Conversations with Waheeda Rehman (14 page)

(Standing, L to R) Personal hairdresser Mrs Solomon, assistants John Anderson, Prabhuji Jasbir and actor Anwar Hussain. (Sitting) Satyadev Dubey and Pearl S. Buck. Photograph taken by Waheeda Rehman during the filming of the English
Guide
. Udaipur, 1963.

I give full credit to Goldie. He treated the story so beautifully and in such a dignified way. The relationship between Raju and Rosie never seemed cheap. In some Hindi films, the other
woman is called a ‘
rakhail
’ [mistress] and is portrayed as a vulgar person, more of a vamp type. But Goldie portrayed her in a modern and decent light.

NMK:
You’re right. Rosie was not at all depicted as an immoral character and is totally unlike the stereotypical heroine of Hindi cinema. She makes her own decisions, is brave enough to refuse to stay in a failed marriage and is unwilling to continue her relationship with Raju when it turns sour.

WR:
Exactly! She slaps her husband and walks out on him. A wife reacting like that was never seen in Hindi films. And as you said, when she realizes that Raju is behaving badly—drinking and gambling and using her—she has the courage to walk out on him too.

The characters in
Guide
behave like grown-ups. They believe in mature relationships. Rosie leaves her husband and leaves Raju as well. Their relationship actually starts out of sympathy and only gradually develops into love.

Recently a young woman I met told me she thought the song
‘Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai’ was the first feminist song of Hindi cinema because it describes a woman who takes her life in her own hands. Yes! I want to live.

NMK:
An astute observation on the part of that young woman.

Guide
won all the top Filmfare Awards in 1967, including the best actress award. In addition, you also won the best actress award for the English version at the Chicago Film Festival in 1965. Did you attend the awards ceremony in the US?

WR:
No. In fact I knew nothing about it. It was B.K. Karanjia who called me to ask why I hadn’t informed the press about the award. I was quite surprised. He asked me to come and see him in his office. That was the first time I visited the
Filmfare
offices. He showed me an article that had appeared in
Variety
, which read: ‘Indian actress Waheeda Rehman wins an award.’

Dev never told me about it. Neither did Tad Danielewski. John Anderson, who was an assistant on the film, felt very bad about it all and, very sweetly, he stole the certificate and sent it to me! I didn’t make a fuss nor did I mention it to Dev. That wasn’t my style.

I have always believed I was very lucky. I was the first Hindi film actress to work with Satyajit Ray and the first Indian actress to win an award in the US.

Only later did Waheeda Rehman discover that she had won the best actress award at the Chicago Film Festival in 1965 for the English
Guide.

NMK:
Who knows why Dev Anand didn’t tell you.

I have never managed to see the English
Guide
, and would really love to some day.

WR:
I’m very curious to see it again too. Try and find it for me.

NMK:
Of course.

Unlike in the West, where actors are usually contacted through their agents and sent bound scripts, the producer or director in India contacts you directly. Your decision of saying yes or no is based on hearing a narration of the story rather than reading the screenplay.

How does the process of narration work?

WR:
The director usually narrated the story to me. Because he wasn’t reading from a screenplay, he would come with his chief assistant who would remind him of any detail he might forget
while narrating. All actors are narrated the story individually.

We would usually start after lunch and carry on undisturbed until we finished. The director told me the story and described the characters, but did not read any dialogue because the dialogue was often written much later.

Goldie and Gulzar Saab were very good at narration. I remember Rajinder Singh Bedi telling me the story of
Phagun
. Dharmendra, Jaya and Vijay Arora were my co-stars and the film came out in 1973. Bedi Saab was directing but he was also an excellent writer. He told the story well, he even read the dialogue to me. He was a very sensitive man and got emotionally involved and started crying in a sad scene. It was very embarrassing.

Bengali directors like Asit Sen, Moni Bhattacharjee and Basu Bhattacharya were quiet and subdued. Sunil Dutt told the story dramatically and when Dev came to me with the idea of
Prem Pujari
—it was his first film as director—he got very excited. I must admit I was taken aback.
[we laugh]

NMK:
Did you prefer hearing the story or reading a bound script?

WR:
I preferred hearing the story first, and then I would have liked to read the script. The screenplay of
Guide
was one of the first screenplays I was given.

I remember Guruduttji asked the author Bimal Mitra to come to Bombay. He read us the story of
Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam
in his Bengali English. Abrar, Guruduttji and Bimal Mitra worked on the screenplay after that.

NMK:
I wonder if you still have any of your old screenplays—
Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam
or
Guide
? It would be fascinating to read them and to see your notes.

WR:
I moved homes so many times and then finally we moved to Bangalore. It’s all gone.

Bound scripts were uncommon in the early days. I wish they had been given to us. I would have read the lines repeatedly to become familiar with the dialogue. If you read the script many times, and then do a scene, the words come out sounding far more natural.

I read somewhere that Anthony Hopkins reads his scripts dozens of times. Perhaps that’s why his lines flow so easily.

NMK:
I wonder if any directors have come to you and said: ‘I have written a script only for you.’

WR:
They always say that. Of course everyone says: ‘Waheedaji, we have written this script only for you.’
[we laugh]

NMK:
Maybe it was true.

WR:
Not at all! They repeat the same line to everyone. And in
case I wasn’t free for some reason, or if there was a money issue and I couldn’t do the film, then they’d promptly go to another actress and say: ‘We have written this script only for you.’

NMK:
I am sure they did write the script only for you in some cases. I doubt they were fibbing all the time!

But tell me, when you heard the narration, did you have a good instinct about which story would make a good film?

WR:
I made mistakes, but usually I had a pretty good idea of what would work. I instantly knew about
Guide
. I had read the book and when I read the script, I thought to myself: ‘Wow, this is going to be good.’

I never think about the commercial success of a movie. You have to make the movie in the best way you know how. No one knows how the film will turn out or how it will be received. When David Lean made
Doctor Zhivago
, could he have imagined that his next film,
Ryan’s Daughter
, would not appeal as much? It may have been a good movie but people were not crazy about it.

If any producer were able to predict the success of a film then he would be God! Everyone would go rushing to him and ask him if their films will succeed at the box office. No one anywhere in the world really knows what will work for an audience. And that’s part of the excitement of making movies.

When I was making
Khamoshi
in the late sixties some people asked why I was acting in a film with such a heavy subject, a
subject they thought no one would like. But I personally liked the story as well as the character I played—a nurse called Radha. I did not think about how well the film would do. What mattered to me was feeling strongly about the subject.

NMK:
Did the final film ever match the story narration?

WR:
No, never! But that’s to be expected. Directors have to make changes during the various stages of production.

The dialogue was always changing. Many times the scene was given to us on the day of the shoot. On the spot! The assistant director would hand us a bit of paper on which the dialogue was written, and we would start memorizing the lines. Then he would come back and say: ‘The scene has changed, don’t memorize those lines.’ Oh my God, now to memorize new ones!

There were even times when the dialogue was written shot by shot. Even after we had filmed a scene, the director decided to change a line here or there and we had to go for another take.

This is how we all worked—Nargisji, Meena Kumari, Dilip Saab, Balraj Sahni, Nutan and all the others. In spite of that, we didn’t do too badly, did we?
[smiles]

NMK:
Far from it! Your generation set the bar high for acting in Indian cinema.

I am curious to know if there is a performance you like above all others?

With (L to R) O.P. Ralhan, Meena Kumari, Mrs Kewal Singh, Nargis, Geeta Singh and her father, Ambassador Kewal Singh, in Moscow during the 1967 film festival where
Teesri Kasam
was screened.

WR:
I don’t watch my old films. If I happen to see one, I am very critical. The acting, the hairstyle, the clothes—I think it’s all very bad. I always feel I could have done better.

Recently there was a programme in Ahmedabad where my work was discussed. They played a scene from
Aadmi
and when I saw the clip I thought I hadn’t done too badly. But rarely do I think I’ve done well.

NMK:
When dubbing became the norm in Hindi cinema, actors had a second chance of enhancing their performance through
re-recording their lines. Until the late 1960s, films were being made in sync sound, which favours more naturalistic acting.

What did you prefer? Dubbing or sync sound?

WR:
Filming in sync sound is by far the best way of working. You can put in real effort, shot by shot.

When we were dubbing, we worked on the scene as a whole and it’s easy to miss the finer nuances of a shot. Filming in sync sound meant paying greater attention to your lines in every shot.

I found it very difficult recreating the emotion and mood when I started dubbing because I was used to working in sync sound. If the lip movement matched, the emotion didn’t, and when I got the emotion right the lip movement was out of sync. I had to concentrate hard to match the mood of the scene that I might have shot months earlier.

But finally it didn’t take long to grasp what was needed once I got used to dubbing. Basically you had to keep three things in mind: the mood, the lip movement and the emotion.

I am very pleased Hindi films are being shot in sync sound again. For years Hindi films were dubbed and I didn’t enjoy working like that.

NMK:
I think sound can enhance a sense of reality on screen and I am sure dubbing added substantially to the artificiality of some Hindi films.

Often there isn’t much sound perspective either. Obvious
examples are when you see a busy outdoor scene and the voices of the actors have the clarity of a quiet studio recording. Or the actor’s voice sounds so close to the mike, even when he or she is in a wide shot. Dubbing increased the split between the actor’s physical presence and the voice.

WR:
That’s right.

I think we actors also concentrated better when working in sync sound. It imposed a certain discipline on the set, and though there were 100 or 150 people around—the spot boys, the light boys, the focus pullers, the make-up assistants, the hairstylists, etc.—they went silent when the director shouted:
‘Start action! Roll sound!’ Everyone stood perfectly still.