Shakti Samanta @100: The visionary behind 'Aradhana', 'Amar Prem' and legends

Remembering the writer, director, producer and once-upon-a-time actor on his birth centenary.

Today it’s hard to believe that the director of such evergreen movies as Howrah Bridge, Kashmir Ki Kali, An Evening in Paris, Aradhana, Kati Patang, Amar Prem and Anuraag had never planned on moving behind the camera. Shakti Samanta had come to Mumbai to become a singer and an actor. In 1948, he joined Bombay Talkies Studio as an assistant to directors like Phani Majumdar and Gyan Mukherjee. And though the tall, good-looking man, with intense eyes and a cleft chin, did face the camera in a few films, acting wasn’t all that exciting because he was usually cast as an inspector who had chased after the villain in the climax with what quickly became a boringly familiar line, “Follow car number XYZ (Only the car numbers changed).”

Studio boss, Ashok Kumar, was among the first to tell Samanta that he would make a better director than an actor. In fact, the matinee idol even starred in his first big hit, Inspector (1956). The movie set up Abdul Karim Nadiadwala, a construction tycoon, as a film producer, his son Sulieman, and now his grandson, Sajid, taking the legacy forward. Seven years after Inspector, another Nadidawala, Gaffarbhai, launched his banner, AG Films, with Ek Raaz, directed by Samanta, starring Kishore Kumar, and was a hit too.

Ashok Kumar starred in 'Inspector', Shakti Samanta's first hit in 1956.

When writer-director Vrajendra Gaur heard the 1956 film’s title, he laughed, “So, you are taking revenge on us for all the inspector roles we thrust on you, huh?”

Samanta got his break as a director while assisting Gaur when two brothers came to meet him wondering how much it would cost to make a film. They were nephews of a prominent eye-specialist who had wisely invested the money they had inherited from their uncle in a car business in Mumbai. “Each of their 30 cars were earning them around Rs 900 a month and when they learned that they could shoot three-four days for as little as Rs 1,000, they asked Vrajendraji to direct a film for them,” Samanta had recounted to me in the course of an interview.

Since Gaur was already working on Kasturi, and could not take on another film till the Nimmi-Sajjan starrer was complete, he recommended his assistant. Bahu (1954), was produced by Bikram Lal Pahwa and co-directed by Samanta and Chaman Lal Pahwa. It had Usha Kiron in the title role, the story and dialogue penned by Vrajendra Gaur. “The film didn’t fare too badly, it ran for six weeks at Liberty Cinema (in Mumbai),” Samanta had informed me, smiling wryly.

He was a disciplined producer and director who planned his projects meticulously, yet left plenty of room for creative freedom. Prosenjit Chatterjee, while speaking about his experience working with another legendary filmmaker, Tarun Majumdar — the director of Moushumi Chatterjee’s debut film Balika Badhu which was remade nine years later in 1976 in Hindi, with Rajni Sharma as Sachin’s teenage bride and Samanta as producer — reminisced about travelling along with all the actors and technicians to Ghatsila in West Bengal, to shoot Pathbhola. “Whenever a location en route caught Tarun jethu’s eye, we were asked to stop; the camera and lights would be quickly set up and the actors called for a shot. I later discovered that even Shakti Samanta, followed the same pattern of filmmaking,” revealed the actor, who played the lead in Samanta’s last film, Devdas (2002).

Devdas was one of his rare failures, and son Ashim Samanta admits that he had advised his father against making the film after learning that Sanjay Leela Bhansali was helming a Hindi version with Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit. “But dad was adamant, and wanting it to remain loyal to Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s original novel, he insisted on making the film in Bengali. We had signed Bengal’s reigning superstar, Prosenjit, in the title role, but soon after our film released (May 31, 2002), Bhansali’s Devdas arrived (July 12) on a Cannes hype. And as I had feared, we never stood a chance after that,” Ashim sighs.

A still from Devdas

He also remembers riding back to Natraj Studio with his father after watching the first print run of Ayaash (1982) at the lab. “Dad was visibly disappointed and told me despondently, ‘Yeh film nahin chalegi (This film won’t work.’ Sadly, I agreed,” says Ashim, admitting that the songs by Ravindra Jain, which had sounded so good during the music suiting, inexplicably lost their magic once they were recorded.

Also, even though it had Sanjeev Kumar as the debauched zamindar, a terrific performance, the 1982 remake of the 1972 Bengali film, Stree, didn’t work. “If Rajesh Khanna played Thakur Jaswant Singh, I believe he was the only choice. We got the casting wrong with Awaaz too, two years later,” Ashim acknowledges, revealing that his father had sketched out the idea of Awaaz to Dilip Kumar at a party and the thespian had asked him to return after completing the screenplay. “Meanwhile Rajesh Khanna came home, and pointing out that both Souten and Avtaar had clicked big, refused to leave till dad signed him.”

Awaaz reunited the actor-director, seven years after Anurodh, but with Khanna’s entry, Anil Kapoor, who was playing the younger cop Vijay, exited, pointing out that he had only agreed to play second fiddle because it was Dilip Kumar. Meenakshi Seshadhri, who was opposite Anil, also dropped out subsequently. “They were replaced by Rakesh Roshan and Supriya Pathak, but the romantic songs that were to be shot on Anil and Meenakshi, were now picturised on Kaka (Rajesh Khanna) and Jaya Prada. It was a fabulous concept and Awaaz would have been one of dad’s biggest hits had Dilip Kumar done it,” Ashim asserts.

Not too many remember Awaaz today or for that matter Ajanabee, Mehbooba, Anurodh or Alag-Alag, but they haven’t forgotten Aradhana, Kati Patang and Amar Prem which made Rajesh Khanna the ‘phenomenon’ of the ’70s. “If Kaka had chosen his films with more care as I had advised, not signed every project that came his way, he would have enjoyed a longer reign,” Samanta had sighed to me more than 20 years ago.

That was his grouse with ‘Guru’ Uttam Kumar, with whom he made two bilinguals, Amanush and Anand Ashram. In contrast, he was all praise for Amitabh Bachchan who featured in his Hindi-Bengali Barsaat Ki Ek Raat /Anusandhan. “I worked with Amitabh for the first time in The Great Gambler, he was superb, very sincere. If I told him to report at 7 am, he would be there, never mind if no one else was,” Samanta had raved, He himself was never late. Prosenjit recalls that no matter how late they wrapped up the shoot, his Shakti jethu would be waiting when he arrived, in his spotless white shirt, raring to get going.

Incidentally, the producer of The Great Gambler’s had taken a great gamble too with this 1979 crime thriller with Bachchan in a double role. “CVK Shastry had lost a lot of money on a couple of films and came to me hoping for a hit,” Samanta had confided, adding with a chuckle that after the film’s release, he was laughing all the way to the bank.

Another name that always made him smile was Shammi Kapoor. They collaborated for the first time in 1960, for Singapore. The Indo-Malay co-production was shot in Singapore, one of the earliest Hindi films to be shot extensively abroad. However, two years later, the duo’s China Town was shot in Kolkata’s ChinaTown, with Samanta befriending the Chinese waiters working in the restaurants there who happily appeared in the film to give it the authentic touch.

Kashmir Ki Kali took the two friends to Kashmir, and like Mukesh’s ‘Singapore Singapore’, Mohd. Rafi’s ‘Yeh chand sa roshan chehra’ remains the best promotion for a shikara ride down Srinagar’s Dal Lake, the actor serenading Sharmila Tagore in his flamboyantly exuberant fashion. “Shammi was an old friend and I let him choreograph his songs. The result was ‘Yeh jheel si neeli aankhen’, Samanta had smiled fondly.

The last time we met, the filmmaker admitted that after an Indo-Malay co-production — Singapore — and an Indo-Bangladesh joint venture — Annay Abichar/ Aar Paar — he had been planning an Indo-China collaboration. “But the deal fell through when I was told I couldn’t shoot on the Great Wall of China,” he shrugged.   

That was Shakti Samanta, who would have turned 100 today. You couldn’t ‘wall’ him in any way. For him, the sky was the limit. Which is why I remember him as a cry from the sky, ‘Asmaan se aaya farishta, pyaar ka sabak sikhlane….’

(The author is a senior film journalist)