Biwi No 1 Hindi Film

[Francisca Noggles]

The book's rights were bought after his production venture Chaudhvin Ka Chand (1960) became commercially successful and covered his company's loss following the failure of Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), his previous directorial project. Mitra and Alvi took a year to write the screenplay, facing difficulties in translating the novel from Bengali to Hindi. Principal photography took place in Andheri and Dhanyakuria with cinematographer V. K. Murthy; the film was edited by Y. G. Chawhan. Hemant Kumar composed the soundtrack and Shakeel Badayuni wrote the lyrics.

Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam became a milestone of Bollywood[citation needed] and is considered among the most important films in Dutt's career.[citation needed] In 2012, its screenplay was published as a book titled Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam: The Original Screenplay, which also contains interviews with the film's cast and crew. On the centenary of Indian cinema in 2013, IBN Live included Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam in their listing of "100 Greatest Indian Films of All Time".[4]

In Calcutta, a group of labourers is demolishing the ruins of an old haveli. When the workers break for lunch, the overseer walks around the site. As he sits, a flashback to the late 19th century begins.

The lower-class yet educated Atulya "Bhoothnath" Chakraborty arrives in the colonial Calcutta looking for work. Along with his brother-in-law, he lives in the haveli of the Choudhury zamindar family. Bhoothnath meets Subinay, a dedicated member of the religious sect Brahmo Samaj, and is employed at the factory Mohini Sindoor. Subinay's daughter Jaba hears their conversation and is amused by the behaviour of Bhoothnath, whom she considers an unsophisticated rural dweller. Bhoothnath becomes fascinated with the goings-on in the haveli and every night he observes the Choudhury brothers' decadent lifestyle.

When Bhootnath returns, he sees the haveli has been partially ruined. Chhoti Bahu is now a desperate alcoholic and her husband is paralysed. Meanwhile, Bhoothnath learns he and Jaba were betrothed as children. One night, Chhoti Bahu asks Bhoothnath to accompany her to a nearby shrine to pray for her husband; the elder zamindar Majhle Babu overhears their conversation and suspects Chhoti Bahu is having an affair with Bhoothnath, and orders his henchmen to chase them. Bhoothnath and Chhoti Bahu travel in a carriage, but Majhle Babu's henchmen stop it. Bhoothnath is knocked unconscious and Chhoti Bahu is abducted. When he wakes up in the hospital, Bansi tells Bhoothnath Chhoti Bahu has disappeared and her husband is dead.

The flashback ends. Bhoothnath's workers inform him a skeleton has been found in the ruins of the haveli. From the jewellery on the corpse, Bhoothnath realises it is the remains of Chhoti Bahu. In the last scene, a nostalgic Bhoothnath rides away in a carriage with Jaba, who is now his wife.

Guru Dutt wanted to adapt Bimal Mitra's novel Saheb Bibi Golam (1953) into a film after reading it and watching its staged version at Rang Mahal Theatre, Calcutta, with his wife Geeta, Mitra, and Abrar Alvi.[6][7] This marked the novel's second cinematic adaptation after the 1956 version.[8] The novel was written in and never translated from Bengali. Dutt asked Alvi to write a screenplay; according to Alvi, he was surprised Dutt gave him the offer because Dutt had previously discharged him from his company Guru Dutt Movies Pvt. Ltd. after Dutt's Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), in which Alvi served as the screenwriter, became a flop and he could not pay his workers.[6] Since then, Dutt decided to not direct any films he worked on.[9] After his next release Chaudhvin Ka Chand (1960) commercially succeeded, he was able to save the studio from bankruptcy and later acquired the rights of Saheb Bibi Golam.[10] Dutt and Alvi started translating the novel to Hindi but Alvi was not fluent in Bengali. They tried translating it word-for-word but realised the process would be really slow and stopped after a few days.[6]

Dutt invited Mitra, who lived in Calcutta, to visit him at a bungalow Dutt rented in Khandala. Alvi said Dutt was thorough on any aspects of his projects and that the bungalow was used to ensure both Mitra and Alvi concentrated on writing the screenplay. After arriving in Khandala, Mitra and Alvi invited a "Mr. Mukherjee", who was fluent in Bengali and Hindi, to be a "bridge between us". The translator, however, gave up after fifteen days, asking them to do the rest by themselves. Alvi said the screenplay was written "slowly but surely"; he and Mitra made many changes to the story so the film would be fit with Hindi audience's interest. For instance, they removed several characters who appear in the novel version, including Swami Vivekananda, and made Bhoothnath more nave and less educated.[11] Dutt's biographer Nasreen Munni Kabir estimated the translating took two months and said Dutt, who was impressed by the screenplay, suggested Alvi to direct the film.[10][12] Yasser Usman reported it was the first time the screenplay of a film Dutt produced was finished before filming began. In preparation, Alvi was sent to Calcutta to learn about the Bengali milieu and the zamindars' background.[13]

Dutt and Alvi completed the casting;[14] their first choice to play Bhoothnath was Shashi Kapoor, who was invited for a meeting with Dutt but he arrived two-and-a-half hours late, which irritated Dutt, who then declined to cast him.[15] Biswajit Chatterjee, who portrayed Bhoothnath in the play, became Dutt's next choice; he and Chatterjee had dinner at the Grand Hotel to discuss it.[7] The film was to be Chatterjee's Bollywood debut but his friends and fans informed him his popularity among Bengali people was increasing, so he reluctantly rejected the offer, a decision he later regretted.[16] The role was eventually played by Dutt, who had to shave his moustache to make him look younger.[17]

The film marked the sixth collaboration between Waheeda Rehman and Dutt.[27][28] In Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, Waheeda Rehman stars as the "couldn't-care-less carefree" Jabba.[29] After reading the novel, she wanted to play Chhoti Bahu but Dutt felt she was too young for that role, saying she looked more like a girl than a woman. Still insisting, she asked Dutt and the film's cinematographer V. K. Murthy for a photograph session in which she would dress up as Chhoti Bahu, wearing a Bengali sari and a tilaka. After looking at the photographs, Murthy agreed with Dutt and likened her to a child. When Alvi was appointed to direct the film, he called in Waheeda Rehman was and offered her the part of Jabba. Dutt disapproved of this casting because she was an established actress and he did not want her cast as the second female lead after Kumari. According to Dutt, the film's title represents its three leads; Sahib for Rehman, Bibi for Kumari, and Ghulam for Dutt, but these excluded Waheeda Rehman. She, however, told Dutt she was fine by it.[30]

Principal photography for Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam took place in Andheri and a forty-to-fifty-room haveli in Dhanyakuria.[31] It started on 1 January 1961 with a muhurat ceremony that was attended by the film's production team. The cinematographer was Murthy and the sets were designed by Biren Nag.[32] Bhanu Athaiya, who knew little about Bengali people and their looks, designed the costumes; Dutt sent her to Calcutta to prepare for filming.[33] According to Usman, Athaiya was also involved in the film's directing, especially that of the song sequences,[34] though only Alvi's name appears in the credits.[35]

Filming, except for the scenes that feature Chhoti Bahu, was almost completed by the beginning of 1962;[36] filming was completed with a 45-consecutive-day schedule in Andheri.[37] There are no scenes of Chhoti Bahu and Jabba together; Waheeda Rehman wanted to act with Kumari so she asked Dutt to rework the story. She suggested a scene in which Jabba persistently asks Bhootnath about Chhoti Bahu and he later takes her to the haveli. Dutt, however, dismissed the idea, saying the characters never meet in the novel and that the audience would not be interested by it.[38] After filming, P. Thackersey and Y. G. Chawhan handled the sound and editing, respectively.[39][40]

Posters for Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam were printed by Dutt and Alvi.[14] When the film was released on 29 July 1962,[45][46] the initial audience response was negative. A day after its premiere, Dutt went to Bombay's Minerva Cinema[47] and observed audiences were disappointed by the scene in which Chhoti Bahu asks for a last sip of alcohol and the song "Sahil Ki Taraf" that made the relationship between Chhoti Bahu and Bhoothnath ambiguous. He visited the director K. Asif's house and was suggested to make Chhoti Bahu recover from her addiction and her marital relationship improve. Dutt asked Alvi and Mitra to write a new climax and invited Kumari for another day's filming. The next day, while they were discussing the unexpected changes, Dutt decided to maintain it, and instead removed the Chhoti Bahu scene and "Sahil Ki Taraf", saying he did not mind if the film became a box-office disappointment. He added it was not possible to create another scene because the changes would the audience would be confused about the film's plot.[48]

Vinod Mehta, who biographed Kumari's life in 1972, said Kumari overshadows her co-stars and added; "Gone were the traces of frivolity, gone was the look of undernourishment, gone was the look of the 'girl-next-door'. She was now a woman of sharp, mature, mysterious persona ... whose one smile concealed a thousand enigmas."[59] In her 1985 book Profiles: Five Film-makers from India, Shampa Banerjee complimented Kumari for being the greatest performer in the film. She also found Bhoothnath to be completely different Dutt's previous roles, noting its "rustic simplicity and comic innocence, coupled with a deeply compassionate nature, lent Bhootnath's character an immediate realism, a natural complexity, which justified the keen internal version of the older Bhootnath who recounts the tale".[60] On 19 February 1989, The Illustrated Weekly of India's Khalid Mohamed called Waheeda Rehman's role equal to that of Kumari's and wrote of her importance in the film, even though hers is a supporting role whereas Kumari's is a lead.[61]

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