Nanda: The girl-next-door

One of Nanda's best performances came with Yash Chopra?s Ittefaq, writes Manjula Negi.

The nice girl-next-door Nanda, whose birthday it is today (January 8) took her time moving away from the image of younger sister to blossom into a full-fledged heroine and went on to do more than 40 memorable films.

One of her best performances came with Yash Chopra’s songless thriller Ittefaq in 1965. Co-starring Rajesh Khanna, who was then still a novice (his Aradhana was still four years away) while Nanda was a star, the film is a whodunit with convincing performances from the duo. Incidentally, Nanda never shied away from acting with new heroeslike Dharmendra (in Mera Kasoor Kya Hai) and Manoj Kumar (in Bedaag).

Dilip Rai (Khanna) returns home one night from work to find his wife, Sushma, murdered. His hysterical sister-in-law Renu (Bindu) accuses him of having killed his wife in a fit of rage. When Dilip breaks down and laughs hysterically during the court scene (relying heavily on shadow-play), he is sent to an asylum for treatment. He makes his escape from the asylum with the police hot on his heels.

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Armed with a revolver, he gatecrashes into Rekha’s (Nanda) palatial house even as she is hearing an announcement on the radio that a murderer is on the loose. Even though she becomes aware of his presence, she doesn’t blow the whistle on him either when the neighbours call to check or when the police come calling. She reveals that she is alone at home as her husband Jagmohan, has gone to Calcutta for work.

For the next couple of reels, the film escalates the tension to fever pitch as the overtly sexy Rekha tries to free herself from Dilip’s grip. She lunges for her husband's revolver, sneaks a phone call to the police station when a drenched Dilip excuses himself to change into her husband's clothes, and flashes a torch on her drawing room windows. She even keeps back a visiting doctor (Gajanan Jagirdar) and a police officer (Sujit Kumar) by offering them cups of coffee. But all her efforts come to naught.

But when all these tricks fail, she decides to find out more by befriending Dilip. It almost turns into a seduction game as Dilip and Rekha exchange intimate notes about their on-the-rocks marriages, while sipping their drinks. A cut above the rest of the film, this sequence is slow-paced and almost calm in tone. Its somnambulantquality is in sharp contrast to the pace that precedes and succeeds it in the film. It acts as a much-needed breather in an almost breathlessly paced film.

Ittefaq veers sharply towards its thriller pace again when Dilip accidentally discovers Jagmohan's body in the bathtub. He hysterically accuses Rekha of murdering her husband. Resorting to physical force, he forces Rekha to look into the tub - but the body has disappeared!An enraged Rekha convinces Dilip he is hallucinating. But a phone call from Calcutta, inquiring after Jagmohan’s return, reignites his suspicions. In a high-strung climax, the police break into Rekha's house to find Dilip and Rekha exchanging a flurry of allegations.

Nanda is a spellbinder in the film. Her character seems to be constantly in a state of emotional upheaval and she conveys it with a carefully controlled performance. Acclaimed for its performances and experimental style of filming (more suggestive than overt) keeping in mind the subject, Ittefaq’s background score was provided by none less than Salil Chaudhary.

Yash Chopra, who was handed over the reins of director by elder brother BR Chopra distinguished himself. It is also one of the first films where one finds the stamp of the Yash Chopra glossy style. Clad in a simple, yet seductive, transparent blue chiffon, Nanda is the epitome of innocence until proven guilty. Though the second choice for the film (Mala Sinha, a perennial favourite of the Chopra camp back then could not do the film), she does justice to the role of a confused woman who is being held to ransom.

Based on the play Lamp-post to Murder (originally in French, then adapted to English and finally adapted in Gujarati called Dhummasfrom whence it was picked up by the Chopras), the film was way ahead of its times. It was decided to do the film without songs or an interval – an unheard of thing in the 60s, which was really golden age of Hindi cinema – and made more so by the presence of melody and hummable songs. The film’s script was written by Akhtar-Ul-Imam within a week and it was shot at Rajkamal Studios in 28 days, by cinematographer Kay Gee.

Among other things, a lot of low-angle shots and hand-held camera movements make Ittefaq a watchable experience even today.