Synopsis
A
naive villager (Raj Kapoor) who has come
to Calcutta is looking for water to drink.
Unknowingly, he enters an apartment block
where he is mistaken for a thief and finds
himself drawn into a vortex of corruption
and mass hysteria. As he goes from flat
to flat hiding and trying to evade arrest,
he discovers that these so called middle-class
and respectable city people are the actual
thieves and commit far bigger crimes - moral,
hypocritical and physical behind the four
walls of their homes....
The film
Jagte
Raho, set over a single night's events
is a brilliant comic yet critical survey
of Bengali middle class life. The film is
written and directed by legendary Bengali
actor-director Sombhu Mitra (specially invited
by Raj
Kapoor) to direct the film and Amit
Moitra. Jagte Raho is one of two
films directed by Mitra, the other being
Subha Bibaha (1959). He is regarded
one of most significant figures of 20th
century Indian Theatre and is considered
the greatest Bengali actor after Sisir Bhaduri,
along with Ajitesh Bandhopadhyay and Utpal
Dutt.
The
film shows Mitra's pre-occupation with social
justice and is a Chaplinesque denunciation
of the petit-bourgeois who will not even
offer a glass of water to a poor peasant
lost by night in Calcutta. Like other films
of the period - Do
Bhiga Zameen (1953), Naukri
(1954) and Shree
420 (1955) the film looks at the city
as a nightmare. In fact the opening images
are similar to those of first impresssions
of Bombay in Shree 420 - the 'closed'
nature of city life is placed in opposition
to the 'openness' and simplicity of village
life where everyone knows everyone else:
an allegory to the inhuman nature of the
city where undesirable villagers are hunted
down mercilessly.
 Jagte
Raho is
an allegoric film about darkness and light,
where darkness is the cloak of respectability
under which a city supposedly sleeps but
in effect thrashes around in the throes
of crime and evil - a civilization gone
to seed. It seems a night without end, but
there is an end, the coming of a dawn at
which the peasant discovers that the terrible
darkness of the night is only half the truth
but out of the suffocating darkness itself
shall be born the dawn of a new day of truth
and justice.
The
device of having the peasant run into an
apartment block and then having to move
from flat to flat to avoid being discovered
is an ingenious device as we move from one
milieu to another while giving the film
a sense of movement. The irony of the film
is that while he is thought to be a thief
and is chased by the so called righteous
petit-bourgeois, what he sees in the flats
are far bigger crimes - moral, hypocritical
and physical, committed by these 'repectable'
people behind the four walls of their homes.
The
film sees one of Raj Kapoor's most remembered
performances as perhaps the best of his
Chaplin inspired roles. Quoting British
critic Geoff Brown:
"Kapoor's
character is cut from Chaplin's cloth. He
starts out sharing food with a dog, squatting
on the pavement, and spends most of the
filma cting in pantomime, darting in and
out of rooms, hiding in a drum, shinnying
down a drainpipe, periodically pursued by
a lively crowd of residents wielding anything
from sticks to stringless tennis rackets.
The result is one of Kapoor's most diverting
films."
However
the scene stealer has to be Motilal playing
the role of a drunk debauch with relish.
Fine support comes from the rest of the
ensemble cast.
The
other highlight of the film is undoubtedly
Salil Choudhury's musical score. Zindagi
Khwaab Hai, the haunting Jaago Mohan
Pyaare and the robust Punjabi Bhangra
song Main Koi Jhoot Bholeya are the
standout numbers of the film. An interesting
aside: Shailendra convinced Salil Choudhury
to compose Aaja re Pardesi from Madhumati
(1958) from a piece of music used at
the climax of Jagte Raho even though
iniitially Bimal
Roy opposed the move.
Jagte Raho also sees the last appearance
of Raj Kapoor and Nargis together on screen.
Though Chori Chori
(1955) was their last film as a hero-heroine,
she makes a cameo at the end of Jagte
Raho and it is fitting that she is finally
the woman who quenches Raj Kapoor's thirst
and ending the film with an element of romantic
humanism.
A
shortened version for the International
market of Jagte Raho (115 minutes
instead of 149)went
on to win the Grand Prix at the prestigious
Karlovy Vary Film Festival in 1957.
Jagte Raho is one of those
rare films which have stood the test of
time and is in fact even more relevant in
today's times.
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