Neecha Nagar
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1946: At the Cannes
As Cannes celebrates its 70th anniversary, a look back at Chetan Anand's forgotten Neecha Nagar
Many film buffs think that India's story at the Cannes Film Festival began with Satyajit Ray and Pather Pan chali. But the fact is, ten years before that, in 1946, Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar won the top Cannes award of the time, a Grand Prix, which it shared with classics like David Lean's Brief Encounter, Roberto Rosellini's Rome: Open City and Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend. No other Indian film has ever made such an impact at Cannes since then, but sadly, few people remember Neecha Nagar today.And if they remember Chetan Anand himself, it is mainly as Dev Anand's older brother.
Chetan Anand, amazingly , was only 22 when he began work on the film. He was a member of the theatre group, IPTA, and had no previous cinema experience, but fired by idealism, he wanted to make a film that would shake people's consciences.His friend, Hayatullah Ansari, had recently adapted Maxim Gorky's play , The Lower Depths, which explored the conflict between the common man and the elites, and the two friends decided to work together.From the beginning Anand was very clear that his film that would make no compromise with the box office.He roped in a group of talented young friends, mainly from his theatre circle, including actress-choreographer Zohra Sehgal, a promising 23-year old sitarist named Ravi Shankar and a cousin of his wife's named Kamini Kaushal, none of whom had any cinema experience.The only exception perhaps, was Bidyapati Ghosh, the cameraman.The entire thing was a completely amateur cinematic venture which is what makes its Grand Prix at Cannes all the more remarkable.
It is a strangely prescient film about the wealthy Ooncha Nagar, set on top of a hill, and the impoverished Neecha Nagar, at the bottom of the hill. The tycoon, Sarkar, who controls Ooncha Nagar, sees the rich real estate possibilities of developing Neecha Nagar, and tries to get rid of its occupants by diverting a sewer into it, thus creating an epidemic. And when the people of Neecha Nagar start falling ill and dying, Sarkar, in a slickly cynical public relations move, sets up a hospital to treat them, and skillfully subverts the community's leading social activist. This storyline could, of course, be straight out of today's newspaper headlines.
This story was presented in Chetan Anand's dramatic cinematic style, which eclectically married elements from German director Fritz Lang with elements from Russian directors Pudovkin and Eisenstein. The look of Neecha Nagar, with its stark imagery and location shooting, is said to have been an inspiration for the masterpieces of Indian cinema that followed, like Do Bigha Zameen and Pather Panchali.
Despite Neecha Nagar's great success at Cannes and despite the support of Jawaharlal Nehru, who admired the film Chetan Anand found it impossible to get the film released commercially . On the insistence of the distributors, he finally inserted a couple of song and dance sequences, which destroyed the integrity of the film. But the film was a disaster nevertheless, and angry audiences are said to have demanded their money back. The cognoscenti, however, admired the film, and Chetan Anand later recalled receiving a fan letter from a young Kolkata movie buff, who said that he loved Neecha Nagar and was inspired by it to persevere with making his own film. That young movie buff was Satyajit Ray . Sadly , over the years, Neecha Nagar disappeared without a trace, both literally and figuratively , and all the prints were lost. Many years later, however, Subrata Mitra, Satyajit Ray's camera man, discovered some old film reels at a Kolkata raddi wala's shop. Intrigued, Mitra bought them and discov ered, to his astonishment, that they were the lost reels of Neecha Nagar. He donat ed them to the National Film Archives, which is why we are still able to watch this historic film.
Chetan Anand later went on to direct movies like Taxi Driver and Funtoosh for his brother Dev Anand, but the brothers then parted professionally , and Chetan went his own way . He has sometimes been compared with Orson Welles: both of them were gatecrashers from the theatre; both of them had an instinctive genius for cinema; both of them had a uniquely dramatic cinematic vision; both of them were uncompromising artists, rejected by the industry as being difficult to work with. It is ironical that Chetan Anand is remembered today not for being a pioneer of Indian cinema, but for being the man who introduced Rajesh Khanna to the movies.
