Filmindia (1941)

June 1941 F ILMINDI A cal climate which encourages quick growth in everything. Before I travel to Calcutta, I must tell you why Sheela could not be our heroine. She appeared in "Jailor" with an extraordinary grace and looked quite loveable but in subsequent pictures in trying to assume some glamour, probably because Sohrab Modi wanted her to do so, in one single stroke she has lost all that she had gained. It is often through our well wishers that we come to lose something -which we have once gained. MISCHIEVOUS KANAN In many a heart Kanan reigns supreme. Since "Vidyapati", she seems to have been obsessed with her individualism. She seems to reduce a man into insignificance and if she is left alone to have her own way, ere long, Adam will be threatened with extinction. Kanan displays mischief in every twist and turn. And a mischievous young man may well be the hero lor our College girls but we, the College boys, are creatures of scanty patience. We want something more steady and more loyal. And yet for this very reason we cannot be driven to Kamlesh Kumar i. She is not frivolous like Kanan, 1 admit, but her austerity holds us in awe. We are dreamers alright but we do not want nightmares. THE SCREEN DOLL I remember to have read sometime back that Leela Desai wants real romances like the Hollywood stars. She has my full sympathy, and even a few regrets. One can magine her plight in a place like Calcutta where people are busy cutting one another's pocket for business. Leela oug'ht to have been here, with us in Patna College, but s she is not, she has to be satisfied by presenting herself as the supreme artiste of Oriental dances. Every time this volatile beauty refrains from opening her lips, she does a service to herself. Not be cause her Bengali accent is ill-matched with the Hindusthani language but because whenever she tries to express a feeling through her face alone, she does it more exquisitely than with the help of the spoken Leela Chitnis in "Kanchan" word. Her talent can glow only behind her reticence and she cannot be our heroine, for the same reason why a doll cannot be a house wife. Now let us to one who is grace personified — Jamuna. She is "Her Majesty" with dare and dignity and with something of an ethereal emotion and sentiment in her make-up. And this is exactly why, for some of us, she is too good, and for others, too spiritual to be our heroine. We cannot talk to her of the tavern of Omar Khayyam and to talk and talk of temples all the day would make one sick. AT LAST LEELA CHITNIS, AND YET. Baffled from everywhere, in the last I tremble to think of Leela Chitnis. "Sant Tulsidas" had run for weeks everywhere. There were people who went to see how the great Sant Tulsidas renounced the world and dedicated himself to the worship of Rama but our College boys went to see the one and only — Leela Chitnis. "Every pose of hers" said a friend of mine, "is worth a life time." Then she came in "Kangan" and soon her name became a legend, and then she came in "Bandhan" and she soon became a tradition. Every beautiful girl in the College is now a "Chitnis", every smile has the Chitnis spontaneity and every blush wears a Chitnis hue. Her lilting music in celluloid and on wax keeps ringing in our ears morn and eve. And this girl of all should have been our heroine but alas Baburao Patel, Editor of "filmindia" says in his January issue: "Leela has enoug'h children to be many. Leela is our champion mother among our film stars." And with these words the famous critic shatters our dream and writes the saddest epitaph on our romance. A mother! Can a champion mother be a heroine to the dreamy youth? And who wants a mother for our heroine — certainly not the College boys? The place in our heart therefore goes vacant crying for a candidate. 41