Rajesh Khanna & Dimple on Filmfare (Aug 1-15, 1980)
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6 Responses to “Rajesh Khanna & Dimple on Filmfare (Aug 1-15, 1980)”
We pray for them to be together for ever Dimple & Rajesh Khanna. Let whole world talk non-sense about their relationship.
Super Star Rajesh Khanna – The real example of characterization
With his honest performance, he has made his status on the Indian Silver Screen as a most dignified and sophisticated performer in commercial environment, who along with his historic first superstar image never forget that the actor Rajesh Khanna born via theatre world and always proved the real example of characterization in varied way.
It is rumoured that his disarming smile costs Rs. 1.4 million. Young women devour him with hungry eyes in the afternoon darkness of cinema halls. Mothers witness his filmic deaths with helpless pangs of frustrated protectiveness. Young adult males project themselves into his limelit presence on the screen and later yearn to recreate themselves in his image. Millions of Indians queue up for long hours to see him break into his smile, get drunk, become furious, whisper love-words or burst forth into a husky, vibrant played-back song. If there is one person in India today who surpasses the Prime Minister’s charisma, he is Rajesh Khanna. The multimillion rupee Hindi film industry which prolifically produces stereotyped dreams unanimously regards him as the only authentic super-star it has so far produced. He is what makes a sure-fire box-office hit. Even films with all the essential ingredients for making a sure flop have run for weeks just because he starred in them. His success is so phenomenal that it challenges anyone who pretends to understand mass behaviour.
Also Read | Revolutionary Road
He is of medium height and build. He has mannerisms of his own which show through whatever character he plays—or perhaps that is unfair to him. His producers and directors want him to play no other character but his own unique self. He has a rare plasticity: that which makes a natural actor, something which James Dean had impressed upon movie-addicts during his meteoric Hollywood career. For he gives the sense that he lives his assumed role, however crudely it is scripted and directed. Yet he will not get an Elia Kazan or a George Stevens to direct him. And his hurt-youth image, which is a factor in his success, will gradually age.
Star power: Rajesh Khanna (left) and Amitabh Bachchan in Anand. Chitre wrote in Quest that Khanna found his best script and director in this film.
The best script and director he got so far was in the film Anand, directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee who is one of the better directors in the world of commercial Hindi cinema. His worst role was the one in Haathi Mere Saathi in which he plays a sort of elephant-boy and in which one of the three corners of the conventional love triangle is occupied, of all animals, by elephants.
Curiously, Rajesh Khanna is considered a hero worth killing—which is amazing since in Hindi films it is a taboo to kill the hero. Curiously too, he has to die of cancer. He died of cancer in Safar and again in Anand. In Safar he is the leukaemic lover of a would-be doctor. In Anand, he is a cancer patient who spends his limited spell of life to make people around him happy. In Andaz he dies in a motor-bike accident for a change. Is it, one wonders, the expression of a mass death-wish? Some fifteen years ago, Dilip Kumar, the matinee idol then, specialized in dying as a hero. However, Dilip Kumar’s screen deaths brought no shock to the audience since he moved and spoke, from the start, as if he were his own pall-bearer. Rajesh’s screen deaths have some novelty: he is a warm, ebullient, vivacious, blithe young man. Even if he is destined to die, it seems unfair and too early. One has seen teenage girls sob witnessing him die. Or heaving unmistakably erotic sighs when he sings a love song (with the inimitable Kishore Kumar play-back singing for him). For the first time in the history of commercial Hindi cinema a single person has acquired such a following.
Rajesh Khanna with Asha Parekh in Kati Patang
What has Rajesh Khanna got that others haven’t? He does have acting talent. But there are others who are much better. He is good-looking. But that is neither here nor there. He is certainly not very handsome. What is it then?
Excerpted from The Best of Quest, edited by Laeeq Futehally, Achal Prabhala and Arshia Sattar, published by Tranquebar Press, 2011, Rs. 695.
In the book’s last piece, ‘D.’ reveals his identity for the first time ever—he is the late poet and essayist Dilip Chitre.
thanks Kash.. great read here.. I have staunchly resisted using the word superstar for anyone in the present because it was invented for someone like Rajesh Khanna, taken to its apogee with Bachchan and there hasn’t been another one since, even with Taran and Nahata supplying half the gross for some stars (!). But this piece provides a slice of that history which is of course not just about the box office and also includes a huge cultural archive that too is unmatched in the present. Aunties haven’t yet written letters to SRK in blood nor have they married his picture! Adultery is another matter and perhaps that’s what RNBDJ tapped into.
Exactly my views on Superstar(dom), These guys have not seen (not that I have, but ofcourse going by what I am being told by family and columns such as these) what kind of hysteria these guys used to generate, it is something to only dream about. Even in today’s times if anyone was genuinely a superstar, I don’t think it would be at the level of Rajesh Khanna & Amitabh Bachchan. Though short lived, the madness for Rajesh Khanna was just something else. I am sure you know, women got married to his photograph, took the sand from his feet and filled it as vermillion in their maangs, wrote letters to him with their blood. It does not get more extreme than that.
February 3, 2011 at 3:46 AM
We pray for them to be together for ever Dimple & Rajesh Khanna. Let whole world talk non-sense about their relationship.
Super Star Rajesh Khanna – The real example of characterization
With his honest performance, he has made his status on the Indian Silver Screen as a most dignified and sophisticated performer in commercial environment, who along with his historic first superstar image never forget that the actor Rajesh Khanna born via theatre world and always proved the real example of characterization in varied way.
February 4, 2011 at 9:46 AM
salute to king of romance
off topic on music :
its very rarely one encounter a fairly nice romantic song these days and even one can see predictability in voice of those contestants of talent hunt
a kk emerged on his own with pal and dosti
and very recently this song really has caught up on me and must be a lesson to the bollywood who keep on churning mediocrity:
( singer : rohan rathod of iit guahati who died after 15 days of recording this song )
February 4, 2011 at 11:24 AM
November 11, 2011 at 4:08 PM
Excerpts from an old column date back in sept 1971.
http://www.livemint.com/2011/11/11210634/Excerpt–To-die-for.html
It is rumoured that his disarming smile costs Rs. 1.4 million. Young women devour him with hungry eyes in the afternoon darkness of cinema halls. Mothers witness his filmic deaths with helpless pangs of frustrated protectiveness. Young adult males project themselves into his limelit presence on the screen and later yearn to recreate themselves in his image. Millions of Indians queue up for long hours to see him break into his smile, get drunk, become furious, whisper love-words or burst forth into a husky, vibrant played-back song. If there is one person in India today who surpasses the Prime Minister’s charisma, he is Rajesh Khanna. The multimillion rupee Hindi film industry which prolifically produces stereotyped dreams unanimously regards him as the only authentic super-star it has so far produced. He is what makes a sure-fire box-office hit. Even films with all the essential ingredients for making a sure flop have run for weeks just because he starred in them. His success is so phenomenal that it challenges anyone who pretends to understand mass behaviour.
Also Read | Revolutionary Road
He is of medium height and build. He has mannerisms of his own which show through whatever character he plays—or perhaps that is unfair to him. His producers and directors want him to play no other character but his own unique self. He has a rare plasticity: that which makes a natural actor, something which James Dean had impressed upon movie-addicts during his meteoric Hollywood career. For he gives the sense that he lives his assumed role, however crudely it is scripted and directed. Yet he will not get an Elia Kazan or a George Stevens to direct him. And his hurt-youth image, which is a factor in his success, will gradually age.
Star power: Rajesh Khanna (left) and Amitabh Bachchan in Anand. Chitre wrote in Quest that Khanna found his best script and director in this film.
The best script and director he got so far was in the film Anand, directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee who is one of the better directors in the world of commercial Hindi cinema. His worst role was the one in Haathi Mere Saathi in which he plays a sort of elephant-boy and in which one of the three corners of the conventional love triangle is occupied, of all animals, by elephants.
Curiously, Rajesh Khanna is considered a hero worth killing—which is amazing since in Hindi films it is a taboo to kill the hero. Curiously too, he has to die of cancer. He died of cancer in Safar and again in Anand. In Safar he is the leukaemic lover of a would-be doctor. In Anand, he is a cancer patient who spends his limited spell of life to make people around him happy. In Andaz he dies in a motor-bike accident for a change. Is it, one wonders, the expression of a mass death-wish? Some fifteen years ago, Dilip Kumar, the matinee idol then, specialized in dying as a hero. However, Dilip Kumar’s screen deaths brought no shock to the audience since he moved and spoke, from the start, as if he were his own pall-bearer. Rajesh’s screen deaths have some novelty: he is a warm, ebullient, vivacious, blithe young man. Even if he is destined to die, it seems unfair and too early. One has seen teenage girls sob witnessing him die. Or heaving unmistakably erotic sighs when he sings a love song (with the inimitable Kishore Kumar play-back singing for him). For the first time in the history of commercial Hindi cinema a single person has acquired such a following.
Rajesh Khanna with Asha Parekh in Kati Patang
What has Rajesh Khanna got that others haven’t? He does have acting talent. But there are others who are much better. He is good-looking. But that is neither here nor there. He is certainly not very handsome. What is it then?
Excerpted from The Best of Quest, edited by Laeeq Futehally, Achal Prabhala and Arshia Sattar, published by Tranquebar Press, 2011, Rs. 695.
In the book’s last piece, ‘D.’ reveals his identity for the first time ever—he is the late poet and essayist Dilip Chitre.
November 11, 2011 at 4:20 PM
thanks Kash.. great read here.. I have staunchly resisted using the word superstar for anyone in the present because it was invented for someone like Rajesh Khanna, taken to its apogee with Bachchan and there hasn’t been another one since, even with Taran and Nahata supplying half the gross for some stars (!). But this piece provides a slice of that history which is of course not just about the box office and also includes a huge cultural archive that too is unmatched in the present. Aunties haven’t yet written letters to SRK in blood nor have they married his picture! Adultery is another matter and perhaps that’s what RNBDJ tapped into.
November 11, 2011 at 4:32 PM
Exactly my views on Superstar(dom), These guys have not seen (not that I have, but ofcourse going by what I am being told by family and columns such as these) what kind of hysteria these guys used to generate, it is something to only dream about. Even in today’s times if anyone was genuinely a superstar, I don’t think it would be at the level of Rajesh Khanna & Amitabh Bachchan. Though short lived, the madness for Rajesh Khanna was just something else. I am sure you know, women got married to his photograph, took the sand from his feet and filled it as vermillion in their maangs, wrote letters to him with their blood. It does not get more extreme than that.