Help! I’m seeing double: The Way We Were by Poonam Saxena – Hindustan Times

Fifty years in the past, a movie was launched that captured one among Bollywood’s most beloved tropes: the double function. The staple double function is that of equivalent twins separated at start and often dramatically totally different (good / evil; cop / robber). However typically a double function signifies that the identical actor performs totally different characters, like a father and son or mom and daughter. In such a state of affairs, the double function additionally lends itself fantastically to comedy.

Fifty years in the past, a movie was launched that captured one among Bollywood’s most beloved tropes: the double function. The staple double function is that of equivalent twins separated at start and often dramatically totally different (good / evil; cop / robber). However typically a double function signifies that the identical actor performs totally different characters, like a father and son or mom and daughter. In such a state of affairs, the double function additionally lends itself fantastically to comedy.

Right here’s the factor about double roles: all actors wish to try one sooner or later as a result of it offers them an opportunity to showcase their expertise. It’s additionally an assertion of star energy, since they may dominate the movie utterly.

Double roles proceed to crop up; they’ve all the time been an viewers favorite. However the newer movies are up in opposition to such a formidable legacy that few stand out as compared. Double roles are additionally more practical when mixed with rousing dialogue, catchy songs, and good old school confrontation / battle scenes, none of which is unfortunately in vogue now.

The 50-year-old movie in query was Ramesh Sippy’s Seeta Aur Geeta (1972), with Hema Malini taking part in twins separated at start. There was the meek, terrified Seeta and her polar reverse, the robust, daring Geeta. The hit movie was impressed by the very profitable Dilip Kumar starrer Ram Aur Shyam (1967). It was the good Dilip Kumar’s first double function. His efficiency because the timid Ram was a delightfully tongue-in-cheek tackle his earlier “struggling” roles (suppose, Dil Diya Dard Liya).

For a similar actor taking part in totally different, contrasting roles, my vote goes to Amitabh Bachchan in Don (1978), the place he performed the ruthless underworld don and the easy, paan-chewing road singer. In his ebook The Making of Don, creator Krishna Gopalan reveals how the latter was modelled on one of many 9 characters that Sanjeev Kumar performed within the 1974 movie Naya Din Nai Raat, that of a stage artist named Phool Kunwar. No different Hindi movie has had one actor in 9 roles, although actors have executed triple roles, as Bachchan did within the 1983 movie Mahaan (the place he performed an embattled businessman and his two sons).

It’s fascinating to suppose that Naya Din Nai Raat was first provided to Dilip Kumar, who declined (he’d already executed Ram Aur Shyam and was engaged on a triple function in Bairaag). It was he who prompt Sanjeev Kumar. The movie has no actual story: Jaya Bhaduri has run away from dwelling; as she careens all around the countryside, she encounters a variety of wierd characters, from an aged physician to a killer, all performed by Sanjeev Kumar in an assortment of wigs and make-up.

Naya Din Nai Raat, primarily based on the Tamil movie Navarathri (1964), was principally a automobile for Sanjeev Kumar to indicate off his performing chops. Not everybody was impressed. Of their biography of Sanjeev Kumar, Hanif Zaveri and Sumant Batra inform of how actor Shabana Azmi watched the movie and criticised the efficiency on a couple of factors. Sanjeev Kumar heard her out, however after she left, remarked, “Right now she taught me the way to act. Maybe tomorrow she’s going to educate Dilip Kumar too.”

Sanjeev Kumar was memorable although, even in a easy double function. Gulzar’s Angoor (1982) had not one however two double roles, the opposite performed by Deven Verma. Two pairs of twins trigger a number of hilarious mix-ups, and what with the 2 males’s pitch-perfect performances, the movie stays a comedic basic.

For my cash, in all probability one of the best current instance of a double function is Fan (2016), the place Shah Rukh Khan performs each the obsessed fan and the enigmatic celebrity. However even as we speak, the picture that instantly springs to thoughts on listening to the phrases “double function” is that of equivalent twins separated at start, a trope reminiscent of the delectable charms of previous Bollywood.