Why Vijay Anand remains unforgettable

On his 88th birth anniversary, Ranjan Das Gupta writes about the filmmaker’s golden days in Hindi cinema

Vijay Anand confessed in his later days that he never blossomed fully as a filmmaker. Maximum of his creative best was put behind promoting the acting talent of elder brother Dev Anand. With exceptions of Shammi Kapoor and Ashok Kumar, he did not work with other actors during his golden days in the 60s and early 70s.

Also known as Goldie Anand, the acclaimed filmmaker’s 88th birth anniversary falls on January 22.

After Guru Dutt, Vijay Anand has influenced several popular directors such as Shekhar Kapur, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and Madhur Bhandarkar. Even though Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna and Vinod Khanna acted in flop films — ‘Blackmail’ and ‘Rajput’ — made by Vijay Anand, they cherish experiences of working with him.

Assisting Chetan Anand for ‘Aandhiyan’(1952), Vijay Anand developed a desire for filmmaking. His dialogues for Navketan’s smash hit ‘Taxi Driver’ were natural and grounded, backed by Chetan Anand’s taut scenarios. During his student days at ST Xavier’s College, Mumbai, Vijay Anand along with Satyadev Dube, won awards for plays they penned together.

Completing a screenplay with dialogues, he narrated a story to Dev Anand during a journey to Mahabaleswar in 1956. His condition to his brother was he would direct it. Thus ‘Nau Do Gyarah’ was born in 1957. It was a hit and there was no looking back for Vijay Anand.

The Vijay Anand-Dev Anand team gave many memorable hits like ‘Kalabazar’, ‘Humdono’ and ‘Tere Ghar Ke Samne’. With the classic ‘Guide’, he achieved everything Hindi cinema could give him.

‘Teesri Manzil’, ‘Jewel Thief’ and ‘Johny Mera Naam’ placed him at the peak of his career. With ‘Tere Mere Sapne’, he also turned producer and this was an additional burden which hampered the otherwise memorable film to become as evergreen as ‘Hum Dono’ and ‘Guide’.

From his debut, Vijay Anand mastered the arts of script writing, directing and editing. His handling of emotions, comedy and suspense was brilliant. Vijay Anand ushered in a new era of song picturisation with SD Burman and Jaidev as his musical souls.

Though he gave RD Burman a coveted break in ‘Teesri Manzil’, they did not get along well together. Rather Kalyanji-Anandji was more compatible with the sensitive director composing for ‘Johny Mera Naam’.

Every heroine he worked with praised Vijay Anand’s skills. He extracted the best from Waheeda Rehman, Nanda, Sadhana, Nutan and Mumtaz. In the middle 70’s, he lost form and focus due to personal tragedies. Vijay Anand excelled as a parallel actor in ‘Kalabazar’, ‘Hakeekat’, ‘Tere Mere Sapne’, ‘Hindustan Ki Kasam’ and ‘Main Tulsi Tere Angan Ki’.

According to the film industry, Vijay Anand was the best censor board chairman. He was the first to understand the necessity to alter the 1953 cinematograph Act with best inputs from censor guidelines of the USA, UK and Germany. He also proposed a different censorship for television.

After Aparna Sen and Shabana Azmi’s requests, he went out of his way to censor Mr & Mrs Iyer like no other CBFC chairman dared to. He was very upset at Aparna Sen’s ingratitude even after he helped her so much. Vijay Anand’s talks on editing of ‘Guide’ and ‘Teesri Manzil’ were big hits with the students of Film and Television Institute of India in Pune.

(The author is a Kolkata-based freelancer who has done research on all three Anand brothers).