Published date: 19th Dec 1975, Cinema Journal

Round and round the rugged

rock, rugged lovers run the race

In any formula set-up, there’s nothing better than a few digressions

on Young Love. Thus, the director said ‘Let there be romance, and there was a love scene

… and the love scene-drome

SCOFT music. A setting sun. Birds chirping, flying home- wards. And a boy and a girl in some woodland.

Nice scene? Wait. It is not complete yet. There is also strategically placed vegetation. The trees are spaced out at intervals that facilitate a long chase. The bushes are designed to hide an amorous look.

And then the boy breaks into a song. Rapturous and sweet-sounding. There’s appropriately romantic background noise. The girl reciprocates. The boy chases the girl. The girl giggles, evades his grasp, begins the chase around the trees and bushes. The boy follows, spouting poetry at every leap.

Five minutes of peek-a-boo later, the duet runs out of words. The song ends, and the boy succeeds in catching the girl. They go into a close close-up.

The director shouts “Cut!” That ends the love scene.

Hindi films and love scenes are inseparable. Oh yes, the violence is there, the twists in the story, the father who has run away from his family, the son bent on becoming a latter- day Dick Whittington. But give me Hindi films without love scenes, and I will count them on my fingertips.

It is time someone tried to examine the phenomenon of love scenes in Hindi films. It all began long ago, when most of today’s young people were not even born, when silent movies ran in a couple of theatres. Imagine the crucial moment when. glance meets glance, when sparks fly, when hearts thud in unison, and the boy and the girl fall head over heels for each other. I wonder how they conveyed it on the screen. Perhaps the subtitle read: “O-0-0-0 meri rain! O-o-0-o mere raja!” with ap- propriate music, and the audience gasped in ecstasy.

In any commercial formula set-up, there is nothing better than a few digressions or Young Love. Thus, the director said Let there be Romance, and there was a Love Scene. The number of films that turned out successful because of the masterful love scenes they presented must be legion. For a romance-starved young people, Love scenes were veritable manna.

Things have changed since the Silence Era. People are more educated, increasingly questioning. Old methods are

In a Hindi film the boy must fall in love with the girl … in a crowded bus, in a zoo, or in a queue for cinema tickets …

discarded like heroine’s costumes. The director of the modern Hindi film must explain the falling-in-love event with a plausible motive. This makes the story-writer’s job difficult. He must try and cook up a different situation in every new story, but all of them must end with a boy falling in love with a girl. But the story writ- er is brilliant. That is why we get so many variations in Love Scenes. But long ago, the entire gamut was exhausted. And so, the Salims and the Javeds have burst into to the Hindi film firmament, with yet newer ways of falling in love.

In the unvarnished tales of love, the boy and the girl meet. Do not ask me how. The film would never have ended if they did not. Perhaps it is in a crowded bus, or in a zoo, or in a queue for cinema tickets. But they meet. The boy immediately flips for the girl. Sometimes as particularly bold writer has the girl flipping for the boy. Inter- national Women’s Year, you know. After the flip comes the first overture. Normally the boy finds out (he has got an army of informers bigger than the one Sherlock Holmes had) where the girl is staying, who her father is, how much she is worth and where she is studying.

The girl invariably lives in a posh bungalow. The boy is poor, struggling to eke out a living. The. girl’s father is either a big executive or a police officer. The boy therefore Joins the firm as a clerk or enlists as a constable. Either way, he soon worms his way into the Saab’s confidence. The Saab thinks he is a very nice young man. The nice young man is invited for lunch at the Saab’s place. There he meets the girl of his dreams. All this happens in ten minutes on the screen. The rest of the film, you see, will be devoted to how he wooed her.

This is where the story writer comes into his Elem. Sometimes the boy rescues a girl from a mad bull or saves her father. Anyway, girl is grateful for whatever he has done. Begins the process of realization that she is falling in love with that nice young man.

Suddenly you wonder where the poor young man got such a flashy outfit. Perhaps he is hired it from a customer. He invites the girl out to a park. If he invited her out for a movie, it would be difficult to picture the great moment when the girl falls completely in love with him.

Acrobatics, gymnastics and ballet too!

Such difficult scenes are left to directors from the West to picture, like in Summer of 42. Once they are in the park, the young man proceeds to dis- course on the beauty of nature. Soon, the girl, who has been shy all along, begins to smile. The smile activates the young man’s vocal cords, an invisible band strikes up and the young man bursts into song. And what a song! And wonder of wonders, the girl, who has been a rather dumpy little collegian so far, suddenly finds she can sing and thus a duet is born.

It hardly matters whether young man and the girl can compose a song at a moment’s notice, but they suddenly begin to warble in voices that strangely resemble Kishore Kumar’s or Lata Man geishas. Either way, the audience sits back and waits for what it knows will follow, namely, the main love scene.

Over the years, the main love scene has gone through many stages of development. There was a time when the scene had the boy and the girl coyly ex-changing glances, with low-key music; the boy and the girl beginning to run towards each other, with slightly louder music; and finally, the boy and the girl meeting in the middle of some field, with the music reaching a crescendo, and the boy sweeping the girl off her feet. Climax!

Nowadays the directors and the stars are getting to be bolder and bolder. This is the ag of the sizzling love scenes, win very suggestive gestures, mo. suggestive looks, most surge stive dialogue, and finally, the intimate clinch, wrestler style. If there is a bed on which the lovey-dovey wrestlers can collapse, all the better. But the crux of the situation lies in the fact that at the crucial moment, when the boy’s face is close to the girls, when she is in his arms, when the breathing is appropriately heavy, the camera chooses to swing away Pavitra passion and zooms in on a ceiling fan, or the window. And if the love scene is shot outdoors, on a pair birds or a suggestive close-ups of two buds. The moment has come and passed, and the lovelorn young man in the audience are left licking their chops.

This is the age of sizzling love scenes, with suggestive looks, suggestive gestures, suggestive dialogue and, finally, the intimate clinch – wrestler style …

With the advent of the sensitive films, the off-beat films, the story writer has had to incorporate off-beat love scenes in his script. So, we have the non-conformist love scene – there are no songs, no country-aide scenes, no buds. There IA sheer realism – the boy and the girl sitting across a table in a sleazy restaurant, (remember the boy is poor) and sipping cups of tea. The camera zeroes on a fly Kamikaze style, which buzzes around and finally drops into the girl’s cup. The boy interrupts his dissertation Marx, Freud or Plato and tenaciously orders another cup of tea for the girl, that is how the intellectual love scene takes place – the girl appreciate this gesture so much she falls In love with the guy. All for an extra 25 praise!

Of course, there are infinite variations in the love scene. I am only giving you a few e maples. Think of how nice. would be to fall in love on foreign locale – somewhere Europe! *

Which is all very well for the younger sections of the audience. But when in real life, the young man after getting the girl of his dreams to accompany him to a park, or a zoo, or sleazy joint he discovers that, he cannot break into songs nor Is there hidden or- Chestra ; with Kishore Kumar to sing for him. What is Important there is no fly to fall ” in the girl’s tea cup.