A Movie Nearly Every Night: Pyaasa

Pyaasa (1957)
Dir. Guru Dutt
Starring: Guru Dutt, Mala Sinha, Waheeda Rehman


I know, we just keep watching movies. You know why? Because it's still winter here in Oregon, that's why. Because we had 2 days of sun a few weeks ago and now it's gone gone gone gone gone. Yes, rain makes things green, but it also makes the heating bill go up and makes people want to Snuggie-up and stay inside. It helps if you don't want really downer movies, but I had a hankering to see this after watching Kaagaz Ke Phool last year.

Director and star Guru Dutt as poor suffering poet Vijay

This movie is also a little autobiographical, although not as obvious as Kaagaz. This time Guru Dutt is a poet named Vijay and no one appreciates him until they think he's dead. Everyone's out for the quick buck. Screw art, just give us the money. Nobody wants him when he's down and out except for his mother and a beautiful hooker named Gulabo -- and even she doesn't want him at first when she finds out he's broke. But when she finds out he wrote poems she bought as "waste paper" for $10 (yes ... think of that one, artists) she tracks him down.

Waheeda Rehman ... dude, yeah, smoking hot as Gulabo

The "other woman" is poor class-conscious Meena, who threw Vijay over in college for a jerk who had a lot of dough. The jerk later hires Vijay to work at his publishing house (without publishing Vijay's poems, much less looking at them, dismissing them as "amateur trash"), which makes for some uncomfortable moments around the office with Meena. But also makes for some a lovely dream sequence where Vijay re-imagines their college days:



It's all about the poor not being appreciated by the rich (until they die) and class and greed and lies and truth, friends and users, and how to kill art in 10 easy steps. It's a beautiful picture and Guru works some sweet moves with the dolly track. He loves to take that camera right up into people's faces and capture everything they're thinking without the character having to say a word.

"That poem ... it's about me ... f...k."

But there are also a lot of really distracting Christ-moments (the devoted, but tragic mother; the hooker as Mary Magdalene "resurrecting" the dead poet from obscurity; much crucifix posing, etc...) that kept me from liking it as much as Kaagaz Ke Phool, which is a little more natural -- which means that it was very cinematic, but it was a movie about cinema shot with cinema moments, which made it natural. See?

one of many such poses

And Kaagaz is about making movies, so it was a little closer to my heart anyway ---- not that I have anything against poets. I'm just saying, in the race for favorite movies about making movies will come out ahead every time. Part of the problem is that the poems and songs that make up the bulk of Pyaasa were not translated in the version I watched and that detracts a little from connecting too closely with it.

All that said (or not said, since it's not translated), this moment still made me cry like a baby: