In Search of the Greatest Indian Film

WHICH IS THE greatest Hindi film of all time? If you ask that question to 10 different people, you will get 10 different answers. The films will include the usual suspects, but I am willing to bet that there is someone out there who firmly believes that The Kashmir Files is the best film ever. There is no accounting for tastes.

In a respected international poll, carried out two years ago, only one of our films was considered among the 100 best films of all time. It was not a Hindi film. We will come to that in good time.

The film Sholay is a contender for the title of our best-ever Bollywood film. It was critically acclaimed and hugely popular with the young and the old alike. It gave us a superstar who refuses to go away 50 years after it was released. The film became a trendsetter, much copied, though there was nothing original about it. It was a rip-off, of a Hollywood film, The Magnificent Seven that, in turn, was a rip-off of a Japanese film, Seven Samurai.

K Asif’s Mughal-E-Azam has its passionate admirers as do Raj Kapoor’s Awaara, Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. Can we ignore Vijay Anand’s Guide or Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan? Bimal Roy made some great women-centred films—Biraj Bahu, Parineeta, Sujata, and perhaps his best, Bandini. No other filmmaker so consistently excelled in making great films. Several of them would make any top 20 list.

Before your fathers were born, Sohrab Modi’s Sikandar (1941) and Gyan Mukherjee’s Kismet (1943) packed cinema halls across the country. The latter ran for uninterrupted 187 weeks in Roxy Cinema in Calcutta. It was the biggest all-time hit of undivided India. Even earlier, we had some fine films, among them Bombay Talkies’ Achhut Kanya (1936) directed by a German, Franz Osten, and New Theatres’ Devdas (1935) directed by PC Barua. I have seen them all!

My all-time favourite film happens to be Mehboob Khan’s Mother India. Seventy years ago, I was mesmerised by the director’s vision and the performance of its lead actor, Nargis. I saw it three times on its opening week at Moti in Chandni Chowk, now demolished.

I saw many of my films in that rundown cinema hall. It was closest to the university campus—20 minutes by the No 21 bus. I had nothing better to do after classes, not good at sport and with no girlfriend until the final year. Most times, it was the 3:30 screening sitting in the stalls. It gave me time to be back in the hostel for dinner. Sometimes, I had a hard time deciding what was worse, the film or the food!

Mother India was the closest an Indian film came to winning an Oscar. It lost in the foreign film category in 1957 by a single vote to an Italian film, Fellini’s La Strada. Some critics consider Gunga Jumna, made around the same time, a better film. It had Dilip Kumar in the lead who also directed it under an assumed name.

The former editor of Filmfare, Khalid Mohamed, is partial to Mughal-E-Azam. Not a bad choice as our best film, all things considered. Suparna Sharma, the film critic of the Rolling Stone magazine shares that view. Dev Anand’s Guide has its passionate supporters, including Ritesh Batra, the director of the gem of a movie, The Lunchbox.

When I asked Sidharth Bhatia, founder editor of The Wire and an authority on cinema to select his best, he surprised me by opting for Raj Kapoor’s Shree 420. “It has everything—a great storyline, crackling dialogue, outstanding songs and, most of all, it is a quintessential Bombay film.” His other two favourites are Yash Chopra’s Deewaar with a similar message—crime pays—and Kundan Shah’s black comedy, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro.

The 1950s is often referred to as the golden age of Indian cinema. That reputation is largely based on the output of gifted music directors of that time, Naushad Ali, Shankar-Jaikishan, SD Burman and OP Nayyar among others. And they had glorious human voices working with them in tandem, Lata, at her prime, Shamshad, Rafi, Mukesh, and a host of others equally melodious. They don’t compose like that anymore.

As for the films of that ‘Golden Age’, nostalgia for them is eminently curable by watching them on YouTube. Among a handful of great films, you will find a lot of rubbish made by fly-by-night producers. If you fancied tear-jerkers, Mala Sinha was almost guaranteed to cry in her films.

Quite a few films of that era were scene-by-scene copies of foreign films. Charles Vidor’s The Loves of Carmen became AR Kardar’s Jadoo with the Rita Hayworth role going to Nalini Jaywant. The most preposterous copy was Cecil B DeMille’s biblical film, Samson and Delilah, with the Victor Mature role played by Prem Nath. The only thing good about Aurat was Prem Nath ending up marrying his leading lady, Bina Rai. No royalties were paid for these copies. Hollywood complained but could do nothing because copyright laws were difficult to enforce.

If you asked someone queuing for popcorn in a multiplex to name his favourite film, he would most likely opt for Aamir-Salman-Shah Rukh films. He has little interest in films of the past. Nostalgia does not play a role in the lives of our film-going public. Abroad, there are cinema halls that show exclusively vintage films.

Once upon a time, Madhubala, Nargis, Meena, Raj, Dilip and Dev made hearts of boys and girls flutter. They have all gone. Happily, Kamini Kaushal is still with us, now past the age of 96. She lives in Malabar Hill, playing solitaire with her memories. She was often paired with Dilip Kumar early in their careers. Her very first film, Neecha Nagar, received the top prize at the Cannes film festival in 1946, the only Indian film to receive that honour. Take a bow, Kaminiji.

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Since 1952, Sight and Sound, the venerable film magazine of the British Film Institute, has been running a poll to select the 10 greatest films of all time. No restrictions, the film could be made anywhere in any language. In its first year, there were 63 participants in the voting and the 1948 Italian film, Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves was voted the best film of all time.

The magazine conducts the poll every 10 years. The selectors are now spread across the globe and include film critics, academics, historians, actors and filmmakers. The number of voters has increased to 1,639 and there are several from India.

In the latest poll in 2022, the Indian films that received votes, included Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Mughal-E-Azam, Mother India and Guide. But only one Indian film managed to make the list of best 100 of all time. Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali was 35th on the list.

A Belgium film made in 1975, Jeanne Dielman, by a woman director Chantal Akerman was chosen as the best film ever made. Tastes in movies change over the years. Most of the voters in 2022 would not have seen Bicycle Thieves made 70 years earlier. What was considered the best film in 1952 was now at 41.

Interestingly, one of Indian participants in the latest

poll ignored films of the masters of cinema—Akira Kurosawa,

Ingmar Bergman, Fellini, Martin Scorsese—and cast all 10 of her votes for our films: Garam Hawa, Pyaasa, Pather Panchali, Ankur, Deewar, Bandit Queen, Monsoon Wedding, Sholay, Nayakan and Maqbool! Now, that’s patriotism with a vengeance!

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Let us cut to the chase. My guess is that if you ask people involved in Indian cinema—producers, directors, actors, film journalists—to identify the best Hindi film of all time, it will be a close finish between Mughal-E-Azam and Sholay.

It’s just a hunch. I could be completely wrong.

BollywoodcinemaGreatest Indian FilmsguideKaagaz Ke PhoolMother IndiaMughal-e-AzamPyaasaSholay