The famous trio of Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand were known as the pioneers of Hindi cinema when they started working in the movies in 1940s. Raj Kapoor started RK Films in 1948 at the age of 24, and 75 years later, his grandkids are still keeping his legacy alive, even though the company doesn’t exist anymore. The Kapoor family is famously known as the ‘first family of Bollywood’ but that’s not the only family that made Hindi cinema what it is. There was another ‘first family’ – the Anands – where three brothers got together and gave Hindi cinema a touch of class, and held on to their point of view, which was considered quite modern for those days. This ‘other first family’ started Navketan Films in 1949 with Afsar and in the many years that they continued to make movies, Navketan made 39 films.
Chetan Anand, Dev Anand and Vijay Anand were the pillars of Navketan Films but the company was started by the older siblings – Chetan and Dev. Chetan, who was a teacher at Doon School and had a worldly approach to movies, had already made the 1946 film Neecha Nagar by then. Even though the film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and is still the only Indian film to win that honour, it never saw the light of the day back home. The same year, Dev also made his debut in the movies with Hum Ek Hain as it was still believed that the idea of Partition was unfathomable. Though we now know that in a year’s time, India was divided into two, the masses at that time continued to believe that dividing people on the basis of religion was far from practical. Hum Ek Hain explored this idea and found its audience.
In a turbulent nation, where everyone was trying to find something to hold on to, Dev, along with his older brother Chetan, formed Navketan Films, and made their first film, Afsar. The idea here was to speak about the corruption that was starting to creep into the newly independent country but the film did not get the results that the brothers had expected, and this is where Dev realised that if Navketan was to survive and eventually thrive, it had to be more than a family company. He called up Guru Dutt as the two had promised to support each other in their struggling days, and gave him his first break with Baazi, and that film changed the careers of everyone who was involved with it. After Baazi, Navketan was a force to be reckoned with and it continued to soar for the next two decades.
With Baazi, Navketan found its identity. Raj Kapoor and other famous filmmakers of the time were making films that appealed to an audience that was still finding its feet in a new India. These were the people who were made to believe that independence from the British would change their fate, but when no such change was seen, they started to question their leaders. The people demanded their leaders be accountable and provide them with employment and education. Navketan, like the others, observed these themes, but their approach to presenting them wasn’t as direct or preachy as Raj Kapoor. They realised that their identity lay in presenting the same ideas in a more nuanced way. Their characters weren’t pitiable, instead, they were street-smart individuals who had already accepted the cards they had been dealt.
Navkten Films of the 1950s actually relied on the language of cinema, instead of spelling out everything as it is. They had faith in their audience which was further underlined when they presented them with morally compromised characters. Unlike the basic unidimensional characters which were often seen in those days, where one could either be a saint or satan, characters in Navketan movies were rather multi-layered as they didn’t see morality as a black-and-white concept. ‘Morally ambiguous men who eventually choose the noble path’ were widely accepted in the movies at the time but Navketan pushed the envelope even further when they applied the same principle to their female characters as well.
The idea of ‘Bombay Noir’ was started by Guru Dutt and Dev Anand, and it later became a style of Navketan’s films. Chetan and Vijay built upon the idea and gave a distinct identity to what their films looked like. Because their films were consciously stepping away from the stereotypical character archetypes that were already popular in Hindi movies, they empowered their female characters by giving them shades that were unseen in Hindi movies until then. For instance, Geeta Bali’s character in Baazi, who would have been a traditional vamp in any other film, was the all-knowing wise woman here who works for the bad guys but isn’t an evil person herself. Or Shiela Ramani’s character in Taxi Driver, who works as a singer in a nightclub, isn’t really shown as a morally compromised woman in this story. The women here weren’t slotted into ‘good-girl-bad-girl’ boxes and this approach to their female characters was seen even in films like Guide, where Waheeda Rehman’s character is fighting for her own self no matter how the men around her perceive her, or Jewel Thief, where Tanuja’s character isn’t shy of owning her sexuality and isn’t villainised for the same.
After making a few popular films, Chetan left Navketan Films and set up his own shop, and it was in this time that Vijay Anand, or Goldie as he was popularly called, became a part of his older brother’s company. Vijay, whose most popular film Guide, is still known as one of the best films ever made in Hindi cinema, was the most decisive of all the Anand brothers. Even when he was making his first movie, Goldie decided to shoot the climax first because he knew exactly how it was going to play out. This might sound completely logical in 2023 but it wasn’t the norm in the 1950s. Back then, directors shot the entire movie, showed it to a few well-wishers, usually from the industry, and then they collectively decided on the best, and the easiest way, to conclude a story with a happy ending. Goldie was a rule-breaker and Dev appreciated that. Goldie was also largely responsible for the image of Dev Anand, which continues to be the bread and butter of mimicry artists to this day.
Vijay Anand’s, and Navketan Films’, biggest contribution to Indian cinema was the Dev-Waheeda-starrer Guide, which completely flipped the script on how the audience saw heroes and heroines until that point. No one was a saint here, and even though Raju (Dev’s character) eventually becomes a literal saint in the movie, the film reinforces that a man/woman’s character is a sum of all their actions and those actions can’t always be classified as noble or evil. The film was based on a book by RK Narayan and was one of the most modern films of its time in terms of treating its characters. Although Dev and Vijay had some professional differences in later years, Dev credited his brother for doing a “grand job” with Guide’s screenplay.
After Guide, Vijay made Jewel Thief and Johnny Mera Naam (this one wasn’t for Navketan though) and set a template for crime dramas in Hindi cinema, which continues to inspire filmmakers like Sriram Raghavan. After making many successful films for Navketan, Goldie also went his own way and made a few films for other producers. He didn’t appreciate the rat race culture of Bollywood and eventually retired from the movies in the 1980s. He was also a very vocal opponent of the censorship culture in India and when he served as the head of the Central Board of Film Certification, he resigned fairly quickly because of his differences with the government in trying to decide what constituted as ‘adult’.
Navketan had enjoyed its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, but 1976 proved to be a landmark year for the company. Brothers Chetan and Vijay returned for their last directorial venture for the company in its silver jubilee year, and Dev starred in both their films. After this, Navketan was a one-man show and Dev Anand continued to make films until he passed away in 2011. The actor-director had enough confidence in himself that he could control every part of the filmmaking process. From being a collaborator who supported artists like music composer SD Burman and lyric writer Sahir Ludhianvi to flourish, Dev’s films became all about his sole vision. He continued to promote new talent but it was obvious that the best years of Navketan were long gone. “I wanted to be able to control everything, from the songs to the dances to the fights to the drama to the dialogues. Filmmaking involves every single art form from music to choreography, from poetry to prose, from dramaturgy to story-telling. I felt I could do it. I did,” Dev said in an interview with Man’s World.
The audience’s tastes had also transformed by the late 1970s and the Salim-Javed wave had swallowed the mainstream aesthetic. The 1980s, which can easily be described as the worst decade for mainstream Hindi movies, didn’t help his case. Dev wasn’t the one to follow the trends and liked to do his own thing, even when he knew he wasn’t getting the returns he wanted. “If they like, it’s okay, if they don’t, move on,” he said when speaking about his continuous flops towards his last years. Cinema was truly a passion for the Anand brothers and while their future generations didn’t maintain the standard they set, no one can take away from the fact that right when Kapoors laid the foundation of Hindi cinema, the Anands were standing alongside them.
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Sampada SharmaSampada Sharma is a Copy Editor at Indian Express Online's entertainme… read more
Dev Anand and the Anand brothers: The other ‘first’ family of Bollywood that formed Navketan Films – The Indian Express
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