October 10th, 2009

Dilip Kumar – as Action Hero

Aan (1952)

Dilip Kumar in Aan (1952)

Dilip Kumar in Aan (1952)

The star-crossed romantic was given a sword to brandish and a temperamental horse to ride. He tells me that he was averse to both. Well, if he was, it certainly didn’t show.

From the lovelorn young hero, he made the switch to Jai, the romantic action hero, a tough act which he pulled off without a trace of self-consciousness. Against his basic nature, he become an extrovert.

I love to watch the intricately constructed romantic scenes between Dilip Kumar and the haughty, ill-tempered princess. With bravado, he would sneak into the Rajkumari’s ivory tower, with a saucy smile on his face.

He tells me that the film was being made in Hindi, Tamil and also English. It was shot in 16 mm. Kodachrome and then blown up to 35 mm. and printed in Technicolor. This was a huge gamble. For every given shot there had to a be a minimum of seven okay takes… two okay takes in Hindi (one would be for standby) and two okay takes, each in Tamil and English.

What on exacting exercise. Merciful­ly, the English version was dropped, reducing the essential seven takes to five. At end of it all, the linguistic con­strictions were such that he didn’t know whether he was coming or going. Poor fellow!

Moreover, high current voltage was required for shooting in the color pro­cess. So most of the studio work was scheduled for the night as greater voltage was available in the late hours. Hen­ce, our already reluctant hero had to contend with sleepless nights.

Gradually, he gave himself complete­ly to the charge of Mehboob Khan and got into the fun and frolicsome mood of the film. The outdoor stints were a pleasu­re, he recalls.

At the director’s behest, he enjoyed conducting the rehearsals of the other artistes and also come close to Naushad whose lilting compositions added to the incredible success of the film, at home and overseas.

The gamble paid off. Even great names of world cinema like Alexander Korda and Orson Welles, as well as the Technicolor inventors, admired the technical excellence of the magnum opus – Saira Bano (Filmfare Magazine)

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