CRITICAL ANALYSIS

OF
INDIAN FILM NOIR

Devarsi Ghosh
Roll: PGDJ15052
New Media Stream

Mentor: M.S Ganesh Viswanathan

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

Postgraduate Diploma in New Media Journalism from the
Asian College of Journalism, Chennai for the academic year
2015-16.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank my mentor M.S Ganesh Viswanathan for guiding me through every step of the

dissertation.

I thank my friends, Sumit Chakraborty, Ritayan Basu and Ankita Sarkar for staying by my side

and working on the dissertation in the last few days before submission and thus, all my worries

and tension were somewhat shared by the trio and I did not panic as I raced against time.

I thank whoever curated the books for the library as the Cinema section was really helpful

though it did not have Gyan Prakashs Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City and

if I had that at my disposal, the dissertation, may be, would have been slightly better.

Last, but not the least, I thank Anna and Akka from the tea-and-cigarette shack in front of the

Indian Institute of Hotel Management for helping me be sane through the entire process.
 CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: The Early Era (40s to 60s) 5

Chapter 2: The Middle Era (60s to 70s) 13

Chapter 3: Parallel Cinema Era and Precursors

To Contemporary Bombay Noir
(Parinda and Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin) 20

Chapter 4: Bombay Noir and Contemporary

Indian Neo-Noir 27

Conclusion 33

Bibliography 34
 INTRODUCTION
The ethos of film noir organically doesnt lend itself to the Indian cinematic language

(particularly, popular Indian cinematic language that derives its essence from theatre,

dance drama, nautanki and Indian mythology), however, filmmakers, time and again,

right from the days of Mahal (1949) have dabbled in film noir, regardless of how distant

they might seem from western noir films in terms of treatment, if not aesthetic.

Following Mahal, Chetan Anand, Guru Dutt and Raj Khosla churned out noir films in the

50s and 60s. But with the introduction of colour film in Indian cinema, these rigidly film

noir movies dried up as Bollywood did not have the time or patience for the brooding and

world-weariness so central to noir cinema. In came Rajesh Khanna with his romances and

social drama films and Amitabh Bachchans angrier, action-oriented films that took a

more proactive approach to lifes woes.1 Even then, as mainstream as Khanna and

Bachchans films were, they often borrowed noir tropes, more so in Bachchans case

(Films like Red Rose starring Khanna as a psychopath and Bachchans Zanjeer, Deewar

and Andha Kanoon where the superstar played the vigilante figure trying to fight and

come to terms with the criminal society around him).

Indian film noir took a curious turn in the 90s with erstwhile Telugu filmmaker Ram

Gopal Varma making the seminal Hindi/Bollywood neo-noir film Satya (1998). Earlier

Vidhu Vinod Chopra (Sazaye Maut, Khamosh, Parinda), Sudhir Mishra (Iss Raat Ki

Subah Nahin) and Govind Nihalani (Aakrosh, Ardh Satya, Thakshak) had flirted rather

successfully with film noir but it was with the arrival of Satya and other dark thrillers

from the Varma factory, that noir successfully entered the Indian mainstream film scene.

Varma and the then-young writers and filmmakers that he mentored such as Anurag

Kashyap, Sriram Raghavan and Vishal Bharadwaj went on to become major filmmakers

1
in the next decade and thanks to them and fellow filmmakers like Dibakar Banerjee and

Navdeep Singh, Indian film noir came of age Maqbool, Ek Hasina Thi, D, No

Smoking, Johnny Gaddaar, Manorama: Six Feet Under, Shanghai, Talaash, Detective

Byomkesh Bakshy, Badlapur, Bombay Velvet and so on.

Regional cinema in India has also offered a variety of noir films. Two of the first noir

films in Bengali were Satyajit Rays Chiriakhana, an adaptation of a Byomkesh Bakshy

story and Agradoots Sabar Upare, both starring Bengali matinee idol Uttam Kumar. In

recent times, Hollywood and foreign language cinema, easily available through DVDs

and the internet, have officially or unofficially inspired a large number of Bengali noir

films while most of them are not worthy of mention, films like Srijit Mukherjis

Baishe Srabon, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhurys Buno Haansh, Suman Mukhopadhyays

Herbert, Qs Gandu and Indranil Roy Chowdhurys Ekti Bangali Bhooter Golpo have

been both critical and commercial successes.

Filmmakers down south have also tried their hands in making noir films. One of the most

popular examples in recent times is Thyagarajan Kumararajas Aaranya Kandam (2010),

credited for resurging the neo-noir genre in Tamil cinema. Other Tamil noir films include

Andha Naal (1954), Dharmam Thalaikaakkum (1963), Vallavan Oruvan (1966),

Ragasiya Police 115 (1968), C.I.D Shankar (1970), Quarter Cutting (2010), Onaayum

Aattukkuttiyum (2013) and Thoonga Vanam (2015).

Just two years back, Rajeev Ravi, the cinematographer for all the movies (except Ugly)

by Anurag Kashyap, the maverick of contemporary Hindi neo-noir cinema, directed a

small, low-budget Malayalam crime caper Njan Steve Lopez (2014). The previous year,

Mohanlal starred in the much-loved and highly popular Drishyam (2013), which has

2
since been remade into four different languages - Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Hindi. Two

important Malayalam movies made in the 80s are Irakal (1980) and Aparan (1988).

In the following chapters, I shall discuss the evolution of the noir genre in Indian cinema.

I shall chart how Indian noir films have changed and evolved from the 40s to the present

day in terms of their heroes/protagonists, female characters, villains, treatment of

crime/criminals and the law and portrayal of socio-political realities vis--vis the time

period in which the films were made.

I shall also focus on how Indian noir films are different from their Western counterparts

in treatment of noir storytelling tropes and devices.

Last, but not the least, Ill discuss the changes in the urban landscape and the social

realities of urban man and woman of different social classes as seen through the film noir

lens starting with films of the Dutt-Anand-Khosla era right down to the present day films

of Kashyap-Bharadwaj-Raghavan.

Note: Due to lack of availability of most Tamil and Malayalam noir films (a few are

available but without English subtitles), I shall not be analyzing regional noir

cinema but focusing solely on Hindi language noir films.

3
Chapter 1: THE EARLY ERA (40s to 60s)

In the United States, film theorists, critics and historians have never come to a singular

conclusion about the meaning of the term: "film noir". While the term might immediately

conjure in one, an image of a hard-boiled detective, smoking like a chimney, looking out

of a crisscrossing window pane trying to solve a mystery, made more mysterious by a

foxy femme fatale, few film noirs, internationally speaking, have this elements. Sure,

these elements were common in the noir films made in the 40s and 50s, but after a point,

it was the dark visual aesthetic (mise-en-scne plays a huge part in the noir narrative;

visual elements like low key lighting, shadows, smoke etc. are used to create a mood of

menace and foreboding) and underlying themes of pessimism that got carried on to future

noir films.

But when applied to Hindi cinema, where does the term "film noir" fit in? Because, no

film theorist or historian in India ever characterized a period in Indian Cinema as the noir

period. Neither did anyone categorize a certain section of films as noir, at least not

academically. Indian films have been identified as noir, noir-ish or neo-noir (films

that are noir in sensibility but have modern themes, visual elements, references, etc.) by

film critics, film writers and film buffs because certain elements have appeared to be

common between western noir cinema and the Hindi films that I will be writing about

henceforth in this dissertation.

4
However, to identify what exactly Indian film noir is, is not an easy task. Just like in the

American lexicon, where the term has been defined vaguely, so too does it loosely

encompass a certain section of Indian films with low-key lighting, stories centered

around cops and/or criminals with morally ambiguous protagonists. Therefore, the best

way to crack this nut is by starting with an illustrative example - Raj Khosla's Woh Kaun

Thi? (1964) starring Sadhana and Manoj Kumar.

There are four basic elements in Woh Kaun Thi? First, is the film's distinctive

cinematography and mounting - low-key lighting inside a mysterious haveli. The shots

are slow and unhurried and the score is aptly somber. The film creates the illusion of

being trapped in a morbid dream (similar to Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad),

whether alone in a graveyard or with a crowd of dancing people.

Second is the film's overall mood and pace - there is a sense of paranoia, of being

pursued or followed throughout the movie, a sense of impending doom unless the hero

solves the mystery in time. However, unlike American film noir, the hero here is not a

cynic (obviously, it is Manoj Kumar, after all) and he does not give out sarcastic remarks

now and then to balance the dreary mood. Instead, the hero is an honorable man, innocent

of any crime or affair, heir to a fortune, who suddenly becomes a victim. Though often

punctuated with obligatory musical highs, the film which starts off with a slow and

calculated set-up gradually develops into a fatalistic climax.

The third element, an element, very specific to American film noir movies is the flash-

back trope, which has been used interestingly by their Indian counterparts. Woh Kaun

Thi? revolves around a mysterious back story in the protagonist's earlier life (It is a

reincarnation story). Since the Hindi film audience, at least then, comprised mostly of

5
practicing Hindus, the reincarnation backdrop served as an acceptable premise to launch

the flash-back framework into the movie. The hero must revisit his past life, which is

connected to his present predicament, through songs, plot developments and secret clues.

Lastly, the film is centered around the presence and betrayal of the femme fatale, who is

busy most of the time, singing sad but seductive songs. The hero, through most of the

movie, is not able to correspond with her. However, her intentions are obviously marked

with a sinister undertone. The femme fatale remains an ambiguous character

sometimes she is chased by him, sometimes she pursues him the mystery is solved

only when her story arc is complete.

While Woh Kaun Thi? is quintessentially noir in its mood, texture, themes and treatment,

the first ever Hindi film that could be called film noir is Kamal Amrohis Mahal (1949), a

romantic noir similar to Otto Premingers Laura (1944). In many ways, Mahal was a

precursor to not just Woh Kaun Thi? but a host of other Indian noir films, as it was not

only India's first reincarnation thriller but also laid the first stone for Indian gothic fiction.

Mahal, which was Kamal Amrohi's directorial debut, was included as one of the 10 great

romantic horror films by the British Film Institute in 2015.2

Mahal was also the first Hindi film to exhibit opulence in its set construction, the kind

usually associated with historical movies. The sets were created by esteemed art director

B.N Tagore. In the movie, the lavish sets are used to an interesting effect: at one juncture,

the hero is seen walking endlessly through doorway after doorway, finally ending in a

grand corridor. Here, in this sequence, Amrohi brilliantly visualizes in physical space, the

entry into, and the entrapment of, the hero's psyche in a delusional world from where it is

6
impossible to escape. "Soon, Hari Shankar [the hero] will see things through a glass,

darkly, as his sense of reality becomes blurred."3

Nasreen Munni Kabir writes, "Its unknown whether Amrohi was familiar with

Hollywood supernatural thrillers of the 1940s, especially those of Jacques Tourneur, shot

in the film noir style, its roots in German Expressionism. These melodramas had gloomy,

flawed characters, inexorably drawn to their ruin. Mahal has a comparable mood; and its

no surprise it is rooted in film noir, for it was shot by the German cinematographer Josef

Wirsching, who used stunning close-ups and shadows to create dramatic tension and

infuse menace."3

With Mahal, the formula for suspense films was etched in stone by Amrohi. Soon, many

clones followed. Besides Woh Kaun Thi?, there was Bimal Roy's Madhumati (1958) and

Raj Khosla's Mera Saaya (1966). These films accustomed the audience to and created an

appetite in them for ghostly hawelis (mansions), murderous affairs, psychologically

unstable characters and a female figure strolling about as a haunting tune plays.

A very important figure in the growth and evolution of film noir in India is Guru Dutt and

his Man Friday, ace cinematographer V.K. Murthy. Dutt's flirtations with film noir began

with Baazi (1951). It was Baazi that created the archetype for Dev Anand's "ambiguous

but charming trickster hero". Bhaichand Patel writes, Dev Anand's screen persona in

Baazi of a likeable scoundrel, not to forget the cheekily placed beret on his head, went

down well with the audience. The Indian film noir had found its hero. Not as sexily

cynical as Robert Mitchum or souly charismatic as Humphrey Bogart, Dev Anand

managed to be 'dark enough' to make many of the desi noirs he acted in work. He acted in

7
a spate of film noirs like Jaal (1952), Pocket Maar (1956), C.I.D (1956), Nau Do Gyarah

(1957), Kala Bazar (1960) and Jaali Note (1960).4

Guru Dutt's affinity for film noir and the anti-hero, probably has its roots in his

collaborative work with his mentor, Gyan Mukherjee, who had directed Kismet (1943), a

blockbuster starring Ashok Kumar as "arguably Hindi cinema's first anti-hero." 4 In

Kismet, Mukherjee used standard film noir elements like chiaroscuro lighting and oblique

camera angles.

Dutt, impressed by V.K. Murthy who was an assistant to cinematographer V. Ratra on the

sets of Baazi, took him on as his cinematographer for his next, Jaal. Since then, Murthy

became an irreplaceable part of the Dutt team. Together, they created some of the most

luscious and rich images in black-and-white for Indian cinema. Andre Spicer and Helen

Hanson writes, The legendary cinematographer V.K. Murthy was responsible for the

house style of Guru Dutt productions, which, according to Creekmur, showed a deep

familiarity with American cinema and noir style.5

Film journalist Sidharth Bhatia writes in Livemint, In the last named one [C.I.D], the

entire sequence of Dev Anand hiding first from a crime boss and then the police is

reminiscent of early German expressionist and Hollywood crime films, which reflected

the characters feeling of being hunted.6

Their most fruitful collaboration, however, happened in Kaagaz Ke Phool (1966). It was

a labour of love for both Dutt and Murthy. Natural light was used in innovative ways in

the film; for example, in a scene where Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman meet in a empty

studio floor, the only light in the scene is a single shaft of sunlight, which was brought in

the room using special mirrors created for the scene. In a 1999 interview of V.K Murthy

8
by Raqs Media Collective and C.K Muralidharan, Murthy says, I got the carpentry

department to make two big mirrors, some four feet tall. I placed them outside the studio

and had sunlight strike on them at such an angle that it would hit the exhaust fan from the

outside, then another big mirror was placed on the catwalk inside the studio, and that

would direct the shaft of light in a diagonal pattern straight across the studio. So, we got

sunlight not on location, but inside the studio floor. It was quite something, na. Till then

nobody had used sunlight inside the studio not even in Hollywood films.7

Kaagaz Ke Phool was the last director-cinematographer collaboration between Dutt and

Murthy. The movie flopped around the time colour film was making inroads into Indian

cinema. Also, around this time, the studio system began collapsing and films became

vehicles for stars. Such artistic collaborations that took so much time, effort and patience

was possible where actors, directors, technicians and production stuff were part of an

integrated unit, who knew one another, had a modicum of respect for each others

professional skills and had the time to spend with each film on a regular basis. 7 With the

rise of superstars like Shammi Kapoor, Rajesh Khanna and Dharmendra, who were able

to manipulate contacts according to their will, the craft and expertise of film studios

began to be undermined. In the place of the studio system, a new nexus between

producer, distributor, financer and star emerged which dictated what kind of film would

be made. Now, a cinematographers innate skill and willingness to create a new kind of

image was not the priority, but his ability to enhance the slightly overweight heros

profile to make him look rough and tough was more important. Thus, production teams

like Dutt-Murthy, Bimal Roy-Dilip Gupta (who collaborated on Madhumati, famous for

9
its noir-ish, chiaroscuro cinematography) and Raj Kapoor and the Mistry brothers

collapsed. 7

Simultaneously, with the new phenomena of slow speed colour film, which, in the

beginning, had low exposure latitudes and dismal contrast ratios forced cinematographers

to regress to more conventional framing and lighting, thereby hindering them from

exploring the visual possibilities of cinema. Soon, the rigidly film noir movies of Guru

Dutt, Raj Khosla and Chetan Anand dried up as Bollywood did not have the time or

patience for the brooding and world-weariness so central to noir cinema. In came Rajesh

Khanna with his romances and social drama films and Amitabh Bachchans angrier,

action-oriented films that took a more proactive approach to lifes woes. 1 Even then,

as mainstream as Khanna and Bachchans films were, they often borrowed noir tropes,

more so in Bachchans case (Films like Red Rose starring Khanna as a psychopath and

Bachchans Zanjeer, Deewar and Andha Kanoon where the superstar played the vigilante

figure trying to fight and come to terms with the criminal society around him). In the next

chapter, well take a look into what happened to Hindi film noir in the late 60s and 70s, a

period in Indian cinema, not particularly known for its cinematic brilliance, if you, of

course, keep aside the National Film Development Corporation of India (hereafter,

NFDC)-funded Parallel Cinema.

10
Chapter 2: THE MIDDLE ERA (60s to 70s)

Corey Creekmur, in the book International Noir (2014) writes, A cycle of popular Hindi

films, almost all set in (then) contemporary Bombay, regularly featured many of the

characteristic elements of Hollywood film noir, including heroes (most consistently

embodied throughout the period by the suave star Dev Anand) who skirt the border of

legal and illegal activity; like their counterparts in American film noir, these are men who

are streetwise but can confidentially negotiate swanky nightclubs featuring alluring

femmes fatale (often explicitly Westernized through signifiers such as clothing, smoking,

and the use of English) as well as the semi-illicit temptations of alcohol and gambling.8

Dev Anand was perhaps the one and only consummate noir hero of Indian cinema.

Starting with Baazi in 1951, Dev, through his production company, Navketan Films,

produced a series of noir films through the 50s and 60s. Most of these were directed by

his brothers Chetan Anand and Vijay Anand. One of the first and most memorable of

these collaborations was 1954s Taxi Driver directed by Chetan Anand. The film was

Chetan Anand's first major commercial success. Although, considered as a crime thriller

today, the crime plot of Taxi Driver takes a back seat to the noir elements that form a vital

part of the hero's world for example, his hangout den with the dancer and small time

crooks. The film is enriched with V.Ratra's shadowy cinematography, which plays around

with light and shade, S.D Burman's evocative and the well-executed outdoor sequences,

11
which were filmed all throughout Mumbai. At such, the city is an important character,

and this fact is mentioned in the opening credits. One could argue that well before Satya

(1998), Taxi Driver was the first Bombay Noir movie (more about Bombay Noir later).9

With the introduction of colour film, the moody noir movies quickly disappeared from

Hindi Cinema. Yet, Navketan Films continued to produce films in a similar vein, the most

prominent of them being Vijay Anand's Jewel Thief (1967). Jewel Thief is one of the best

examples of Hindi noir films, around this time, when such films were not being made.

Suresh Kohli, writes in the book Housefull: The Golden Years of Indian Cinema, with

passion for not just the film, but also its maker: The father of Hindi thrillers, Vijay

Anand, seldom got his due. His technical prowess was second to none. Vijay had a fine

grip over camera dollys. Side tracking was another speciality that he put to great use in

Jewel Thief, a thriller peppered with some memorable songs. Not to forget the fast zoom

outs and interplay of montages that created slickness almost peerless for its age. One of

the most cinematically aware directors of his times, Vijay loved to create a spatial

relationship between his characters and surroundings. His blocking was unique. He

would surprise you with his sudden zooming out only to reveal a mysterious figure

lurking in the foreground.10

Mr. Kohli also goes on to describe Vijay Anand as "a rare director who scripted and

edited his narrative" who was "at his best in Jewel Thief." He writes, "For him, cinema

was not as much about the arrangement of the words in a sentence, but the passage within

which the sentence was contained. He brought out the philosophical depth of RK

Narayan's Guide and then settled to deliver this Hitchcockian tale too." 10

12
However, Jewel Thief was one of the rare film noir movies to have come from this

period. Dev Anands films had taken on a glitzy, glamorous quality even though they

dealt with crime elements but crime alone doesnt make noir. Nevertheless, one such Dev

Anand film from this time, Johny Mera Naam (1970), did serve as an inspiration of sorts

to Sriram Raghavans Johnny Gaddaar (2007), a fantastic neo-noir cat-and-mouse thriller

centered around an amoral protagonist one of the best Indian thriller films ever made.

While the classical visual aesthetics of film noir might have gone for a toss in the age of

color film and Manmohan Desais masala entertainers, film noir elements (thematic

elements to be precise) did creep into some of the major films of this era, particularly

Amitabh Bachcchans angst-driven action dramas like Zanjeer (1973), Deewaar (1975)

and Andha Kanoon (1983).

However, it is a much lesser-known Bachchan film, Parwana (1971), directed by Jyoti

Swaroop that can go down in the annals of Indian film history as a prime example of desi

noir from the 70s. The film is explicitly referenced in Johnny Gaddaar. In fact, the plot

of Johnny Gaddaar is somewhat distilled from that of both Parwana and Johny Mera

Naam. The protagonist of Johny Gaddaar, Vikram, is a young, ambitious conman who

suddenly gets greedy and steals a bag full of money from his partner, thereby

jeopardizing a business plan for his gang. The rest of the film is about how Vikram will

go to prevent his gang, or anyone else for that matter, to know about his secret crime.5

The movie plays on a television at a motel desk (a throwback to all the films beholden to

the psychotic desires of such gatekeepers after Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)) and

supplies Vikram with his secret identity, 'Johnny', which he'll use to commit the crime.

The movie is filled with other characters using pseudonyms at various points, mimicking

13
Johnny Mera Naam, where the hero plays a spy who dons multiple identites to infiltrate a

crime gang. To decode Raghavan's Johnny Gaddaar, one has to enter the logic of

Anand's film, which is equally besieged with a different kind of counterfeiting, a shadow

play of in cognito. 5

At the same time, Parwana which also plays on television gives Vikram the idea for his

crime. He follows the footsteps of the Bachchan character who is a conniving criminal

who covers his tracks by flying secretly from Bombay to Nagpur to get on the Kolkata-

bound train that took off from Dadar. Later, in Johnny Gaddaar, the police inspector in

charge of solving the crime cracks the case by recalling Parwana. 5

The spirit of film noir comes from the streets, from the smoke that rises off manholes,

from the guttural grunts of rough men fighting it out in street corners for a living.

Superstar Amitabh Bachchan made a career out of playing the 'angry young man' in the

70s and 80s. His vengeful forays in some of the top commercial blockbusters of his time

were justified by the reality that society had become rife with corruption, which, in turn,

had corroded law enforcement and thus, it was hard for the common man to have access

to justice. In such circumstances, the only way to cleanse the city, in Bollywood cinema,

that is, would be to go the vigilante way.

Bachchan films during this period were very much a product of its time. Severe socio-

political problems emerged in the 70s in India. Ethnic violence, droughts leading to food

shortages in addition to demands for better health care and education was driving the

country to the edge. On top of that, the war with Pakistan, economic difficulties

throughout the country and frequent clashes between the establishment and left-wing

students and union members had turned India to a boiling cauldron. In 1975, when Indira

14
Gandhi was being asked in various quarters to step down as Prime Minister after she was

found of breaching election rules, she responded with declaring a State of Emergency,

under which 10,000 politicians, students, journalists and activists were arrested without

trial.

It was around this time, a new kind of film emerged were the hero would provide

vigilante justice to a corrupt city. The romantic hero of social dramas was long gone and

the hero of the 70s was a cynical, brooding man who was either fighting organized crime

from the side of the law (Zanjeer) or fighting social injustice by being a criminal himself

(Deewaar). Jayson Beaster-Jones writes, Not surprisingly, the political turmoil of the

1970s was very much a presence in the music and films of this era. Tejaswini Ganti

(2013), Rachel Dywer (2000), and other film scholars have noted that this period saw

new kinds of representations in Indian films. Rather than being a force of development

through socialism, for example, the films of the 1970s and beyond introduced negative

depictions of the Indian state, particularly conflating politicians with social and economic

corruption writ large.11

The production of Bachchan starrer-action dramas of this era, with an arguably socialist

bent, continued well into the 80s. After the Technicolor extravaganza of Shammi Kapoor

and Rajesh Khanna in the 60s, the cinematic language of the 70s films were beginning to

take new shapes, in light of not just the political cinema but also the parallel cinema

movement that was blooming around this time (More on parallel cinema in the next

chapter). Jayson Beaster-Jones writes, This kind of film required a new kind of

background music and a new kind of film song. Music was significantly less important to

the narrative in this era than in previous era. In particular, the angry young man films of

15
the screenwriter duo Salim-Javed (Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar) focused much more

attention on dialogue than on music. 11

One of the last film noir movies, albeit a shoddily scripted one, of this period is the

Rajesh Khanna-starrer Red Rose (1980) directed by P.Bharathiraja. For once in his career,

Khanna steers away from his romantic and melodramatic image and plays a misogynist,

who, after sharing his bed with young ladies, kills them. The film, a remake of the same

directors Tamil movie, Sigappu Rojakkal (1978), is a pure B-movie, with its use of

garish fluorescent colours, Hitchcock-ian camera angles and montages and fast cuts.

Looking back at the movie in 2016, Red Rose might appear as an inconsequential movie

in the scheme of things, but in addition to its film noir sensibilities, its campy essence

makes it an all-time favorite for film buffs and critics. Journalist Jai Arjun Singh, author

of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro: Seriously Funny Since 1983 writes, What makes Red Rose

terrible and sort-of-excellent at the same time is the way it combines disparate elements:

on one hand, its a cheap rip-off of psychological-horror classics like Peeping Tom and

Psycho, presented in the B-movie style of the Ramsay Brothers; on the other hand, you

can't fully appreciate this movie without reference to the long-defunct superstar persona

of Rajesh Khanna.12

In the 80s and in the early 90s, till the release of the seminal Indian gangster noir film,

Satya, directors associated with Parallel Cinema movement like Govind Nihalani and

then-young filmmakers like Sudhir Mishra and Vidhu Vinod Chopra made comparatively

(in relation to the 70s) grittier, darker and more realistic noir films. These paved the way

for the film noir boom in the late 90s that began with Satya. In the next chapter, Ill delve

16
into the film noir movies of the 80s that were a crucial influence to contemporary Indian

neo-noir cinema.

Chapter 3: PARALLEL CINEMA ERA AND PRECURSORS TO

CONTEMPORARY BOMBAY NOIR (Parinda and Iss Raat Ki Subah
Nahin)

It all started with Govind Nihalanis cop drama Ardh Satya (1983). Never before was

urban grime and male angst treated with such understanding and sensitivity. Govind

Nihalani changed the direction of gangster films with Ardh Satya, a film that can be seen

as a forerunner of Mumbai Noir.13 Nihalani, through Ardh Satya (English translation:

Half-Truth), painted Bombay in an entirely new light. While this film did not have the

private eye, the femme fatale or other standard film noir tropes, the darkness of noir

pervaded every reel of the film. The movie, which derives its name from a poem of the

same name, is deeply existentialist in nature. The protagonist Anant Velankar (Om Puri)

wanted to study literature. But his father (Amrish Puri), a constable, forced him, through

his fierce and overpowering personality, to become a cop. Being a no-nonsense person

who refuses to be undermined by anyone, it isn't long before Anand butts heads with

local mafia and its leader (excellently played by debutante Sadashiv Amrapurkar). The

17
film, though not flawless, has a wild energy and vitality, suppressed under the calm

exterior of the scenes, something that was never before seen, till then, in Hindi Cinema.

While Govind Nihalani was being championed as one of the best filmmakers in India, in

the 80s, to have come out of the Parallel Cinema movement, a new director, by the name

of Vidhu Vinod Chopra, was quietly making small, independent neo-noir films, that were

quite ahead of its time, and even, today, hold up well to contemporary standards, given

that the cinematic language of crime and thriller films have become more advanced since

then. Chopras self-financed, feature film debut Sazaye Maut (1981) is a psychological

thriller in the vein of Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo, based on his own FTII diploma film,

Murder on Monkey Hill.

In the film, the protagonist, Mallika, heiress to a large forture, is running for her life from

a hired gun and a morally ambiguous man, Uday (Naseeruddin Shah) who is later

revealed to be a deranged mental patient. Similar to noir films with supernatural elements

like Laura, Madhumati, Angel Heart and Night of the Demon, the eerie, haunting score

coupled with the rich, shadowy cinematography is evocative of Michael Mann's films of

the 80s such as Manhunter. Also, after a long time, in a Hindi thriller film, we have a

female hero who is proactive and calculative. It is a man who takes on the role of the

amoral seducer (Uday), whose intentions are difficult to figure out till the end of the

movie.

Chopras next, Khamosh (1985), a whodunit, similar to Agatha Christies And Then There

Were None, is a film-within-a-film, where actors and actresses play themselves and the

movies meta, self-referential tone makes it way ahead of its time. There are terrific

18
visual moments in the film, for instance, Shabana Azmis sleepwalking scene and the

climactic revelation where the murderers face is seen through a dimly-lit window.

The film is set in the picturesque town of Pehelgaum (in Kashmir) where a film crew has

gathered to shoot a movie. Things go awry when an actress (and a wannabe heroine)

commits suicide for no apparent reason. At this point, a military man who is sure that the

lady had been murdered enters the plot, kick-starting a series of events that result in a few

more killings, with the blame shifting from one person to another. As the story

progresses, we realize that almost all the characters are morally ambiguous and have an

hidden agenda. "Ugliness and deceit define most of them, irrespective of what their

public veneers suggest."14

Khamosh does with the film industry, what classical film noir does with urban society i.e

hold a mirror to the dark side. The film is a caustic commentary on on how the film

industry operates -- the darkness behind its dazzle, its deep-rooted chauvinism and its

sleazy, exploitative mentality. Calling the songless Khamosh, a piece of exemplary

filmmaking", film journalist, Sukanya Verma writes, "There's no place for romantic

angles, poetic flirtations, lilting music, Kashmir darshan, no pleasantry whatsoever in his

crisply-edited (by then wife Renu Saluja to whom he dedicates the film along with

Mangesh Desai) vision of a stark script. Instead Vanraj Bhatia's ominous background

score, assisted by Dadasaheb Phalke recipient Kersi Lord and composer Uttam Singh

(Dil To Pagal Hai, Dushman), is designed to suit the temperament of dread and

anticipation.15

While these small gems stand out in the discourse of Indian Cinema as notable

experiments, two game changing noir films from this time are Vidhu Vinod Chopras

19
Bombay crime epic Parinda and Sudhir Mishras Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin (1996), two of

the first films that later gave rise to the category Bombay Noir a series of gritty

crime films centered in the city of Bombay, that, while going the typical cops-pimps-

lowlifes-gangsters route, are deeply rooted in the citys history and geography, and over

the years, so many such films have been made, that an entire sub-genre has developed,

similar to Scandinavian Noir.

Lalitha Gopalan writes in A Companion to Film Noir, It is the city itself, Bombay, that

has received considerable attention in recent scholarship in Indian cinema studies. As the

central production site for popular cinema, Bombay cinema is used by Mazumdar

[Ranjani Mazumdar] to describe a range of films that deploy the space of the city in

various genres. Mazumdar claims that utopian ideals of urban space evoked by theorists

with the modern city in Europe as the model Paris, Berlin, London emerge in the

city films; monumental skylines in panoramic shots, speed of daily routine, pleasures of

anonymity, and so on emerge as the thematic preoccupations in films since Bombay

cinema came into being. As is the case with the theorists of modernity whose paeans to

the utopian longings of the city were always accompanied with disenchantment, this

disenchantment was recast in the 1970s onwards as crime and gangster films, as in J.P

Dutta's Hathyar (1989), Chopra's Parinda, N.Chandra's celebration of the lumpen

proletariat, and Manmohan Desai's star-focused cycle of urban crime.5

Shooting, in gangster films, is more often than not, done in real locations alleys,

claustrophobic construction sites or city docks. The gang's meeting spots for operation

look like abandoned factory sites, sometimes like half-constructed buildings. Chase

sequences are designed to traverse through the density of the city's public spaces.

20
Instead of sanitized aesthetics and bright lighting that saturates the mise-en-scne of the

homely interiors in family films, in film noir, we find the urban spectacle completely

destroyed with elements like low-key photography and use of shadows.5

Ranjani Mazumdar writes in Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City, Parinda's alleys,

closed spaces, ordinary sites, elevators, dark staircases, peeling walls, and streets are

ubiquitous. The city is dark, crowded, and ruthless; its human form is Anna [played by

Nana Patekar, Anna is a Godfather-like criminal don]. Anna is the center of the city and

his social net connects him to the police, other underworld rivals, factories, politicians,

and more. Anna's eccentricty or "madness" is central to the way the city's lawlessness and

decay are portrayed. Like other noir films, Parinda offers a combination of the themes of

excess, the bizarre, cruelty, madness, innocence and a fascination with death. Central to

the narrative of death is the noir-like darkness of the city.16

Seven years after the release of Parinda, Sudhir Mishra's highly underrated Iss Raat Ki

Subah Nahin (1996) released. It is a strange, almost surreal, existential film about a

chance meeting between an advertising professional Aditya (Nirmal Pandey) and Raman

bhai (Ashish Vidyarthi), a gangster. The film is centered around one long night in the city,

where a series of violent, emotional and intense events happen. Aditya who is married to

Pooja (Tara Deshpande) also has a mistress, Malvika (Smriti Mishra). Consequently, their

marriage is on troubled waters. The emotional chaos gets out of control when the three

end up in a chance encounter with Raman bhai in a bar, where Aditya ends up slapping

him accidentally. Mayhem unfolds in the city as all the characters get involved in a cat-

and-mouse chase. Mumbai comes alive in that one night through its streets, dockyards,

alleyways, railway tracks, dirty bathrooms, run down hospitals, neon lights and swanky

21
buildings by the sea side. Ranjani Mazumdar writes in World Film Locations: Mumbai,

Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin combined the world of restless and lost souls with a nocturnal

cartography of the city, imbuing the narrative with a sense of thrill and adventure.13

While these two films laid the groundwork for Bombay Noir/Mumbai Noir, Ram Gopal

Varmas Satya (1998) was the ultimate culmination of Bombay crime cinema and the

anti-establishment, anti-big studio, experimental filmmaking (exemplified by the works

of Chopra, Nihalani and Mishra) that had been going on for so long. Many people

associated with the movie like Anurag Kashyap, Saurabh Shukla, Vishal Bhardwaj,

Makrand Deshpande and Manoj Bajpai later went on to become some of the best writers,

directors and actors associated with Bombay Noir/contemporary Hindi neo-noir. Omar

Ahmed writes in Studying Indian Cinema, An unexpected commercial success, Satya

confirmed Ram Gopal Varma as a major film-maker and led critics to coin the term

'Mumbai Noir' in relation to a cycle of films which appeared as a result of the film's

unglamorous representation of the underworld.17

Satya, which was shot on a low budget with new faces and theatre actors, in real

locations, almost in a docu-drama style, along with Hyderabad Blues (dir. Nagesh

Kukunoor) and Bombay Boys (dir. Kaizad Gustad), released in the same year, inspired a

lot of filmmakers to eschew big studio funding and make independent films. Some film

theorists hail this period, extending into the 2000s, for the resurgence of parallel cinema.

Satya changed the thinking of the industry as Bollywood suddenly became open to the

idea of small-budget independent films, especially because Satya made a lot of money.

Following Satya, Varma graced us with a number of quality neo-noirs like Kaun? (1999)

and Company (2002), and together with Anurag Kashyap and Sriram Raghavan, carried

22
on the noir legacy into the next decade. The 2000s can be rightfully called the time when

Indian Noir came of age. In the next chapter, I shall delve into contemporary Indian neo-

noir cinema i.e the period from Satya to the present day.

Chapter 4: BOMBAY NOIR AND CONTEMPORARY INDIAN NEO-

NOIR

It ... struck me that you always hear about these gangsters only when they either kill or

when they die. But what do they do in between? That was the first thought which

eventually resulted in Satya.18 wrote Ram Gopal Varma in 2008. For the first time in the

history of Hindi cinema, gangsters were not made to appear larger than life through use

of any extraneous cinematic device like three-point lighting to enhance the actor's profile,

low angle shot to make him look magnanimous or an over-the-top background score as a

cue to tell the audience 'Look, this is the bad guy'. Gangsters were treated like any other

person with a nine-to-five job in Satya.

23
In the centre of Satya, lies the age old noir trope of an outsider simpleton entering the big,

bad city to make a living only to fall into the depths of the criminal underworld, where he

tries to make a name for himself, till he finally falls from grace. Satya, owing to its low

budget, was shot in real locations in Bombay some of the dirtiest, grimiest spots to

have ever graced the screens of Bollywood with small-time but talented actors, and its

cinematic language was new, bubbling with energy, something midway between art-

house cinema and commercial cinema. Since then, Satya has inspired countless

filmmakers, not just those making crime movies in Bombay, but it also instilled a new

script-driven, toned-down approach to Bollywood filmmaking in general, which after the

release of Dil Chahta Hai and Lagaan in 2001, began to produce, what we know today as

multiplex films.

Ranjani Mazumdar writes in World Film Locations: Mumbai, It was however, the gritty

and edgy world of Ram Gopal Varma's Satya (Truth, 1998) that really brought the term

Mumbai Noir into much wider circulation. Satya staged noir's typical sense of 'moral

ambiguity' while also drawing much more explicity on the visual codes of the gangster

genre.13

Following Satya, Ram Gopal Varma established himself as the master of Indian neo-noir

with the release of Kaun? (1999) and Company (2002). While Kaun? was a chamber

film, involving just three characters in a cat-and-mouse game, Company was a spiritual

sequel to Satya based on the dreaded terrorist Dawood Ibrahim's 'D' Company. In

between Satya and Company, another important noir film was released Mahesh

Manjarekars Vaastav: The Reality (1999), believed to be loosely based on the life of

underworld gangster Chota Rajan.19 (TOI) Known for one of the finest 'bad boy'

24
performances delivered by Sanjay Dutt, Vaastav, like Satya, portrayed gangsters as

everyday human beings, and on the lines of classic film noir, showed the rise and fall of a

gangster who is too wild for the city to handle.

Various individuals associated the Ram Gopal Varma around this point of his career went

on to make a name for themselves in the movie business and being mentored by Varma,

they made films similar to his style. Two of the best directors to have come out of the

Varma stable are Anurag Kashyap and Sriram Raghavan together, they have made

some of the best, most innovative neo-noir films in recent memory.

The then-26-year-old Anurag Kashyap, who co-wrote Satya with Saurabh Shukla,

became a highly sought-after writer in Bollywood after the success of the film. He then

went on to write some of the best cop dramas and thrillers in Bollywood before making

his directorial debut with Paanch, which due to censor board problems, has gone

unreleased. Paanch, based on the 1976-77 Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders in Pune had

some of the best noir imagery at that point in Bollywood. The story was set around a

bunch of angst-ridden youngsters, who have a small-time band of their own and are eager

to make it big in the cutthroat media industry of Bombay and in a bid to do so, end up

kidnapping a friend and killing him, resulting in a series of gruesome murders one after

the other. Paanch broke away from the series of gangster noir films, triggering a series

of psychological thrillers. Unlike gangster films, which often offer a street-side view of

violence, Paanch shows the slow, inevitable, inner destruction of the dreams of post-

global success. The flashy, glamorous world of music production that boomed via

television after globalization has little place in Paanch. Instead we see greed, petty

dreams and uninhibited ambition that seems to have no limits.16

25
Petty greed and uninhibited ambition also forms the central crux of Sriram Raghavans

Johnny Gaddaar (2007). Raghavan, who had cut his teeth early in neo-noir with the

docudrama Raman Raghav (1992) based on the real life serial killer of the same who

operated in Mumbai in the 60s, made his feature film directorial debut with Ek Hasina

Thi (2004), a psychological thriller produced by Ram Gopal Varma. Ek Hasina Thi was a

pulpy revenge drama that was dark and bloody and starred Saif Ali Khan in a complete

image makeover as a suave, smart and ruthless conman. He followed it up with Johnny

Gaddaar a B movie by his own admission a dark but enjoyable thriller peppered

with references to hardboiled crime fiction and Indian noir films of the 60s and 70s.

Raghavans final feature film, Badlapur (2015), was, however, his darkest. Abandoning

the meta-kitschy treatment of Johnny Gaddaar, Raghavan treated the story of a man

avenging the murder of his wife and son over the course of fifteen years as a blood-

soaked, raging fireball of mayhem and violence. The wife and the sons murder in the

film is purely accidental and at such, the director seems to ask us, Does the lack of

personal motive for their death make the loss more acceptable, if inexplicable? 20

Badlapur doesn't ask the question directly, in a heavy-handed, message-movie way, but

allows it to simmer deep down in the subconscious. This make the film ambiguous, with

lines between the hero and the villain blurring (at points, the roles seem to be reversed,

with the killer coming off as a sympathetic man with emotions and the avenging hero

turning out to be a merciless force from hell) time and again, and even with the near-120-

minutes run-time, what should have been a brisk film, is heavy on the senses. Noir, by

definition, raises existential questions and Badlapur poses quite a few of them. In that

regard, Badlapur may not have the thrill-a-minute tautness of Johnny Gaddaar, but its

26
suspense is more subtly built to hint at the elusiveness of what makes a person become a

killer, beyond penitence and forgiveness coda.

Unlike Raghavans films that are either textbook noir, either sincerely (like Badlapur or

Ek Hasina Thi) or in a meta-way (Johnny Gaddar), Kashyaps films imbibe noirs

thematic and visual influences to tell stories that are not necessarily about murder,

revenge or organized crime for instance, with the exception of Paanch and Ugly

(2014), his films like Black Friday (2007) is a film on terrorism, No Smoking (2007) is a

surreal, Lynchian psychological thriller, Gulaal (2009) is a political drama, Dev.D (2009)

is a drugged-up romantic tragedy and That Girl in the Yellow Boots (2011) is a feminist

look at the maximum city through the eyes of a British woman who has come to Mumbai

to search for her missing father. Kashyaps Ugly and Bombay Velvet (2015) are more

straight-forward noir. While Ugly, in many ways like Badlapur, is a dark, unflinching

look at what would drive individuals to go corrupt and inhumane in the face of trying

moments, Bombay Velvet is a big-budget ode to the noir films of Humphrey Bogart, Dev

Anand, Raj Khosla, the Jazz age and hardboiled pulp fiction. However, unlike Johnny

Gaddaars tongue-in-cheek tone, Bombay Velvet is a very sincere, perhaps a bit too

sincere in 2015, with its noir influences perhaps, that is why, the film didnt work with

neither the audiences nor the critics. The Indian audience couldnt relate to the jazzing up

of Bombay into what looked and felt like prohibition-era America.

An interesting thing to note in the neo-noir films of this period is that noir imagery,

aesthetics and themes are utilized by filmmakers to tell various kinds of stories that are

far removed from the usual cops-and-gangsters template. Just like Kashyap, Dibakar

Banerjee imbibes noir influences into his dark comedies like Oye Lucky Lucky Oye!

27
(2008, hereafter, OLLO!), Love, Sex Aur Dhokha (2010, hereafter, LSD) and the political

thriller Shanghai. OLLO and LSD concern themselves about the corruption of

contemporary urban middle-class society in Delhi and deals with themes of greed, petty

crime, voyeurism, class mobility, class consciousness, sensationalism in media and the

spiritual bankruptcy of the nouveau riche and those who want to become so. Dibakar

Banerjee deals more directly with film noir in Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! (2015), a

hyper-stylized take on what could be called a period film a detective film set in 40s

Kolkata shot in the alleys and streets of North Kolkata which still looks like how they

did before independence.

A lot of factors have contributed to the boom of neo-noir films post 2000s. Besides the

success of Satya and the influence of filmmakers like Varma and Kashyap, a large

number of international films today are available to India thanks to DVDs and well,

internet piracy. With a strong independent film culture emerging, thanks to digital

filmmaking, new and young people are making low-budget films. Most of these young

filmmakers are from the metros, shoot on real locations and are somewhat inspired by the

Kashyap-brand of filmmaking, for, rightfully or not, he has become the contemporary

poster-child of Indian indie-filmmaking; at such, neo-noir films are being made by the

dozen. Films like Vasan Balas Peddlers (2012), Amit Kumars Monsoon Shootout (2013)

and Kanu Behls Titli (2015) are all products of this trend (it would be silly to call it a

movement) and by the looks of it, the trend is not stopping any time soon.

CONCLUSION

28
As a post-liberalization and post-globalization India opened up to new possibilities and

consequently, a sea change in lifestyle, sensibilities and ethos, so did the countrys films

change. Where once filmmakers played around with noir aesthetics to make films that

were still rooted in classical Indian cinematic language, over time, this language has

evolved to take a grittier, more un-dramatic form. As India becomes more cynical and far-

removed from the halcyon days of innocence that characterized the films of yesteryears,

Indian films, today, over various genres and not just thrillers have become noir.

Film Noir is a film about the consummate outsider in the city, trying to make it big, trying

to navigate through the various social mechanisms of the city, in a bid to find the truth.

Its no wonder that the genre today is being spearheaded by those who are outsiders in the

cinema industry i.e unaffiliated with the big studios and big bucks. Sure, they dont gross

hundred crores, but as long as the rebel exists, as long as the spirit of Guru Dutt, Chetan

Anand, Vidhu Vinod Chopra (before he became a fat cat and began producing family-

friendly tearjerkers), Ram Gopal Varma (before his success went to his head) and Anurag

Kashyap exists, so will Indian film noir.

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