The Clairvoyant Americans!

The Clairvoyant Americans!

The Americans have been called a lot of names and things, bold, brash, belligerent depending upon, I guess, viewpoints of name-callers.  Anurag Mathur even labored over a couple of hundred pages (full of extremely readable stuff) scrutinizing the Americans and finally declared them to be inscrutable. But one aspect of American character has by and large remained unnoticed and that is how clairvoyant they are.  

 Last week a friend of mine sent me two recordings of songs. Both foot-tapping numbers meant for young generation. One from the US, ‘Watermelon song’ by Tennesse Ernie Ford (1957),  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OAgcsVNzE4  and another from our own bollywood blockbuster Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, ‘ hum the wo thi  aur sama rangeen’  (1958). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OAgcsVNzE4 .  

And I was immediately stuck by the clairvoyance of the Americans. Here was S D Burman,  one of our talented music directors of Bollywood and before he could even compose his tune, there was this guy Ford sitting somewhere in US of A who just went ahead and created  his version of that song. True, Ford got a few tunes not exactly right but overall I guess he did a pretty good job.  Guess we should give him 8 or 9 on the Clairvoyant Scale (0 for no clairvoyancy and 10 for perfect clairvoyancy).

Time and time again I have noticed this clairvoyance. Take for example Ittefaq, a  murder mystery of 1969 -  Rajesh Khanna  - Nanda starrer with Yash Chopra as the Director -  which sort of brought in a new genre in the Indian cinema. Someone in US clairvoyantly caught the waves that producer BR Chopra was to generate in 5 years time and managed to put it all together in Signpost To Murder (1964).  MGM  got most of the plot right, murderer confined to mental asylum – escaping only to run headlong into another murder – and how he gets out of the trap. But I guess the powers of clairvoyance must not be 100% foolproof because I thought that Ittefaq was a much better movie.  The plot of Signpost to Murder was definitely weak in the sense that the second murder was planned under the assumption that the protagonist will manage to escape from the asylum AND reach the exact place where the second murder would take place; even Bollywood would have baulked at such one in a zillion coincidence.  The second murder is actually planned in anticipation of the convict making his getaway and is effected before he reaches the “scene of crime”.  In Ittefaq, thankfully, the two events were independent of each other and only coincidence was that the convict lands up in the wrong place. It is then that baddies decide to pin the crime on him.  This much coincidence is on par with the Bollywood standards, so it is acceptable. The unraveling of both murders was also done quite sleekly in Ittefaq  unlike Signpost to Murder.  I would rate Signpost to Murder, a  poor 6 or 7 on the Clairvoyant Scale.

My second case of clairvoyance is much better one where AVM Production Chori Chori in (1956) found an uncanny pre-incarnation in “It Happened One Night” (1934), the Clark Gable  -  Claudette Colbert starrer directed by Frank Capra from Columbia Pictures.  The film went on break all the records by winning 5 Oscars, Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Actor, Best  Actress and Best Screenplay -  it was the first time any movie had swept the Oscars.  Chori Chori didn’t manage all that success, I guess because these clairvoyant Americans had beaten it to the punch.  But Raj Kapoor and Nargis gave a wonderful performance in what was to be their last picture together as a lead-pair and the music of  Shankar  - Jaikishen, in my opinion, was the best that they had ever composed.  I am not aware if any other clairvoyant American musician had tried to usurp SJ’s claim to fame but, as usual, I am open for correction.  As for the Clairvoyance Scale I am pretty certain that “It happened One Night” scores a perfect 10.    

LazyBee

17^th September 2016