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Love After Death: MADHUMATI (’58) by R. Emmet Sweeney

Bimal Roy’s MADHUMATI was the highest grossing Indian film of 1958, a swirling gothic romance with ghosts, reincarnation, doppelgangers and a love that would not die. Known previously for his neorealist influenced DO BIGHA ZAMIN (’53) and DEVDAS (’55), which were hits with critics but not at the box office, MADHUMATI was a departure into the supernatural and a more populist mode of filmmaking for Roy (the story was written by the famed Bengali writer/director Ritwik Ghatak, of THE CLOUD-CAPPED STAR, [’60]). The film is pumped full of smoke and fog and spectral superimpositions – the most realistic thing about it are the folk-influenced songs written by Salil Chowdhury, some of which remain popular today. The film contains moments of exquisite mystery, such as the off-screen singing of the enigmatic Madhumati (Vyjayanthimala), as well as tedium, like the overly long comedy breaks given to the normally reliable Johnny Walker. It is clearly straining to please everyone, which it succeeded at in 1958, and the expressionist highs it reaches certainly should make it better known in the U.S.

MADHUMATI begins on a dark country road during a rainstorm, when the car transporting Devinder (Dilip Kumar) and his colleague is blocked by a landslide. They seek shelter at an old broken-down mansion, where Devinder first hears the distant song of a woman. Assaulted by visions, he begins to remember one of his past lives, which he lived as Anand, a new manager of a timber company at war with the local village. Anand is sympathetic to the villagers’ plight, and falls in love with Madhumati, the daughter of the village healer. The owner of the company is Raja Ugranarain, a moustache-twirling baddie played with smarmy enthusiasm by legendary character actor Pran. Raja also has set his eyes on Madhumati, and through an intricately orchestrated trap lures her into his clutches.

Madhumati disappears, but lives on, kind of, in the person of Madhavi, a dead ringer for Madhumati who Anand meets by chance. After she discovers a sketch Anand drew of his love, she believes his tragic tale, and agrees to help him snare Raja in a trap of his own. The movie ends back in the present day with Devinder meeting yet another Madhumati lookalike of his own. It’s a dizzying film of romantic obsession and identity swapping that just so happened to come out the same year as Hitchcock’s VERTIGO (’58). There must have been something in the air…

Just like in DEVDAS, Dilip Kumar plays his characters as aloof – his Anand walking through the timber grounds, looking toward a faraway place. He’s always averting his gaze or doing bits of business with his hands, tapping on a notebook or his sketchpad. It’s clear he wishes he were elsewhere – like drawing landscapes or the portrait of Madhumati he sketches on a break. This aloofness turns to total disconnection when Madhumati disappears, what was once a kind of distanced cool becomes edgy and desperate.

Vyjayanthimala has a demanding task in portraying three different characters – two reincarnations and one doppelganger. So, they are similar characters but slightly askew, reacting differently in different contexts. Madhumati seems to emerge directly out of the land, first appearing in a plume of smoke in one of Devinder’s meetings. Her musical sequences emerge out of the forest – the composer Salil Chowdhury told The Quint that he was inspired by “Indian folk music,” specifically “the distinctive tea garden folk music of Assam.” The best-selling soundtrack of 1958, its tunes still resonate today with “Suhana safar aur yeh mausam haseen” still used for dandiya raas dance functions.

Madhavi is more urban, associated with city spaces – she always appears inside, and Vyjayanthimala plays her with more of a stiff, proper posture. With Radha, Devinder’s love who is only glanced near the end of the feature, Vyjayanthimala is a beatific source of light. This final sequence, providing a long delayed happy ending, was not in the original treatment written by Ritwik Ghatak, and its sickly sweet sentimentalism is out of step with the rest of the film’s gloomy romanticism.

Bimal Roy intended to shoot most of the feature on location in Ranikhet, Nainital, though circumstances made that impossible. Assistant director Debu Sen told Mid-Day that the film’s smoky look was achieved with “great difficulty.” He continues, “Since there were no monitors, the negatives needed to be developed to see what had been shot. After a six-week schedule…the reels were developed. Much to the chagrin of the crew, most of the footage was foggy.”

Unable to return to Ranikhet, they built a set. Debu Sen recalled, “We chose a location, a dam near Igatpuri. Our art direction team, led by Sudhendu Roy, created fake pine trees. We dug up the earth and planted them in. Dada [Roy’s nickname] knew exactly where to place the camera and that’s how we matched up the film to the location in Nainital.”

The outdoor cinematography by Dilip Gupta is remarkable, capturing the dappled rays latticing through the leaves. The version streaming on FilmStruck comes from an old release print exhibiting plenty of damage, but these are the best elements available on so many Bollywood classics. Encouragingly, Bimal Roy’s daughter Rinki Roy Bhattacharya is working on preserving his legacy, including restoring the film prints of MADHUMATI, which are now “lying in a totally messed up condition at the National Archives, Pune,” according to a First Post article. Hopefully, this is the first of many restorations in store, following up on PYAASA (’57), which now exists in a good looking restoration. But it will take time and plenty of money. For now, this FilmStruck stream is the best we have.

MADHUMATI is a desperately romantic film, and works because of this intensity. Using the simplest of tools, like a cross-cut or superimposition, Bimal Roy is able to fold time so a momentary love is expanded into an immortal romance, one set to recur throughout history. But it will go through various iterations – tragic and comic and super sentimental – over the course of the film, trying on tones until it finds one that fits. I prefer the central gothic romance, which peaks in a ghostly apparition floating in the clouds, trying to salve the wounds of her tortured earthbound lover. But if that doesn’t suit you, return to the present with Devinder, where a more traditional love abides. MADHUMATI tries so hard to be a crowd pleaser that it loses narrative focus, but it is peppered with uncanny images that will linger with you into next week.

#Bimal Roy #FilmStruck #Madhumati #Indian cinema #StreamLine Blog #R. Emmet Sweeney

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