In films on courtesans, the first things you see are big bosoms and money.
In Muzzaffar Ali’s film Umrao Jaan (1981), based on Mirza Hadi Ruswa’s 1899 novel Umrao Jaan Adaa on a 19th century tawaif and poet of Lucknow, the emphasis is on things intangible – the heart of a woman; the speech of sighs, silences and glances; and Umrao’s determined study of the art and etiquettes of poetry to make something of herself when she is doomed to a courtesan life.
Set to make a comeback to the silver screen after 44 years on June 27, TMS catches up with Muzzaffar Ali to talk film history, his choice of Bollywood’s then reigning star Rekha as its heroine, National Award controversies, and the teamwork that made it transcend its time, or, being more than a Lucknow film or a movie on a tawaif.
A commemorative, limited-edition coffee-table book featuring behind-the-scenes photographs and production materials celebrating the film is also being published, timed with the film’s release and restoration. The restoration was supervised by Ali himself working from a 35mm release print preserved at the National Film Archive of India.
The big films of 1981 were Kaalia, Laawaris, and Katilon Ke Kaatil…. In that year, you made Umrao Jaan, a quiet, tender film full of poetry, art, and the heart of a woman. Why did you think it would work?
I knew things around me were much bigger, louder, faster and heavier. But this was something that was coming from inside of me. It was my Lucknow, my sense of music, my understanding of people and characters—all coming out. So, I was on another trip.
You had worked with Smita Patil in Gaman just before you made Umrao Jaan. Was it Rekha’s screen test that made you decide on her?
No, I had a screen in my head! (laughs) Smita would have been good, too. She also was dark and dusky, and had that piercing look. But I think what Rekha had was a very novel language. Also, by then I was very clear about the character. I was clear about her trajectory. I was clear about what she would look like. It could only be Rekha and nobody else.
It's part of cinema's lore that she charged you R1 for the film. It's a big gesture. I don’t think she has done that for any other film.
These are matters of the heart. She had set her heart on the role and she didn’t want to put a price to it.
What was the kind of preparation you had to do for a Bollywood detox when she was doing Umrao Jaan? She did have her trademark maroon lipstick on in many frames.
All I had done and I did, was to get her absorbed into the character, and the layers that needed to go under the character. It’s like entering into an ocean, and when the ocean is ready for you, and every little wave is there to receive you, then you find it very difficult to come out of it. So, Rekha got into it through poetry. I think poetry was her biggest embrace, and it was something that I had worked on for at least a year before anything else. The poetry was the intangible screenplay of the film.
And the poetry took its own sweet time to bloom—it didn’t happen suddenly, you know. So, I was living here in Juhu. Khayaam saab (Umrao Jaan’s music director) was also in Juhu (Mumbai). Shahryar saab (head of the Urdu department at Aligarh Muslim University), who did the lyrics for both Umrao Jaan and Gaman, used to come and stay with me here in this house. So, that way we were a trio trying to create a world within a world and nobody knew what was going on in our heads. It’s only when you come out of the recording studio that you realise a child is born, and how beautiful and perfect that child is.
How did Gaman help you in preparing for Umrao? Any continuity between the two?
Both films express the pain of love and a dissatisfaction in the love being expressed. It’s tender, but it’s dissatisfied, unsatisfied. I think Umrao is a mixture of both Khairun (a woman separated from her husband who drives a cab in Mumbai), played by Smita Patil, and her husband Ghulam Hasan (played by Farooq Shaikh). Khairun is vulnerable in her village home while Ghulam is in the city without anywhere to go. He is unable to return. Umrao has the same vulnerability, the same helplessness, the same feeling of being dispossessed. For her, there is no going back.
Umrao is open to love, risks hurt—yet her heart is always open. Even more touching is her tentative steps towards poetry. She has an urge to be seen as an artist, to make something of herself.
That’s just the point. If we had not touched her through poetry, you wouldn’t have felt this way. The art of poetry takes Umrao through all these very vulnerable situations; it attracts you to her, and you feel sad for her as well. Poetry does absolute miracles to a person. In the film, we were not writing any eulogy through her verse. We were only trying to express certain kinds of unknown, unseen feelings, and we were just taking you there and leaving you there.
Umrao’s close-ups were painterly.
I’m a painter. I sketch every frame before I attempt to see it through a lens. As far as faces are concerned, there’s something inside me that always looks at people as paintings and notices things about them.
Many of Rekha's costumes were in pastels. There are very few films in which the colour of seduction is white. When she sings 'Dil cheez kya hai'…, for example, she is a vision in white.
That’s golden white, the kind of a white that looks as if light is pouring in and the back is lit up. I wanted to create a certain feeling of purity, of divinity about Umrao.
Is it true that the National Film Award for Best Actress in 1982 going to Rekha for Umrao Jaan created a bit of a stir. I believe Shashi Kapoor had a party ready for Jennifer Kapoor. He was so sure she was going to win for 36 Chowringhee Lane.
I mean Jennifer Kapoor was something else. She was also a great actress. I mean, I didn’t have any influence with anybody. You think I pulled strings? (laughs).