Despite my great admiration for Indian cinema, Namak Halaal represents for me all that is unfortunate about the Bachchan phenomenon and the tendency to grotesque overacting and ridiculous plots that it spawned and which has done so much to cheapen Hindi cinema since. Do not get me wrong. Amitabh Bachchan is in my view a fine and multi-talented performer but this does not alter the fact that his period as a superstar has had a very detrimental effect on Bollywood films. Interestingly Amitabh's introduction to cinema owed much to his undoubtedly beautiful speaking voice (doing the commentary for a Hindi film by the Bengali director Mrinal Sen in 1968 and later also for a Hindi film by an even greater Bengali director, Satyajit Ray's Shatranj Ke Khilari). He turned in a beautifully understated performance as the rather uptight young doctor in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anand (1970) - a sort of thinking man's Love Story about a man dying of cancer - for which he very deservedly won an award as best supporting actor (to then-superstar Rajesh Khannah's performance in the title role). In Namak Haram (1973), he was again teamed with Khanah but this time distinctly upstaged the star. Zanjeer in the same year gave him famously the image of 'an angry young man' and the period of his superstardom began.
By the time of Namak Halaal, an Amitabh film revolves entirely round Amitabh. The camera contrives to make him look even taller than he really is, dwarfing the other characters and allows him to upstage even those scenes where he is not the principal. The totally incredible plot is entirely subordinated to the set-piece scenes of slapstick comedy or elaborate dance-routines at which Amitabh excelled.
The film has a star-studded cast but even an actor of the calibre of Saashi Kapoor is relegated to a rather embarrassed and embarrassing support-role. More tragic still is the case of Smita Patil, an actress hitherto known for her hugely important contribution to serious realistic cinema (and 'regional' or non-Hindi cinema), here acting for the first time in a popular blockbuster and given nothing to do but cast loving looks at the superstar. The moment where one sees her love-struck face reflected in Amitabh's chest-hair may be thought of as comic but seems to me to be one of the most distasteful images in any Hindi film.
Patil looks embarrassed a good deal of the time and legend has it that she burst into tears after the famous dance in the rain with the big B. Hardly surprisingly since the dance, like other Bachchan routines, is anything but two-way and simply involves Bachchan tossing Patil to and fro like a sort of doll.
Namak Halaal is certainly a clever showpiece for the superstar but it is nevertheless a very unhealthy piece of cinema and marks all too certainly the end of the period of the Indian new wave (which had made a star of Smita Patil)but also of the socio-political elements that (however sentimentalised) had previously characterised even much popular Hindi film-making. It ushers in the dominance of an essentially caricatural Bollywood style which is still the hallmark of the great majority of mainstream films.
By the time of Namak Halaal, an Amitabh film revolves entirely round Amitabh. The camera contrives to make him look even taller than he really is, dwarfing the other characters and allows him to upstage even those scenes where he is not the principal. The totally incredible plot is entirely subordinated to the set-piece scenes of slapstick comedy or elaborate dance-routines at which Amitabh excelled.
The film has a star-studded cast but even an actor of the calibre of Saashi Kapoor is relegated to a rather embarrassed and embarrassing support-role. More tragic still is the case of Smita Patil, an actress hitherto known for her hugely important contribution to serious realistic cinema (and 'regional' or non-Hindi cinema), here acting for the first time in a popular blockbuster and given nothing to do but cast loving looks at the superstar. The moment where one sees her love-struck face reflected in Amitabh's chest-hair may be thought of as comic but seems to me to be one of the most distasteful images in any Hindi film.
Patil looks embarrassed a good deal of the time and legend has it that she burst into tears after the famous dance in the rain with the big B. Hardly surprisingly since the dance, like other Bachchan routines, is anything but two-way and simply involves Bachchan tossing Patil to and fro like a sort of doll.
Namak Halaal is certainly a clever showpiece for the superstar but it is nevertheless a very unhealthy piece of cinema and marks all too certainly the end of the period of the Indian new wave (which had made a star of Smita Patil)but also of the socio-political elements that (however sentimentalised) had previously characterised even much popular Hindi film-making. It ushers in the dominance of an essentially caricatural Bollywood style which is still the hallmark of the great majority of mainstream films.