In the early 1970s, Pakistan was the fourth largest producer of feature films in the world. Yet because of war, politics and tit-for-tat embargoes by Pakistan and India, Pakistani cinema and its stars, music directors and singers remain a mystery to most movie lovers beyond the borders of the Land of the Pure. Our new weekly series is your opportunity to get a glimpse behind the cultural purdah. Each week we look at one film through a song from its soundtrack and share with you the glorious voices and melodies, the personalities and scandals that delighted millions of movie fans just across the border.
As a commercial venture, Chingari (1964), whose star-studded cast included Shamim Ara, Ejaz, Santosh Kumar, Deeba and Talish, was an average picture. It didn’t sink like a stone to the bottom of the Ravi river but it didn’t exactly soar over the glimmering domes of Lahore Fort either.
But as is frequently the case, many box office failures contain lots to be admired and treasured, as is the case with Chingari.
Khwaja Khurshid Anwar was the one-man force behind this film. In addition to producing and directing the feature, he wrote the screenplay and composed the wonderful music.
Born into an educated, upper-class Punjabi family from Mianwali in western Punjab, Anwar followed in his father’s footsteps by studying law. At Punjab University, he was friends with the great Urdu poet and writer Faiz Ahmed Faiz, with whom he shared a passion for literature and music.
By the late 1930s, Anwar was employed as a programme producer by All India Radio in both the Lahore and Delhi stations. AR Kardar, one of the pioneering figures in Lahore’s early movie industry, approached Anwar for the music for Kudmai (1940), which he was producing in Bombay. Several songs immediately caught on and further work and success followed in such films as Parakh (1944) and Parwana (1947).
After the Partition, Anwar opted to return home to Lahore. The late ’40s were hard years for cinema in Lahore, but by 1949, Anwar was getting work and contributed music to Singhar. From that point on, he remained active in the film and music industries, producing or composing music for such memorable films as Heer Ranjha (1970), Intezar (1959) and Ghoonghat (1962).
Chingari is not your run-of-the-mill romantic or family drama, but a dark study of Pakistani society in transition.
The hero is a do-good, nosey, unctuous novelist named Nadeem (Ejaz), who is obsessed with the degradation of society. In order to get close up, all the better to dissect the filth and moral corruption, he masquerades as a taxi driver. He uses this position to rescue fallen women (those who love dancing the twist and drinking alcohol) and return them to their mothers and the safety of an honourable home.
The film’s message is that Pakistani society is being overrun by puppets of the devil in the form of lustful women obsessed with dancing, drinking and fornicating. The opening credits sequence sets the tone as the camera pans across movie posters, soft porn magazines and novels with titles such as Seductress and Lust.
The men are amazingly weak specimens, either disabled or willing dupes of conniving women (with the exception of Nadeem). The women are intent on infecting society with their bad behaviour and even willing to murder in order to get their way.
I’ve not seen enough Anwar’s films to know whether this ultra-conservative take is genuinely held or simply the telling of a bleak tale, but on face value, this is a very reactionary, fear-based work of art.
And yet, it is art. The acting is of a high standard, with Santosh Kumar as the blind musician Sajjad particularly well played. But of course, it is the music score that is most masterful. Every song is appropriate to the story line, with sophisticated melodies and excellent deliveries by Salim Raza and Noor Jehan. Anwar switches between western jazz/surf music with repeated motifs whenever there is a scene or discussion of modern culture or malevolent intent. The music is never overpowering or jarring, but always adds an appropriate level of energy or tension.
The song Ae Roshiniyon Ke Shahar Bata is a masterpiece.
It opens with what must be some of the earliest rock music shot in South Asian cinema – a twist party in full swing at a dance school. A male voice commands the crowd of party goers to push back so as to make space for dancing. Then an acoustic guitar plucks out the melody line while handclaps keep time. Strings swell up and give way to a lonely sax solo that creates an edgy, slightly tense atmosphere.
Mehdi Hassan, whose reserved style of singing is perfect for this scene, gives voice to Ejaz’s anxiety. “Oh, tell me city of lights/why is this gathering of friends so filled with poison?” The hero stands in a torpor outside the nightclub where gyrating women are seen in silhouette.
The song, sung in a jazzy minor key, creates a waking dream in which the wild sounds of the nightclub breakthrough regularly to heighten the effect of the hero’s uncomfortable alienated vision. Wherever he looks, he sees nothing but drunkenness, promiscuity, poverty and pornography.
Musically, Anwar conjures a soundscape that intimately mirrors the noir night scenes. He uses the guitar and sax to dramatic effect. The guitar is plucked in a rhythm that hammers the brain and the sax seems to moans like a ghoul whenever it pushes its way in from the background. In between, bells and vibes keep everything bubbling and unstable.
South Asian film songs are often dismissed as a thousand ways to say I love you. This song is strong evidence of the genre’s ability to express feelings far deeper and darker than mere romantic love. What Anwar and Mehdi Hassan have created is nothing short of a five-minute dissection of Pakistani culture captured at a mercurial moment of transformation.
A version of this story appeared on the blog https://dailylollyblog.wordpress.com/ and has been reproduced here with permission.