Today is the 98th birth anniversary of one of India's finest directors Hrishikesh Mukherjee.
A short 🧵about his life and films.
We all know of Hrishida's contribution to the Hindi film industry, but did you know he has been involved in a lot of celebrated movies down south. In fact, Filmfare South gave him a life time achievement award in 1994, something he never received from Bombay Filmfare.
He edited the Malayalam classic Chemmeen. This movie is interesting as it also had the music from another Bengali legend - Salil Chowdhury.
He started his film career primarily as an editor and learnt everything about movies from Bimal Roy while working on Do Bigha Zamin and Devdas.
His directorial debut was Musafir. The film is about a house and the lives of three families who live in it, so in essence, it is three stories linked by the house.
It wasn't considered a box office success but gave the world glimpses of the genius of Hrishikesh Mukherjee.
He struck gold with his second film Anari that starred Raj Kapoor and Nutan.
Casablanca ended with the line "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship". And that could have been said about Raj Kapoor and Hrishida.
When Raj Kapoor fell seriously ill, Hrishida feared that he would die, leaving him friendless.
That's when he penned down the film Anand about what a friend is about to die. Raj Kapoor called Hrishida - Babumoshai and that is what Rajesh Khanna calls Amitabh Bachchan.
If you are not tearing up after seeing the end of Anand, cardiologists will certify that you have a heart of stone.
Hrishida was a typical Bengali who loved his football. He wanted to incorporate the craze of Pele's visit to India and included many references to Pele in Gol Maal. (-50 if you reference Rohit Shetty here).
In fact in the song "Ek Din Sapne Mein Dekha Sapna" there is a portion that was eventually omitted in the final cut of the film where Amol Palekar dreams of being Pele.
Might be the first instance of a Hindi film song referencing Pele. Listen to that portion here.
Talking of Music, Hrishida's films always had excellent music.
He was particularly fond of the Sitar and was a radio artist himself, but a bout of Arthritis kept the instrument away from him in later years. Pic courtesy @jaiarjun from his excellent book on Hrishida.
One of our favorite Hrishida films is Bawarchi. It is unique that it has spoken credits. Amitabh Bachchan introduces the characters in a film starring Jaya Bahaduri.
Many years later, Paa, a film starring Amitabh Bachchan had spoken credits, this time by Jaya Bachchan.
Getting back to Gol Maal, the scene where Amol Palekar visits Deven Bhojani - we see the scene from a movie Jurmana being shot. Deven asks "abhi tak khatam nahi hui?" referencing to the long time that film was on the floors.
Jurmana released couple of weeks after Gol Maal.
He has had 2 cameos in his films.
Guddi, a film about the Hindi film industry, sees him playing the role of a director in the film within the film.
The other is in a song sequence from the film 'Biwi aur Makaan' with Mahmood asking him "Rehne ko ghar do."
What are your favorite Hrishi da stories? We would love to share them.
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