets provides its own comment on notions of national popular culture, highlighted in the sequence when Raju changes from a fast- talking tourist guide to a saintly figure through dissolves awash with blue and yellow light spots and in the rhythmic cutting of the song He ram hamare ramachandra. Disowned by the novelist Narayan, the film has been attacked mainly for its thematic deviations, esp. the transformation of Rosie: in the novel she is a devadasi (temple dancers and prostitutes liberated by a reformist political movement leading to the Devadasi Bill in 1927 in Madras), a condition defended by orthodox historians for having preserved the South Indian classical Bharat Natyam dance tradition. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay ‘Once Again a Leap into the Postcolonial Banal’ (1990) addresses the irony of a novel, written originally in English and critical of that orthodoxy, itself being assimilated by the orthodox literary establishment in order to attack the film. She suggests a different version of colonial historical continuity than the one dominated by ideas of (literary, historical) authenticity. The film was a musical success with major hits such as Gaata rahe mera dil and Aaj phir jeene ki tamanana hai. A substantially altered 120’ English version (co-sc Pearl S. Buck p/d/co-sc Tad Danielewski) was released in the USA in 1965. It introduced new characters and much enlarged the role of e.g. a bitchy US television reporter played by Sheila Burghart. It also added new scenes (including a sequence in the US Embassy in Delhi). Although the Indian version has Pathe colour, the US version has US-processed Eastmancolor.
censor certificate
Singer: S.D. Burman
Song: Wahan kaun hai tera
My 3rd child was a girl
My mother was a devadasi
Song:
snake dance
Rosie walks int he bazaar with her anklets and high heels
you seem different!
Song: Kaanton se kheench ke yeh aanchal
...Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai
काँटों से खींच के ये आँचल
तोड़ के बंधन बांधे पायल
Rosie appears in the caves
Revised clip: slap
Marco insults Rosie. Slap.
Song: Tere mere sapne ab ek rang hai
तेरे मेरे सपने अब एक रंग हैं
Song: Piya tohse laage re
पिया तोसे नैना लागे रे, नैना लागे रे
Song: Gaata rahe mera dil
गाता रहे मेरा दिल, तू ही मेरी मंज़िल,
Song: Din dhal jaaye
दिन ढल जाये हाय, रात ना जाय
Song: Mohse chal kiye jaaye
मोसे चल किये जाये, हाय रे हाय हाय देखो सैंया बेइमान
Song: Kya se kya ho gayaa... bewafaa
क्या से क्या हो गया... बेवफ़ा
Singer: S.D. Burman
Song: Allah megh de, paani de, chhaya de
अल्लाह मेघ दे, पानी दे, छाया दे रे रामा मेघ दे
Raaga: Saarang
The End clip
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