Anari-1959 moviebox DVD

(“the simpleton”)
1959, Hindi, approx. 157 minutes

Directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee
Produced by L. B. Lachman
Story, Screenplay, and Dialogues: Inder Raj Anand; Lyrics: Hasrat, Shailendra; Music: Shankar-Jaikishan; Cinematography: Jaywant R. Pathare; Art Direction: M. R. Achrekar; Settings: K. Damodar

In a directorial career spanning some forty years, Hrishikesh Mukherjee made an equal number of what are often called “middle class” films. The label refers to their assumed target viewers who, like most of the principal characters in their narratives, were urban, educated people of secure but not lavish means, employed in white collar or professional jobs. But the designation might equally refer to their stylistic location somewhere between big budget, operatic masala melodramas, and the more austere and personal (and usually commercially unviable) visions of so-called “artfilm” or “alternative cinema” directors. Though usually made on modest budgets, Mukherjee’s films adhere to many of the conventions of the mainstream commercial cinema—storylines that rely heavily on both comedy and pathos, music and dance scored by eminent Bombay composers, and big name (or “A-list”) stars—who regularly chose to work for Mukherjee both because of his benign personality and reputation for integrity, and because his scripts gave them the opportunity to appear in more challenging or non-standard roles (e.g., Amitabh Bachchan as a struggling musician in ALAAP, Rajesh Khanna as a dying cancer patient in ANAND, Dharmendra as himself in GUDDI). In contrast to the wide-canvas, “epic” look of more lavishly-budgeted films, Mukherjee’s have a characteristically closer-focus and unpretentious style that often displays crisp and inventive camerawork, as well as a resourceful use of modest sets and locations. Many of these films enjoyed appropriately modest commercial success when they were released, and they have held their own over the years and indeed, have grown more beloved to viewers with the passage of time. Today, Mukherjee (a Bengali who trained under the famed Bimal Roy, and who turned eighty in 2002) is regarded as one of the grand old men of the Hindi film industry.