In ’60s cinema, a long-ago glimpse of faraway lands - Hindustan Times
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In ’60s cinema, a long-ago glimpse of faraway lands

Jan 22, 2022 05:38 PM IST

Before Emily went to Paris, Sharmila Tagore had an evening there. A clutch of Hindi films in the 1960s gave viewers who had never gone abroad glamourous views of another world.

Does the trope of an outsider at sea in a foreign country never get old? Even today, when such travel is commonplace, this continues to be a storyline mined over and over for movies and television.

Sharmila Tagore in An Evening in Paris. The ’60s films set abroad introduced a very different India to a world where women wore swimsuits and couples embraced in public. PREMIUM
Sharmila Tagore in An Evening in Paris. The ’60s films set abroad introduced a very different India to a world where women wore swimsuits and couples embraced in public.

The latest example is Netflix’s big hit Emily in Paris, about a young American woman’s adventures in this beautiful European city.

Season 2 was released recently, and it reminded me of the small clutch of Hindi films of the 1960s — An Evening in Paris (1967), Night in London (1967), Love in Tokyo (1966), Around the World (1967) — whose chief charm was that they were set in foreign countries, at a time when most Indians couldn’t even dream of going abroad. Of these, Night in London is the pretender; despite the title, there’s hardly any London in the film.

In Around the World, Raj Kapoor is invited to go on a month-long trip abroad by his father’s best friend. Our conscientious hero says earnestly, “Sorry, I can’t go. Our country desperately needs foreign exchange. I don’t want my government to suffer a loss because of my pleasure trip.” His objections are overruled and he’s given a grand send-off at the airport with an entire delegation heaping garlands on him and a photographer recording the momentous event for posterity… going abroad was a big deal!

He goes to the exchange counter at the airport to change money and is given $8. That’s all he is allowed. Due to various plot twists, he finds himself stranded in Tokyo, with no money (except the aforementioned $8), from where he must somehow find his way to Honolulu.

The rest of the film is a series of events haphazardly strung together, mainly to showcase all the places the hero travels to — Tokyo, Trinidad and Tobago, the US, Canada, Switzerland. Carried away by its eagerness to showcase exotic foreign “wonders”, the film featured lengthy, disconnected sequences involving musical fountains and ski chases. Viewers were unmoved. The film tanked.

But the other two were bonafide hits. An Evening in Paris had gorgeous songs (by the fabulous Shankar-Jaikishan; the jewel is the sensuous Mohammed Rafi-Asha Bhosle duet Raat Ke Humsafar), a racy background score, grand visuals of Paris and an overall mood of high ’60s glamour, exemplified by Sharmila Tagore’s sexy, sleeveless, knotted blouses, towering bouffants and sensational eye-make up (plus her surprising, seductive turn as a cabaret dancer).

There were also sleek convertibles on Paris streets, boat rides at night on the Seine, candlelit nightclubs, even a bit of water-skiing (giving Tagore an opportunity to wear a fetching blue swimsuit). The film has a storyline that was emblematic of the ’60s too: separated twins, evil villains looking to usurp an heiress’s jaydaad, a squabbling hero-heroine romance. Audiences loved it.

Just as they did Love in Tokyo. The film is set in neon-lit Tokyo, with songs in Japanese gardens and shrines (music again by Shankar-Jaikishan). As a bonus, there’s Mehmood dressed as an “international geisha”, speaking fluent Hindi and Marathi. Desi audiences learnt the Japanese word for “goodbye” as Asha Parekh lip-synced to “Sayonara sayonara” while skipping down the streets. But the film had an actual story, of a young woman fleeing an undesirable marriage, befriended by a man who’s in Japan on a separate mission altogether. And yes, an evil villain who is after the heroine’s wealth.

These films treated the foreign locations as elaborate backdrops, offering viewers who’d never gone abroad and weren’t likely to, tantalising glimpses of another world, one where everyone looked affluent and chic, women wore swimsuits, and embracing in public was unremarkable.

The directors weren’t interested in engaging with foreign cultures. What they promised is probably best illustrated by the lyrics of the title song of Around the World: “Duniya ki sair kar lo… (Take a tour of the world)”.

But for all that, even the wide-eyed ’60s audience demanded at least the semblance of a story.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Poonam Saxena is the national weekend editor of the Hindustan Times. She writes on cinema, television, culture and books

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