Goan Interlude:
As a tribute to Guru Dutt on his 100th birth anniversary, a flashback to his film Jaal.
After making a hit debut as director with Navketan Films’ Baazi (1951), Guru Dutt starred in and directed Jaal (1952), inspired by the 1949 Italian film Riso Amaro, and managed to get his friend Dev Anand to not just play the only negative role of his career, but also take his shirt off in a bathing scene. In those days, heroes in general and Dev Anand in particular used to be modestly dressed.
The opening credits state the underlying theme of the film:
Don’t listen to anything bad
Don’t talk about the one who does evil
Guide anyone who goes on the wrong path
Forgive anyone who errs.
The story is about the redeeming power of love.
According to a post-credits card, the film was set in one of the small regions of the country, which were still under foreign rule, but it was set in Goa (then under the Portuguese), in a Christian fishing community. The film opens with the suave and glib Tony (Dev Anand) persuading a frightened Lisa (Purnima) to board a ship to Bombay (now Mumbai) with smuggled gold. Before she can get in, the cops arrive, and a panicky Lisa jumps into the sea, when she sees no help coming her way from Tony.
Tony moves on rather quickly to a flirtation with fisherwoman Maria (Geeta Bali), much to the annoyance of her silent admirer Simon (Ram Singh). Lisa washes up ashore and is rescued by Maria and Simon, after a beautifully shot song, Pighla ha sona. Maria lives with her blind brother Carlo (K.N. Singh, in a positive role), and shelters Lisa in her own home. The clownish local cop Gomez (Rashid Khan) hovers around Maria, obviously smitten by her beauty and her cooking. He does not connect Lisa with the fugitive woman they are hunting for and is satisfied by the explanation that Lisa is a guest. Maria is not so naïve as to be unable to perceive that Lisa has something to hide. She even tells her, “Don’t try to take advantage of our simplicity. We are poor but we are honest.” Maria sees Lisa burying the smuggled gold in the garden, takes it away and hides it.
Tony meets Maria outside church and notices that she is wearing Lisa’s necklace. He refuses to go inside the church saying that only weak people go in there, to which Maria says, “The one who is afraid to go in is the weak one.” Lisa is deeply impressed by the sermon in which the pastor preaches that only God has the right to punish a sinner.
In spite of Tony’s treachery Lisa is pleased to see him, hoping he has come to see her, but he just wants his gold back. And he knows it’s Maria he has to get past, so spreads his net of faked love. There is a vibrant song, Chori chori meri gali aana hai bura, in which he dances with her. Lisa comes back distressed, since the gold is missing. Carlos finds it and understands what is going on. He wants to hand over Lisa to the cops, but she reveals how she, a simple girl, was trapped by the charms of a man and forced into crime. After her abject confession Carlos is unable to get her arrested; he has also become used to her gentle presence.
Tony pursues Maria will all the tricks at his disposal telling her that if a woman says no she means yes, and if she says yes, she is not a woman—this after putting a lasso around her and pulling her up a tree, while poor Simon waits for her with lunch. By the time Tony croons, De bhi chuke hum dil nazrana, he has persuaded Maria to recommend him for a job with Simon.
Tony’s Arab cohorts want their money back—his interpreter sidekick being Johnny Walker, in his second film. Simon is not too happy about Tony’s presence, but the yield turns out so bountiful that he is silenced. In the fishing song, Haiya hai, Guru Dutt makes an appearance as a bare-chested fisherman, looking very handsome. (In his next film Baaz, he would also play the romantic lead, opposite Geeta Bali, he as prince, she as a pirate.)
In a beautifully shot scene on a ferris wheel, Lisa tries to warn Maria about the kind of crook Tony is; as the wheel goes faster and faster, Maria looks shattered. She tries her hardest to resist Tony and his glib talk, but his seductive crooning (in Hemant Kumar’s voice) Yeh raat, yeh chandni, pulls her to him; in a symbolic moment, she is seen trapped in a gigantic fishing net—the jaal of the title. Without unduly underlining anything, Guru Dutt conveys that she has succumbed to his charm.
He only wants her to be a cover for his escape from the cops and the pesky Arabs; after promising her eternal love in a church, he abandons her mid ocean. The cops close in and there is a shoot out. Even after he has so cruelly betrayed her trust, Maria wants Tony to surrender and promises to wait for him. As he is led away in a long shot, with a cross in the foreground, the lines about forgiveness that appear in the beginning are repeated—the end being a mix of hope and despair for Maria.
Perhaps the amoral anti-heroes that Emran Hashmi plays in Bhatt productions today, owe something to the magnetic Tony of Jaal.
The Catholic characters speaking chaste Urdu is a bit odd, but the simplicity of the characters and their small dreams draws the audience in. S.D. Burman’s music was as fine as V.K Murthy’s stunning black and white cinematography. He collaborated with Guru Dutt on many of his subsequent films.
In the list of assistants are two names that catch attention—one is Atmaram, who was Guru Dutt’s brother and produced some films later. The other was Raj Khosla, who made some great films CID, Solva Saal, Bambai Ka Baabu, Kaala Pani, Do Raaste to Mera Gaon Mera Desh, and is one of the underrated directors of Hindi cinema, maybe because the other supertalented Navketan director, Vijay ‘Goldie’ Anand’s dazzling aura dulled his shine.
(This is an edited version of the piece that appeared in Take 2: 50 Films That Deserve A New Audience, published by Hay House in 2015)
