FilmIndia (1948)

prcmbcr, 1913 F I L M I M) I A ost educated man in the village, and ;t this man of education, with all is learning of books and life, really agrees to give away his y>un£ aughter in marriage to an old derepit man of 70. without even instigating thoroughly what had hapened to the young hero. Do they do lat amongst the Parsis? Jamshed 7adia should tell us another. ILLEGAL AND ANTI-SOCIAL As the hero bends over the dead ody of the heroine. Mehkoo, who is hown as the evil shadow, accuses the ero of murder and we are told that he hero does not defend himself and irefers an imprisonment of 20 years, rather than defame the memory of heir love." How monstrously masohistic is this conception of love? Joes Jamshed Wadia, the lawyer, lean to tell us that a righteous pteadng of innocence of the crime of murler would have sullied the emotional abric of the love between Mohan and flanju? If we accept this pattern of •ehaviour as commendable then we oay as well scrap all our social laws nd close down our courts. After 20 years of imprisonment, he hero arrives once again on the cene of his youthful romance and here the spirit of his dead beloved all. him to eternal rest with the reult that the hero also jumps ovei the liff and dies. It is a damn suicide hat Jamshed Wadia advocates thus n his "Mela", while Section 300 of he Indian Penal Code considers even ji attempt to commit suicide as an >ffence against society. On the other land Jamshed Wadia, Mrs. Hila Wa • a and that Bazidpuri writer can all fe sentenced to ten years" imprisonnent under Section 306 of the Indian 'enal Code for abetting the commission of the hero's suicide. INCOMPETENCY IN CENSORING j Are our motion pictures intended 0 preach and encourage such illegal Jid anti-social acts? The Production Code, recently described by the Government, states: 'Law, natural and human, shall not »e ridiculed nor shall sympathy be reated for its violation'' . What else s this -uir ide of the hero but a vioation of the law, both natural and tuman ? And if suicide is to be accepted as 1 crime* and an anti-social act. as the aw of the land lays it down, ihen he Production Code is more than lear on this point: "No crime shall e presented in a way which will create sympathy for it or inspire its imitation. Sympathy of the public shall never be thrown on the side of crime, wrong-doing or evil." If Mohan's suicide is not a crime, then what else is it? If Mohan's suicide does not create sympathy then what else does it create? The Censors must answer these questions logically or scrap their own Code of Production or admit their incompetency to censor pictures. ^ ith the H»n. Mr. Morarji Desai at the head of the department we can t accuse the censors of dishonesty or favouritism but we wonder whether they can escape the charg of utter incompetency in interpreting their own Production Code. SLANDERING OUR ARMY The most objectionable character in the picture is that of Mehkoo played by Jeevan. He is evidently an Indian army man come home after demobilization. Y\ e expect an army man to be well disciplined at least, however primitive he may have been originally. If our army doesn't teach our men anything else, it at leas: teaches them discipline and a code of decent civic behaviour. But Mehkoo's behaviour in the picture slanders all the noble traditions of our army. On arrival into his native village Mehkoo begins to eye and annoy the village maidens and tries to trap one with the help of his brother. His antics in his unholy pursuit resemble those of some of the toddy-tight Parsis on vacation and they naturally prove revolting and disgusting to every decent spectator in the auditorium. Mehkoo. with a villainous delight, persuades the heroine's step-mother to conspire with him to ruin the life of the young heroine. He slanders the hero, calls the "panchayat ". misguides the villagers \:ith lies, arranges the heroines marriage with the 70-year old dotard after taking a price for this service, scandalise^ the hero and the heroine to the point of blackmail and ultimately falsely accuses the hero of murder and sends him to jail for 20 years. All this goes unpunished in the story and Mehkoo goes scot fr.ee like the toddy-tight Parsi on vacation. And the Production Code says: "Ad picture which will lower the Floral standards of those who see it shall be presented. Aoble ideals such as truth, justice, chastity, charity etc. shall not be ridiculed ' . May we know what else does Mehkoo's role succeed in doing? Apart from the moral aspect of this role as it afiects the masses, Mehkoo's characterization is very much likely to give our people a wrong and filthy impression of our army discipline and its code of honour. An ex-army man, Mehkoo's behaviour should at least have, as we have stated before, some discipline. His antics in ""Mela" amount to a filthy slander on our noble army. Once our masses begin to feel that simple villagers become undisciplined monsters in the army, as this picture seeks to show by the misbehaviour of the solitary military man in the entire picture, a lot of persuasion will be needed to recruit our villagers as soldiers in times of national emergency. There is no sense in spitting at our army in such a vile manner and then expect it to uphold all its past noble traditions. If the Censors can't realize our national loss in such a gross caricature of our military personnel, at least the army officials should jealously guard their hardwon traditions by protesting vigorously against such slander by irresponsible film producers. This is, in short, wlrat Wadia has produced under the title of "Mela" — a slander of our army, an encouragement to anti-social acts like suicide, virgin widowhood, unequal marriage, frustrative love and masochistic treatment of human relationship. PLEASANT PHOTOGRAPHY The picture is pleasant to the eye because of good photography and partly sweet to the ear because of attractive music. The direction of the story, however, lacks both intelligence and imagination. From the players Xargis plays her part well, especially in pathetic scenes, though she looks unconvincing in sequences of her synthetic motherhood. Dilip Kumar plays the hero, Mohan, and does his job well. Jeevan plays Mehkoo and succeeds in creating disgust and revulsion, the two main aspects of his role. As the picture is anti-social in its theme, it does not provide suitable entertainment to the masses, though the music is an attractive feature of the picture. "Mela" is a picture of which the educated Wadias should be ashamed. 57