SHAKTI Samanta passed away, quietly, on April 9, 2009
SHAKTI Samanta passed away, quietly, on April 9, 2009. In a career that straddled five decades, Samanta directed numerous hits; yet when I had met the filmmaker in his office at Natraj Studios, he was most unlike his glamorous, dramatic films. Samanta was quiet and reserved. Moushumi Chatterjee says: "Shaktida was a man of few words; but when he spoke he meant business. A straightforward man, he was clear about black and white."
Remarkably, this unassuming man had been responsible for spinning skeins of cinematic magic.
Once, Shakti Samanta's choice of hero signaled the status of Bollywood's leading men. In the 1960s, he helmed a string of successful films with Shammi Kapoor in the lead; but after Samanta's Aradhana became a blockbuster in 1969, he made films with the new superstar Rajesh Khanna. And after Khanna's career fizzled, Samanta segued to working with Amitabh Bachchan in The Great Gambler (1979) and Barsaat Ki Ek Raat (1981).u00a0u00a0
Samanta could work his alchemy even with newcomers. Sharmila (Kashmir Ki Kali), Rajesh Khanna (Aradhana), Helen (Howrah Bridge) and Moushumi got their first taste of Hindi film stardom, thanks to his films. Speaking from Samanta's house where she had gone to pay her condolences, Moushumi says: "He was my James Bond.
Though I came to Mumbai for Raj Khosla's Kachhe Dhaage, it was Shakti Samanta's Anuraag that was released first and made me a star."
The first image that comes to my mind from Samanta's 1950s beginnings is Madhubala seductively swaying to 'Aaiye meherban' or Helen cavorting in her breakthrough song 'Mera naam Chin Chin Choo', both from Howrah Bridge the film that established Samanta's creds as a filmmaker.
But it was not Samanta's first film. Samanta came to Mumbai from Dehra Dun in 1947 to be an actor. He started as an assistant director in the Raj Kapoor starrer Sunhere Din. Thereafter, he assisted Phani Majumdar in Tamasha, Baadbaan and Dhobi Doctor before getting his break as an independent director with Bahu (1955).
Samanta was determined to succeed but had to wait for his next, Inspector, to deserve a closer inspection.
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Samanta's career can be divided into three phases. In the first, he made crime thrillers like Inspector and Howrah Bridge (both with Ashok Kumar) and Jaali Note (Dev Anand).u00a0 His China Town had the good Shammi Kapoor being dumbstruck by his bad twin's famous retort: 'Mike ka doosra naam China Town'.
In the 1960s, ceding to the governing mood, the Shakti Films banner produced musicals: Kashmir Ki Kali, Sawan Ki Ghata, An Evening In Paris. Their music is eternal. After 42 years, all the nine songs of the Paris caper roll off the tip on my tongue even the rarely recalled cabaret numbers picturised on Sharmila, "Le ja le ja' and 'Zuby Zuby zalemboo'.
Manoj Kumar remembers: "He was a rare producer. On the day of the shooting, he would come home and pay you before he began work! On the first day of shooting of Sawan Ki Ghata, I had to come galloping on a horse. I was petrified of horses ever since I had fallen down from a horse. I told him that he could replace me with a hero who could make a horse gallop. But Shaktida stumped me with the prediction: 'Even if the horse doesn't gallop, you will'."
After Samanta delivered the three-hankie golden jubilee, Aradhana (1969), he entered the next phase of his career emotional dramas. Aradhana was unforgettable, amongst other things for Rajesh Khanna and a towel-clad Sharmila exchanging glances more smouldering than the fireplace in the completed-in-one-trolley-shot song 'Roop tera mastana'. But Sharmila votes for Samanta's Amar Prem as her favourite film. She says, "Amar Prem was sheer poetry."
Amar Prem, a love story between a prostitute, Sharmila, and her married patron, Khanna, is about a relationship that transcends physicality. His love finds sublimation in an unselfish deedu00a0 he reunites his grey-haired paramour with her foster son. Today, a dhoti-clad Khanna, with samosas-in-dona, placating Sharmila with, 'Pushpa, I hate tears. Saline water' maybe considered schmaltz... but it's unfailingly moving.
From the OP Nayyar-Shankar Jaikishen days to the 1970s, music was the bedrock of Samanata's films. When I spoke to him after R D Burman's death, Samanta said, "Pancham would go into his room and work from 9 o'clock in the morning till 9 o'clock in the night for Amar Prem."
Besides songs and song picturisations, Samanta was known for extracting the best from his actors. Moushumi recalls: "I played a blind girl in Anuraag and Shaktida promised to take me to a blind school to prepare. But the mahurat day dawned and we had not been to the blind school. I panicked but did the mahurat shot, for which I got a lot of appreciation. Shaktida came up to me and said, 'This is just the way I want you to enact the blind girl throughout the film'."
By the late 1970s, Samanta had a hit-and-miss run. He tried reteaming with Khanna after a seven-year break with Awaaz ('84) and Alag Alag ('85), but the Samanta-Khanna-Burman magic failed this time. After the Jeetendra-Rekha starrer Geetanjali in 1993, Samanta quit Hindi films. From the 1970s, he had made Hindi-Bengali bilinguals such as the Uttam Kumar hit, Amanush, and now he helped son Ashim in his Bengali ventures.
In the last few decades, Samanta was an industry elder. He was the Censor Board Chief. Manoj Kumar remembers: "When it was anybody's funeral or marriage, he would definitely be present. His son Ashim was his Shravan Kumar."
Samanta's office was situated at one of Mumbai's most famous Bollywood landmarks Andheri's venerable Nataraj studio, which was once abuzz with film personalities like Guru Dutt, the Sagars et al. The studio is now being reconstructed next to the heat and dust raised by the creation of the swish new metro-rail. Nataraj and its environs are now part of another era. Samanta too is no moreu00a0... but the memories remain strong.
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Dinesh Raheja is a film historian and editor of Bollywood News Service
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