Refined Comedy films in the recent years had caught public attention:
Performance of a comedian is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks of an actor as said by renouned scholar, playwriter, actor and intellectual named Utpal Dutta. The audience never laugh unless they are strong sense of humour displayed by actors. In recent years films like Malamaal Weekly, had maintained the comedy impulse and created sequences which were serio-comic in nature. A lot of things happen in the villages in India, which are funny if visualised from an urbanised point of view. That had happened in the film.
The person who had won a lottery ticket had died out of surprise and the lottery seller and his friend try to impersonate the actual winner. As the conversation between the two friends became public, the other villagers had to be consulted to enter into a secret pact for extracting the money from the concerned officer who had come from the city not knowing the winner by face. The rich feudal lord in the village came to know about the pact and tried to let the know the concerned officer about it but her vehicle drowned in a water-body and the officer presented the cheque to the villager who pretended to be the lottery winner.
There were instances where Om Puri who pretended to be the lottery winner fell down on a container full of atta, and his legs getting trapped in a water container, in addition to Paresh Rawal taking Arbaaz Khan to wrong addresses while showing the house of Om Puri. The funny performances included innocence and backwardness of rural people in these type of situations.
The comedy portions reminded people of other comedy films made in the past including kisi se na kehna. There also Utpal Dutta looked for a girl who respected Indian traditional values. His son loved Deepti Naval who was well educated and had urbanised backing and Saeed Jaffery had to create a drama to show her to be a village girl in order to convince his friend for the marriage of Farooq Sheikh, his son.
The questions relating to Indian epics were framed by himself (which were not known to Utpal Dutta) and the answers were previously mentioned to Deepti Naval and the falsehood relating to her identity ultimately helped in the successful marriage of his friend’s son. The success of these types of films depend largely on strong scripts and Rishikesh Mukherjee (the Director) managed to provide powerful scripts in these films. These types of films should be made in future which can impress even serious viewers who are not interested on pomp and grandeur of unrealistic films.
Article By: Chitta Ranjan Chatterji. (Ex. Chief PP, CMM Court, Kolkata).
