Kamal Amrohi Birth Anniversary

Kamal Amrohi, born on 17 January 1918, was an Indian film director and screenwriter. He was also an Urdu and Hindi poet. He established Kamal Pictures in 1953 and Kamalistan Studio in Bombay in 1958.

The fame and appreciation Kamal Amrohi receives goes far beyond his limited body of work. In 34 years, the writer-filmmaker only directed four films, but three of them were the Ashok Kumar-Madhubala starrer Mahal, the Dharmendra-Hema Malini starrer Razia Sultan, and the film that made the dying Meena Kumari immortal, Pakeezah.

Amrohi’s cinema was commercially successful and elegant, showcasing his great eye for detail. His movies told stories of lovers who were unable to cross the boundaries of social conventions (Pakeezah), tradition or marriage (Daera).

Amrohi made his directorial debut in 1949 with Mahal, a reincarnation movie that set the film world alight. He was just 30 years old when he pitched the idea to Ashok Kumar, who was running Bombay Talkies then.

Amrohi received acclaim for his deft use of chiaroscuro (the treatment of light and shade) as well as its music, including ‘Aayega aanewala’, one of Lata Mangeshkar’s first big hits in Hindi. Then, in 1953, Amrohi directed Daera, the story of a 16-year-old girl who was forced to marry a man much older than her, but fell in love with a younger neighbour boy. Called “far ahead of its time”, Daera bombed at the box office, but it was important for another reason — it was the first collaboration between Amrohi and his third wife Mahjabeen Bano, whom the world remembers as Meena Kumari.

Pakeezah, which was conceived in 1958 but was not brought to the screen until 1972. He also wrote the screenplay, lyrics and produced the latter. Film Pakeezah (1972) has been called one of the extraordinary musical melodramas ever made in India, although flawed but noble. Meena Kumari herself, in her public comments to the press, after seeing the movie, said that it was Kamal Amrohi's tribute to her. This was followed by Razia Sultan (1983), his last film. Though, he started a film, Majnoon with Rajesh Khanna and Rakhee Gulzar as leads, however the film got shelved.

He wrote scripts for the movies made by Sohrab Modi, Abdul Rashid Kardar and K. Asif. He was one of the four dialogue writers for the latter's famous 1960 movie, Mughal-e-Azam, for which he won the Filmfare Award.

As a director, he developed a style that combined a stylised direction with minimalist performances. This style was different from the one with expressive acting that was common in Indian cinema of his period.

It was mentioned that the last movie he wanted to make was called Aakhri Mughal. He had written a substantial portion of the script. But it went into oblivion after his death. Noted film maker J P Dutta was to revive the film in the late 1990s which was supposed to have been Abhishek Bachchan's debut movie. But later Dutta scrapped the project. He was again planning to revive the film in 2007 after the debacle of his costume drama Umrao Jaan (2006) remake from the cult film from the 1980s.