guru dutt – The Metrognome

Mumbai-based company Ultra has restored the yesteryear classic and will present the new print in Mumbai film festival next month.

by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Pyaasa, a 1957 cult classic, will be screened in the restored section at the 17^thJio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival in Mumbai on November 1 and 3. The film will be screened at PVR ECX, Andheri and PVR, Phoenix Lower Parel respectively.

The ‘Restored classics section’ in Jio MAMI this year will screen six more films. This particular section has evoked a lot of interest amongst the festival goers and common public in general.

Produced and directed by Guru Dutt, this classic features an ensemble star cast comprising Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman, Mala Sinha, Johnny Walker, Rehman, Mehmood, Tun Tun etc. The movie boasts of one of the best musical scores put together by SD Burman, Sahir Ludhianvi, Mohammed Rafi, Geeta Dutt and Hemant Kumar, featuring such evergreen songs as ‘Jaane Woh Kaise Log’, ‘Yeh Duniya Agar Mil’ and ‘Jaane Kya Tune Kahi’.

The film was restored by Ultra which will also re-release the film theatrically worldwide after MAMI.

How Pyaasa was restored

The most challenging part in restoring Pyaasa was sourcing the authentic materials to complete the preservation. After much effort, Ultra found the original camera negatives of the film at an archive in India; however a lot of the parts of the negatives were either damaged or lost.

They decided to use as many parts as possible from the original camera negatives and a few parts were used from 35 mm prints. A new digital transfer was created in 2K resolution on the ARRISCAN film scanner. This in-house technology helped in applying a multidisciplinary, data-centric approach to the entire film’s restoration process.

Once the complete film was digitally transferred, came the most challenging part of restoration. Thousands of instances of dirt, lines, scratches, splices, warps, jitters and green patches were manually removed frame by frame under careful supervision by experienced artists.

The in-house talented professionals used a specialised film content mending and defect removal mechanism in their repair process. They carefully selected the best way to restore this priceless classic to its original quality.

The original monaural soundtrack was remastered at 24-bit from the 35mm optical soundtrack. Clicks, thumps, hisses and hums were manually removed frame by frame.

Says Anupama Chopra, Festival Director, Jio MAMI, “We at MAMI are indeed delighted to screen Pyaasa. There are some masterpieces of the bygone era that a lot of people have not seen, either due to their poor condition or inaccessibility. These films when restored the right way can give it a completely new life and also can help not only to be screened but also as a strong reference material.”

Long live the King

Humra Quraishi is heartbroken over Yash Chopra’s death, and has given up looking for a man with Guru Dutt’s eyes.

Ever since I heard the news of director Yash Chopra’s death due to dengue, all I kept muttering to myself was, “Yash Chopra’s dead…He’s dead…the king of romance is gone…”

I didn’t know Yash Chopra personally. But sometimes, you don’t need to know somebody on a personal level to feel the loss when they’re gone. Most of those who are mourning for him didn’t know him either, but we’re all shaken by his death. I think what bound me to Yash Chopra was that he personified all that was romantic in film, and I am a diehard romantic in real life. But I count myself lucky, because unlike the scores of people who could idolise him only through his films, I actually had the opportunity to see him up close.

I saw him in person just once, at the New Delhi airport. He was with his wife, and though they were together, his eyes darted about restlessly, like he was mentally somewhere else, looking for someone. Even at a distance, his personality did leave an impact…he wasn’t good-looking in the conventional sense of the word, but he had a definite personality. I thought he was tall and dark, but not really handsome, but there was something about him that would make you notice him in the crowd, turn around for a second look, even on a crowded airport.

The restlessness in his eyes probably stopped me, or rather, the journalist in me, to go right up to him and talk to him. I still could have spoken with him, and I’m sure he would have been cordial enough to answer my pleasantries and my questions, but I thought it would be wrong of me to intrude on his thoughts and bother him.

And as I saw him boarding the same flight to Srinagar as I was on, I was more confident of going up to him, if nothing else, then for one of those unplanned interviews that journalists are sometimes lucky enough to get. But by the time I could muster enough confidence to approach him, he was almost mobbed by his co-passengers. After that, I settled back in my seat and resigned myself to glancing at him at regular intervals, and I could clearly see his smile and his set of fine, good teeth. And I could also hear his distinct voice, and snatches of the sentences he spoke rather quickly.

On the evening of his death, as I mused over losing Yash Chopra, I was actually surprised that I still remembered all these details of so long ago, after so many long years. The only explanation I can offer for my fond memories of Yash Chopra, are that the romantic streak in him and me brought about a strange connection of sorts. Yes, romantics do connect in these rather bizarre ways.

And when I ponder on romance, I remember Guru Dutt and his lovely eyes. After him, no other man conveyed the kind of want, the yearning and a subdued passion of love. Guru Dutt was probably the only man in cinema whose eyes touched a chord with you across a cinema screen, that made love to you with a single glance. I am still looking for eyes like his, but I have almost given up hope. Where am I going to find such a pair of eyes, in these fast times and in an age where pelvic thrusts denote love in cinema, that will be emotional, in love and full of yearning?

Today’s filmmakers would do well to understand why Yash Chopra and Guru Dutt made romance so special. They understood that romance was about an abundance of emotions, exploding in a dazzling display of colours and tears and heartbreak and ecstasy. They understood the difference between love, romance and sex, and also that romance remained with the viewer long after the sex was done with. Their films underlined this wonderful line from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Memories of My Melancholy Whores: ‘Sex is the consolation one has for not finding enough love.’

Humra Quraishi is a veteran journalist and author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Absolute Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy www.deccanchronicle.com)