The Vijay Anand-Dev Anand Legacy: Tanuja Chaturvedi On What Made The Duo's Films Iconic

A fan of Dev Anand, in 1985, Tanuja Chaturvedi joined the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, and with her batchmates—which included Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Rajkumar Hirani, and Sriram Raghavan—inhaled the cinema of Dev Anand’s brother, Vijay Anand, known as 'Goldie', because of his golden locks as a kid.

“Goldie was a master craftsman, yet he kept the craft of his films invisible, like a code, a secret you needn’t even notice as a common viewer. But a practitioner would realise and marvel at Goldie’s command over every aspect of filmmaking: direction, screenplay, dialogue and editing," Chaturvedi writes in her book Hum Dono: The Dev and Goldie Story. In the late 1980s, she had interviewed people close to Dev Anand’s Navketan Films for a documentary to celebrate its 40 years.

Though that film got shelved, Chaturvedi soon got a job with Navketan Films as Dev Anand’s chief assistant director. 

Besides bringing in the intimacy of having worked with Dev Anand, the book also analyses the eight films directed by Vijay Anand, which starred Dev Anand — Nau Do Gyarah (1957), Kala Bazar (1960), Hum Dono (1961), Tere Ghar Ke Samne (1963), Guide (1965), Jewel Thief (1967), Johny Mera Naam (1970), and Tere Mere Sapne (1971). The book also looks at Teesri Manzil (1966), which was originally meant to star Dev Anand, and was seminal in Vijay Anand’s filmography.

Following is an interview with Chaturvedi, edited for length and clarity:

One of the charming asides in the book is when you describe your students responding to Vijay Anand’s films, with equal if not more enthusiasm than you. What is the Vijay Anand film they respond most enthusiastically to?

The youngsters have been enthralled with Guide. They weren’t interested in a break, though the runtime of the film is over three hours. When I tried to fast forward ‘Gata Rahe Mera Dil’, emphasising it doesn’t move the ‘story’, I have always been met with howls of protest.

While senior students on the cusp of making their graduation film are completely spellbound by Goldie sahab’s shot-takings in songs like ‘Baithe Hain Kya Uske Paas’ from Jewel Thief, they also resonate with the breeziness and the breathtaking pace of a Johny Mera Naam.

You make a curious proposition, that the 'Unorthodox choice of tensing in Teesri Manzil holds the key to the film’s repeated appeal'.

The lens usually employed for thrillers and mysteries is the Telephoto lens. But by choosing the opposite lens, viz wide-angle lens, Goldie makes an unorthodox choice. The Telephoto lets a director focus the gaze of his audience at the primary details in a whodunnit. Employing the wide-angle lens allows the audience’s eye to wander, catching other infinitesimal details. People come again and again to watch Teesri Manzil because by visually allowing the audience’s gaze to wander, newer details are discovered.

Do you sense the absence of Dev Anand in a Vijay Anand film where he isn't there, and vice versa? What did they bring to each other’s filmography?

Goldie sahab and Dev sahab were inextricably wound up inside the process of making a film. They were brothers, and so shared a common gene pool, ethics and values which reflect in their work. Besides, Dev sahab was blessed with a perfect facial bone structure. He could look good whether you shot him from low-angle, top-angle, or took his close-ups with a wide-angle lens. That liberated Goldie’s shot takings. He could literally make his camera ‘dance’ with the actors’ movements. Then the other primary value add was Dev sahab’s extreme discipline and focus. Dev sahab stopped having lunch years back so he would still be sitting on the sets while the unit took a lunch break.

Goldie was a director who came with intensive paperwork done, including his shot breakdowns, camera movements, actor’s choreography, lighting, mood, entry exit points—and yes the ‘cut’ or the editing points. So actors had to now work hard in tandem with all technical requirements to help Goldie realise his vision, or the ‘image’ he had seen in his mind’s eye. A three-take marvel like ‘Tere Mere Sapne’ from Guide had the actors, cameraman, focus pullers, lighting department all come together. 

Goldie also knew the 'sur' of the performances he wanted. Dev sahab’s performances are marvellous under Goldie’s baton. Working later in multi-star casts, Goldie sahab surely missed the discipline and focus of Dev sahab. His shot-taking needed commitment from actors, who would go out on a limb for him to achieve what he set out to do.

One of the Vijay Anand trademarks, as you note, is how he shot his songs. Can you tell us what innovations and stylisations that were brought into the song sequence by Vijay Anand, things that the Raj Khoslas and the Raj Kapoors were not doing? 

Raj Khosla actually worked as an AD with Guru Dutt, so you find those marvelous tracking shots emphasizing the actor’s expressions, staying with the actor, heightening the bhaav. Guru Dutt himself was a genius, having studied dance under Uday Shankar in Almora and starting his career as an Assistant Dance director at Prabhat Studio—where he met and became friends with Dev Anand. Guru Dutt has a very interesting way where the song would abruptly begin within a dialogue scene, like ‘Dil Par Hua Aisa Jadoo’ from Mr and Mrs 55. 

While Bimal Roy, essentially a cameraman had very ‘impressionistic’ visuals which deepened the feelings of a character—the lori ‘Aaja Ri Aa’ from Do Beegha Zameen accentuating the loneliness of a poor mother missing her son who has gone away to the big city—Mehboob Khan’s songs were ‘expressionistic’ with heightened emotions, usually with sweeping crane shots that gave the audience a sense of ‘larger-than-life’.

To my mind, Raj Kapoor’s immense contribution is what I call his ‘travelling’ songs. Within the song, the music ‘travels’ from a tappa, to a qawwali, to a virah (longing and separation), done masterfully in ‘Der Na Ho Jaaye’ in Henna. Or it would actually ‘travel’ from one character and move to other sets of characters, reach the hero, and ‘travel’ to the heroine like ‘Ramaiya Vastavaiya’ from Shri 420. Manoj Kumar to my best understanding, followed this expansive skill of a Raj Kapoor song with ‘Mehengai Maar Gayi’ from Roti Kapda Aur Makaan. 

So, when Goldie sahab debuts, the masters of Indian cinema are at their heightened creativity and their songs have a unique style and recall. Goldie’s first diktat to SD Burman, a versatile collaborator, was that the song in his films must move his ‘story’ or move the character’s ‘emotional journey’ or both. In fact, Goldie was assertive that if a song was taken out of his film, the audience must feel an ‘absence’.

Goldie’s songs grow seamlessly from the dialogues, carrying the charge of the spoken word into the poetry. In Guide a sunken Raju laments, ‘Zindagi bhi ek nasha hai dost, jab chadhta hai to poochho mat kya aalam rahta hai. Lekin jab utarta hai to….’ and the aching voice of Mohammad Rafi gives us the immortal ‘Din Dhal Jaye’. With Goldie, the spoken and the sung words have an organic unity. 

Besides, the songs were then cut on ‘beat’, which means one phrase of the song was usually a single shot. Goldie liberated that and for one ‘melodic phrase,’ he would take several shots. Close-ups would cut to close-ups from other angles or the infinite variety of two shots in songs like ‘Dil Ka bhanwar’ from Tere Ghar Ke Saamne. 

Goldie, who hadn’t learnt film-making under anyone’s tutelage, was technically absolutely fearless, breaking ‘rules’ of films yet achieving great visual fluidity. Technically, he would never shoot a song from the theatrical ‘proscenium’ position; his camera would dance as much as his actors would move. With minor pans or tracks, he could visually create amazingly disparate compositions. Again, his mastery wasn’t just in Indian classical dance pieces but in cabaret numbers. If he could mount a song massively like ‘Piya Tose’, he could create the most moving images of expectant parents flush with the joy of impending parenthood in ‘Jeevan Ki Bagiya Mahkegi’ from Tere Mere Sapne. 

Do you see Vijay Anand’s influence in later filmmakers? 

Rajkumar Hirani, who shares Goldie sahab’s skill sets, has an abiding respect for him. Sriram Raghavan, who has brought new blood into the ‘thriller’ genre owes a huge debt to Goldie’s exploration and the blueprint he set for ‘thrillers’. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, my batch mate, is so consumed by song picturizations and that passion comes from loving Goldie’s song picturisations.

Like most directors, the tail end of Vijay Anand's filmography is less exciting. You give a lot of reasons—the work ethic and politics of the 1970s, his family life, his relationship to spirituality. Was he just bored with cinema?

No. He wasn’t bored with cinema. He was an artist and artists are honourable people. When they feel they have no more to give they simply don’t. It was us— me and Sriram who used to nag him continually that we wished him to make more films. 

Filmmaking is a very long, tedious, heart-breaking process. One needs good collaborators, people who are passionate about what they do. Those times became less conducive.

Today, we are in a crisis in Hindi films, we seem to have completely lost our direction. We are not able to tell stories well. We are not able to emotionally connect with the audience and then blame it on their short attention span. That’s a real crisis. And that is why there is still a lot to learn from Dev and Goldie’s cinema.