Within
his
short
lifespan
of
63
years,
Raj
Kapoor
left
behind
an
incredible
cinematic
legacy.
Dinesh
Raheja
continues
celebrating
Raj
Kapoor’s
birth
centenary
by
looking
at
seven
sequences
from
his
films
that
have
defined
Hindi
cinema.
Barsaat:
The
Love
Call
of
the
Violin
The
heart-thumping
immediacy
of
Raj
Kapoor-Nargis’
love
scenes
span
the
14
films
they
acted
in
together.
Barsaat
(1949)
is
a
love
story
between
a
simple
pahadi
girl
Reshma
(Nargis)
who
falls
for
a
‘pardesi‘
Pran
(Kapoor).
He
is
a
sensitive
soul
and
believes
in
true
love
but
grows
insecure
when
his
worldly
friend
(Premnath)
mockingly
predicts
that
his
love
story
will
fail
against
parental
pressure.
Pran
plaintively
plays
the
violin
which
carries
over
the
mountains
to
Reshma’s
home.
She
comes
running
and
falls
at
his
feet
in
an
ardent
avowal
of
her
love.
But
Pran
is
a
demanding
lover.
He
plays
fervently
at
night-time
too,
continuing
even
when
he
cuts
his
fingers
on
the
strings
of
his
violin.
It’s
a
test.
Will
she
acknowledge
the
primacy
of
love
over
all
else?
Reshma
is
hard
put
to
avoid
her
parents
but
finally
abandons
caution
and
flees
to
him.
She
kisses
his
bleeding
fingers
and,
in
an
imaginatively
angled
shot,
swoons
in
his
arms.
This
image
from
Barsaat
went
on
to
become
the
famous
RK
Films
logo
with
a
silhouetted
man
holding
a
violin
in
one
hand
and
a
swooning
woman
in
the
other.
It
can
be
seen
at
the
start
of
every
Kapoor
film
thereafter.
Awara:
The
Boat,
the
Beach,
the
Slap
One
of
Hindi
cinema’s
most
resonant
passion
play
is
in
the
Awara
seaside
sequence.
Childhood
friends
Raj
(Kapoor)
and
Rita
(Nargis)
reconnect
with
joy
as
adults.
However,
she
is
a
lawyer
and
he
hides
from
her
the
fact
that
he
has
become
a
criminal.
Their
outlook
is
different
(she
sees
the
moon
in
the
sky,
he
notices
the
dark
clouds)
but
their
passion
overrides
it
all
on
a
frolicsome
trip
to
the
beach.
While
changing,
she
warns
him
to
behave
like
a
gentleman
(‘shareef’).
When
he
counters
that
he
is
not
one,
she
jokingly
calls
him
‘junglee‘.
This
unwittingly
hits
home.
He
twists
her
arm
and
brutishly
slaps
her
repeatedly,
asking
‘Junglee
hoon?
Awara
hoon?‘
Her
unflinching
love
leads
to
his
lament:
‘Kise
maroon,
tumhe
ya
apne
aap
ko?‘
He’s
torn
by
self-hatred;
angry
at
the
sordid
truth
of
his
shameful
secret.
The
scene
cuts
to
a
boat
and
the
love
song
Dum
Bhar
Jo
Udhar
Munh
Phere.
At
the
song’s
end,
Nargis
stands
on
one
end
of
the
rocking
boat
and
warns:
‘Ek
kadam
bhi
aage
badhaya
toh
kashti
ulat
kar
doob
jayegi‘
before
declaring,
‘Doob
jaane
do‘.
A
directorial
triumph
for
Raj
Kapoor,
the
sequence
captures
the
reckless
quality
of
Rita’s
love
for
a
man
with
outsize
issues,
and
indeed
of
all
love
before
and
since.
Shri
420:
The
Ultimate
Seduction,
The
Ultimate
Betrayal
The
Raj-Nargis
romances
resonated
with
audiences,
so
their
break-up
scene
in
Shri
420
almost
rocked
the
world
off
its
axis.
Shri
420
is
a
morality
tale
in
which
Kapoor’s
protagonist
Raj
is
torn
between
the
conflicting
charms
of
the
virtuous
Vidya
(Nargis)
who
is
content
with
his
earning
Rs
45
at
his
job
at
a
laundry,
and
Maya
(Nadira)
who
gives
him
access
to
easy
but
ill-gotten
gains.
On
Diwali
night,
Raj
excitedly
brings
Vidya
to
a
swanky
night
club
where
he
has
started
making
money
as
a
professional
gambler
and
by
pretending
to
be
a
prince.
But
Vidya
is
repelled
by
the
lies
and
deception.
When
she
leaves
in
a
huff,
Raj
chases
after
her
till
he
is
stopped
by
his
boss
and
by
Maya
who
tellingly
breaks
into
Mud
Mud
Ke
Na
Dekh.
Raj
folds
like
a
pack
of
cards.
Without
a
backward
glance
at
Vidya,
he
joins
in
the
merriment
and
sings
and
dances.
It’s
the
ultimate
seduction,
matched
by
the
ultimate
betrayal.
Kapoor’s
tragicomic
tramp
became
an
allegory
for
the
citizens
of
a
newly
Independent
India
who
now
had
the
freedom
to
choose
their
path
for
the
future.
Sangam:
A
Letter
Fractures
A
Man
And
His
Marriage
Sundar
(Raj
Kapoor)
is
bent
over
double,
crawling
on
his
hands
and
knees,
furtively
collecting
scraps
of
paper
discarded
by
his
wife
Radha
(Vyjayantimala).
The
scraps
are
from
a
love
letter
written
to
his
wife
by
an
unknown
ex.
With
directorial
flair,
Kapoor
visually
presents
to
the
viewer
how
love,
possessiveness
and
fierce
jealousy
have
reduced
the
brave
air
force
officer
to
this
act
of
self
humiliation.
This
tense
sequence
begins
when
Radha
coquettishly
asks
her
husband
to
choose
a
piece
of
jewellery
from
her
cupboard.
As
he
does
so,
a
letter
flutters
loose.
Kapoor
frames
his
composition
so
that
Radha
watches
in
her
vanity
mirror
with
escalating
panic
and
horror
as
her
husband
reads
aloud
the
love
letter
from
her
ex.
Vyjayantimala’s
expression
pointedly
conveys
that
she
knows
her
world
is
crumbling
around
her.
For
Sundar,
his
wife
Radha
and
he
inhabited
a
hermetically
sealed
romantic
world
that
had
room
for
just
the
two
of
them.
But
now
a
shadow
has
entered
in
the
form
of
an
ex-admirer
of
his
wife.
Despite
her
desperate
pleas
and
avowals
of
love,
he
can’t
let
go
of
the
past.
This
well-conceived
scene
is
the
dramatic
pivot
of
the
film.
Mera
Naam
Joker:
Death
Doesn’t
Stop
The
Show
From
Going
On
Raj
Kapoor’s
quasi-autobiographical
epic
that
famously
tanked
at
the
time
of
its
release,
Mera
Naam
Joker
veers
choose
to
self
parody
and
melodrama
at
times
but
has
benefited
from
subsequent
re-assessment.
It
has
the
entertainer
playing
Raju,
a
clown
who
hides
his
circus
job
from
his
mother
because
the
circus
had
claimed
the
life
of
his
father.
His
mother
learns
of
his
secret,
however,
and
collapses
when
she
sees
him
perform
on
the
trapeze.
In
a
poignant
sequence,
a
distraught
Raju
comes
off
stage
to
learn
that
his
beloved
mother
has
been
declared
dead.
And
in
the
very
next
minute,
he
hears
the
cue
for
him
to
reappear
on
stage.
Heartbroken,
he
remains
rooted
by
his
mother
till
his
boss
(Dharmendra)
announces
that
the
hansta
gaata
Raju
will
indeed
be
on
stage
next.
The
joker
goes
on
stage
and
executes
the
emotional
cartwheels
necessary
to
perform
pranks
and
make
his
audience
laugh.
His
boss
reminds
him
of
the
age-old
showbiz
adage:
The
show
must
go
on.
Kapoor
stayed
true
to
this
belief
when
he
overcame
the
failure
of
the
film
as
well
as
the
end
of
his
career
as
a
leading
man
by
bouncing
back
big
with
his
next
directorial
venture,
Bobby.
Bobby:
Mujhse
dosti
karoge?
At
the
age
of
49,
Raj
Kapoor
got
a
creative
facelift.
For
the
first
time,
he
didn’t
cast
himself
as
his
film’s
protagonist.
Instead,
the
director
chose
two
newcomers,
son
Rishi
Kapoor
and
Dimple
Kapadia,
and
turned
them
into
overnight
sensations
with
Bobby
(1973),
a
young
love
story
set
against
the
clashing
ideologies
of
the
rich
and
poor.
The
couple’s
first
conversation
is
one
of
the
most
memorable
meet-cutes
in
the
rom-com
universe.
Poor
little
rich
kid
Raja
(Rishi
Kapoor)
goes
to
visit
his
childhood
governess.
He
is
enchanted
when
the
door
is
opened
by
a
stunning
beauty
(Dimple
Kapadia),
the
very
girl
who
he
had
earlier
fallen
in
love
with
at
first
glimpse.
She
has
been
cooking
so
she
absently
runs
her
hand
through
her
hair
leaving
a
streak
of
besan.
He
is
entranced.
By
the
time
his
governess
has
finished
fussing
over
him,
the
girl
has
returned.
She
cleans
up
well!
‘I
am
Bobby.
Mujhse
dosti
karoge?‘
she
invites,
as
she
sits
cross-legged
on
the
arm-rest
of
a
chair,
revealing
a
long,
bare
pair
of
legs.
The
country’s
young
male
populace
surged
forward,
but
Rajesh
Khanna
had
beaten
them
to
it
and
was
already
married
to
Dimple
by
the
time
the
film
released.
It
didn’t
stop
this
scene
or
the
film
from
going
down
in
cinematic
history.
Ram
Teri
Ganga
Maili:
When
The
Woman
Proposes
Kapoor
continued
to
couch
caustic
social
comment
amidst
young
love
stories
even
in
the
action-dominated
1980s.
He
helmed
his
final
film,
Ram
Teri
Ganga
Maili,
with
a
lead
character
who
was
in
step
with
the
times.
Like
flint
and
stone,
like
match
and
tinder,
city-bred
Naren
(Rajiv
Kapoor)
and
nàive
mountain
maid
Ganga
(Mandakini)
share
an
instant
fiery
connection.
Their
courtship
ritual
is
starkly
different
with
Ganga
taking
the
lead
and
kissing
his
freezing
nose.
When
her
brother
fixes
her
match
to
another,
Ganga
asserts
‘Usse
maine
toh
nahin
choona‘
and
straight
up
proposes
to
Naren.
She
is
emboldened
by
a
tradition
in
their
mountain
community
that
allows
women
to
choose
their
groom
on
one
full
moon
night
every
year.
Naren
acquiesces
and
they
hug.
This
leads
to
Ganga
sealing
the
deal
by
declaring
it
to
all
in
the
chartbuster
song
Sun
Sahiba
Sun
in
which
she
tells
Naren,
‘Karle
Qubool
Mujhe
Hoga
Bada
Punn‘.
At
the
age
of
61,
Kapoor’s
creative
license
didn’t
need
renewal.
