Madhubala in Mahal (1949)

Bombay Talkies Mahal is a story of ghosts, spooks, apparitions, jitters, quivers, bats and snakes. It succeeds in giving one the creeps, but through more causes than one. In the initial stage the spine tingling chill of weird horror which slowly creeps down one’s back is because of the masterly genius ace cameraman Josef Wirsching whose brilliant use of the camera imparts to Mahal that dreaded foreboding of evil and terror which lurks there. But later on the cold shiver of fear which one experiences is the cumulative effect of director Kamal Amrohi’s excursion into the realms of meta-physics. In trying to tackle the subject of reincarnation Kamal Amrohi, to use the cricket parlance, merely swung the bat in the empty air. I give full credit to him for the daring and initiative that he has shown in taking up such a subject. But daring and initiative without good sense and logic are like boiled potatoes with out pepper and salt. In it’s final analysis Kamal Amrohi has failed in Mahal for the simple reason that the innumerable movie goers who go into fits of rapture over Mahal are still unable to cite a reason for their appreciation, except mumble a few words about the enthralling realism of it’s weird atmosphere. But that is a wonderful tribute to Wirsching and not to Amrohi.

According to me the greatness of Mahal as a picture lies in the towering achievement of Wirsching who photographed it. If the critics rave about it and the public applauds it, then it is because of Josef Wirsching, the wizard with the lens who has made of Mahal a milestone in the annals of the Indian film industry. The magic of his camera, has through the witchery of it’s crafts imparted to Mahal an atmosphere of awe and wonder. The fluttering curtains, banging doors, shaking chandeliers, fleeting shadows on the wall have all been so vividly captured on the celluloid that it throws a grim mantle of mystery over Mahal.

But now coming to Kamal Amrohi’s role in the picture as a director I fail to perceive any noteworthy part which he has played in the creation of Mahal, except for the boundless opportunity which he gave to Wirsching to exhibit his talents and prowess in his own field. One would have preferred a more sensible and logical solution of the mystery than the drivelling gamut of reincarnation which badly cripples whatever interest audience may have held in the story. From the moment Amrohi strove to bring the three generations hobnobbing into the picture he missed the mark and in trying to hit an overbound he failed to contact the ball.

In the first half of the picture the eerie atmosphere fits in well with the mood and the events depicted. But from the moment Vijaylaxmi steps in and Ashok Kumar drags her through an interminable process of climbing and panting, does Mahal from a well balanced picture suddenly merges into a blood curdling boredom, which, as I have already mentioned, also gives one a cold fright.

The most glaring inconsistency in the story was the letter written by Vijaylaxmi, in the role of Ashok Kumar’s wife, to her sister-in-law confiding the secret of suicide to her. If she wished her husband to die because of her false confession than why did she write that letter thus, most obviously ruining her own plans? Then again how did the last letter of Vijaylaxmi went to dead letter office when all others were delivered safely? Obviously to bring about the court scene and other following scenes which would otherwise could never have been presented as Amrohi wanted.

Kamal Amrohi’s idea of a Dak Bungalow seems to be a dilapidated broken down, dusty and inhabitable shack, nestling precariously on what seems to be a mountain. Its only dwellers appear to be bats, snakes and cobwebs. Such gross and blatant ignorance is ridiculous and Amrohi would have done better to see what a Dak Bungalow looks like before depicting it in Mahal. Granting even for the sake of argument that Dak Bungalows are a battleground for bat and snake fights and that this particular one was not inhabited for a long time, then one would question as to how a well regulated clock giving correct time happened to be there?

Ashok Kumar and Madhubala have both given the finest performance of their careers, thus adding extra luster to their already shining reputation. The rest of the cast including Vijaylaxmi, Kanu Roy, and Kumar did their parts well.

If only Amrohi had left spiritualism  alone and wound up this mystery melodrama in a normal way, Mahal would have become the finest picture to come out of the Indian film industry.

Music by the late Mr. Khemchand Prakash was most melodious. Songs were well composed and dialogues were written intelligently. The defect of Mahal lay in it’s mystic phenomena. Kamal Amrohi’s direction was both brilliant and deft.

Mahal is an unusual picture. By all means it is worth a visit if only to see the superb photography of Josef Wirsching and to indulge in the luxury of seeing something new on the Indian screen. (The Motion Picture Magazine, December 1950)

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1949, Genre – Mystery/Thriller, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Bombay Talkies,  Director –Kamal Amrohi, Music Director – Khemchand Prakash, Cast - Madhubala, Vijayalaxmi, Kumar, Kanu Roy, S. Nazir, E. Tarapore, Sheela Naik, Neelam, Ashok Kumar

Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam (1960)

It is now believed that Anarkali was in her forties or older when she was suspected of having an affair with the heir apparent, Prince Salim, who was then in the thirtieth year of his life and father to at least three sons from numerous wives. Salim’s father, the otherwise enlightened Emperor Akbar, found out and ordered Anarkali to be buried alive.

Why? Because she was Akbar’s concubine too, and the mother of 27-year-old Danial (Salim’s youngest brother) — at least according to the British traveller William Finch, who visited Lahore in 1608, three years after Prince Salim ascended the throne as Emperor Jahangir. “The King (Jahangir), in token of his love, commands a sumptuous tomb to be built of stone in the midst of a four-square garden richly walled, with a gate and diverse rooms over it,” wrote William Finch. His travelogue survived, along with accounts by fellow travellers and later historians. So did the tomb itself.

Finch probably didn’t make up the story by himself, because the basic incident is corroborated by other sources, too. However, he almost certainly messed up some details, because there are two discrepancies in his account. Firstly, Akbar was not in Lahore in 1599, the year when Anarkali is supposed to have been executed. Secondly, the court historian had already recorded several years ago that Danial’s mother had died a natural death. The honorifics bestowed upon her should indicate that she didn’t fall from grace. Could it be that Finch’s imagination was tainted with preconceived notions of that East as the land of arbitrary punishments, forbidden love and weird feelings all incomprehensible to a foreigner? There seems to be some interplay between fact and fiction here, and this is how semi-historical legends come into being. Historical evidence in such cases calls for a careful evaluation.

How come it is commonly thought that there is no historical evidence whatsoever for the Anarkali incident? This is a valid question. Ironically, the historical side of this incident got eclipsed in the 1920s due to a mistake of dramatist Imtiaz Ali Taj, who was at that time a student in Government College Lahore and a participant in the activities of the college dramatic club. He had seen the tomb of Anarkali (not very far from his college), but by his own confession never looked into a book of history containing references to this incident — which should mean that he didn’t get hold of the standard English translation of the Akbarnama and certain other primary sources. It is not a cardinal sin for a playwright to be ignorant of history, and Taj was more honest than judgmental in his preface where he stated that as far as he knew, the story had no foundation in history and that he didn’t have a clue about its historical sources. That the preface to a stage play overshadowed the primary sources of history is a sad comment on a society where intellectualism is usually left in the hands of pseudo-intellectuals.

The playwright’s imagination transformed this bizarre tale into a story of youthful love. The stage play Anarkali, which was first printed in the 1920s and reprinted a decade afterwards with some revisions, gave birth to the legend that culminated many films later in the unforgettable Mughal-i-Azam (recently re-released in a full-colour version). Back in the 1920s and ‘30s, Taj’s play raised a hue and cry about historical inaccuracies but was saved by a lukewarm felicitation from Allama Iqbal (an old friend of the playwright’s father Mumtaz Ali) and a ferociously witty essay by the playwright’s senior college friend, Patras Bukhari.

Noor Jehan in Anarkali (1958)

Taj deprives the story of its Mughal complexity and interjects elements of a college boy’s fantasy. In this drama, a young prince takes fancy to a girl far below his rank, and the girl’s jealous friend starts blackmailing the prince with nothing more than a threat to inform his father. One can understand that such blackmails could be a harrowing thought for college boys (and one shouldn’t be surprised if Taj originally found the plot for his drama in the common room gossip at his college), but a Mughal prince could certainly not have to worry about threats from a slave girl.

The Akbarnama, the official court history of Akbar, records an incident where Akbar became angry with Salim for some reason and sent a noble to admonish him. Salim, however, complained that the noble spoke too harshly and Akbar ordered the tongue of the noble to be cut off, disregarding the fact that the unlucky man was acting on the orders of Akbar himself. If such could be the fate of a high-ranking noble caught in crossfire between the king and the prince, then imagine a slave girl.

Between the play of Taj and its cinematic offshoots, we achieved a glorious oversimplification of our history. Akbar and Salim, who each had at least 20 wives and over a thousand concubines in recorded history, become strictly monogamous in these modern-day fantasies (Taj came from the family that pioneered feminism in the Muslim society of Northern India). Anarkali, as portrayed in the play named after her, is a concoction of the girl next door, a virtuous housemaid and some kindhearted nautch girl from Lahore’s red light area. The crown prince behaves unmistakably like a college student confused about defining his personal problems against the ambivalence that was in the air of South Asian cities like Lahore during and after the First World War.

Taj himself never flaunted his script as an outstanding achievement — in his preface to the second edition he makes an uncanny remark to the effect that he feels ashamed of his product when he looks at the plays written in other languages, but proud when he compares it to what exists in Urdu. The plot itself is such stuff as bad films are made of, and indeed the two earlier movies by the same title, while trying to follow Taj closely, make unbearable viewing today despite their irresistible soundtracks. Who can remain untouched by such remarkable songs as Yeh Zindagi ussi ki hai, by Lata or Sada hoon apne pyar ki by Noor Jahan, but then who can suffer the old-timer Sudheer trying to act out a wimp.

Pradeep Kumar and Bina Roy in Anarkali (1953)

A third treatment of the Anarkali legend comes down to us in the 1960 film Mughal-e-Azam. Completely breaking away from Imtiaz Ali Taj, the makers of the film used the Anarkali incident to serve a well-defined political agenda. By projecting Akbar as an example of a Muslim king who didn’t subscribe to the two-nation theory, they apparently hoped to lure the ruling majority of modern-day India into taking a more sympathetic view of Muslim history. This agenda also moderates the subtext. If Akbar is identified with the spirit of unification in India and Salim is a hasty but well-meaning entity who endeavours to break away, then the conflict between them mirrors the inherent political tension dominating the region, especially around the time when the film was first conceived in the late 1940s.

In terms of pure drama, the film evokes a powerful intrigue about contradicting passions between larger-than-life characters. A believable palace intrigue by a conniving vamp replaces the blackmail plot of the earlier films. A mild flavour of Mughal brutality is introduced where, in the course of the story, both Salim and Akbar attempt arbitrary executions — although in the tradition of the Indian cinema the victims are saved by chance. Salim’s intended victim is the jealous vamp, who survives when Salim’s dagger misses her. Akbar’s intended victim is none other than Anarkali, whom Akbar secretly leads out of her grave because he is honour-bound by an earlier promise to her mother. Such generosity would be very unbecoming, if not congenitally impossible, of the historical Akbar, but it is consistent with the character in the movie, gels with the rest of the plot as well as with the political agenda and therefore comes out well in the theatre.

The contemporary William Finch didn’t mention any effort on part of Salim to save Anarkali’s life. Any such thing would have been not only unlikely but also highly inappropriate on Salim’s part, given his background. Taking up arms against father is no way for a son to prove his love for a woman in the feudal patriarchy where these characters were coming from. It would be dishonour, and worse than death, for a woman to be known as the cause of combat between father and son. However, these values would not appeal to the young men and women in a civilized world, and hence in Mughal-e-Azam, Salim wages a full-scale war against Akbar in order to save the girl. The ensuing battle has no roots in reality but originates from the need to absolve the guilty male conscience. Of course, Anarkali eventually offers her own life to save her man who doesn’t even know about this bargain, hence making it more convenient for him to have a clear conscience. At the level of subtext, the war in the film represents the larger than life conflicts in the modern Indian society.

The dramatic achievement of Mughal-e-Azam is that it brings out the major confrontations from within the characters themselves. However, the priorities all belong to the male cast and the only woman who has a mind of her own is the vamp. Anarkali, the heroine, doesn’t have a life of her own, she is confirmed as inferior to the vamp in wit and literary refinement, and at no point gives us reason to suspect that her intelligence matches that of her lover. Her crowning grace is an extraordinary moral courage to stand by her man even at the risk of her own life. In fact, risking her life seems to be her usual mode of existence. She is the perfect toy — a female robot intricately programmed to please her man, and she comes with an in-built self-destruct menu in case things get out of hand for the user.

Here is the ultimate male fantasy, then. The mature woman from the harem of Akbar, who risked death for a fling with a younger man almost the same age as her grown up son, is eventually transformed into a nubile young girl. Her moral eccentricities are removed; her daftness stays though she must place it at the disposal of her man.

Historical Inaccuracy – 1

In this song Anarkali (Madhubala) is performing in front of  Mughal Emperor Akbar with the famous Sheesh Mahal shown (The Palace of Mirrors) in the background. However, it should be kept in mind that Sheesh Mahal didn’t even exist during Akbar’s reign (23 November 1542  – 27 October 1605). It was constructed under the reign of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in 1631-32.

Film :- Mughal-e-Azam (1960), Country:- India

Some Info on Sheesh Mahal:-

The Sheesh Mahal (The Palace of Mirrors) is located within the Shah Burj block in northern-western corner of Lahore Fort. It was constructed under the reign of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in 1631-32. The ornate white marble pavilion is inlaid with pietra dura and complex mirror-work of the finest quality. The hall was reserved for personal use by the imperial family and close aides. It is among the 21 monuments that were built by successive Mughal emperors inside Lahore Fort, and forms the jewel in the Fort’s crown. As part of the larger Lahore Fort Complex, it has been inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981. (Source :- Wikipedia)

_________________________________________________________________

Historical Inaccuracy – 2

This film was based on the life of Mahmoud of Ghazni (November 2, 971 – April 30, 1030), and his servant Ayaz. However, in the clip above, Nayyar Sultana can be seen singing in front of Shalimar Gardens. Shalimar Gardens of Lahore didn’t came into existence until 1641 A.D. (during the reign of Shah Jehan), long after Mahmoud of Ghazni was dead!

Film:- Ayaz (1960), Country:- Pakistan

Some Info on Mahmoud of Ghazni :-

Mahmoud of Ghazni was the most prominent ruler of the Ghaznavid dynasty and ruled from 997 until his death in 1030. Mahmud turned the former provincial city of Ghazni (now in Afghanistan) into the wealthy capital of an extensive empire which extended from Afghanistan into most of Iran as well as Pakistan and regions of North-West India. He was also the first ruler to carry the title Sultan (“authority”), signifying the extent of his power, though preserving the ideological link to the suzerainty of the Caliph. (Source :- Wikipedia)

Some Info on Shalimar Gardens of Lahore:-

The Shalimar Gardens, sometimes written Shalamar Gardens, is a Persian garden and it was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in Lahore, modern day Pakistan. Construction began in 1641 A.D. (1051 A.H.) and was completed the following year. The project management was carried out under the superintendence of Khalilullah Khan, a noble of Shah Jahan’s court, in cooperation with Ali Mardan Khan and Mulla Alaul Maulk Tuni. The Shalimar Gardens are located near Baghbanpura along the Grand Trunk Road some 5 kilometers northeast of the main Lahore city. (Source :- Wikipedia)

-by Ummer Siddique

Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam (1960)