Faraar (India, 1975)

Faraar is sort of a Bollywood take on the 1955 William Wyler film The Desperate Hours, but with enough twists of its own to make it far more than a simple remake or retread. Given my recent diet of overblown masala films, it was nice to be reminded that seventies Bollywood was capable of turning out taut, small ensemble dramas like this one.

In the film, Amitabh Bachchan plays a young artist who takes the law into his own hands after a rich man murders his sister and uses his wealth and influence to walk free. Now a murderer himself, Bachchan ends up hiding out in the house of the very police investigator (Sanjeev Kumar) who has been charged with tracking him down, taking the investigator and his family hostage. Complicating things considerably is the fact that the policeman's wife (Sharmila Tagore) turns out to be a former lover of Amitabh's -- and that Amitabh is privy to a secret former life of hers of which her husband is unaware.

Faraar is seriously entertaining, thanks to crisp direction by Shankar Mukherjee and good performances all around -- in particular a lean and hungry turn by Amitabh in the days just before the double whammy of Deewaar and Sholay would launch him into the upper reaches of superstardom. Almost overshadowing all of those contributions, however, is the film's set design, which, in the case of the family home where most of the action takes place, is simply masterful. The incorporation of marbled and tinted glass and a variety of latticework provides opportunities for all kinds of striking effects of light and shadow, as well as a number of evocatively constricting framing devices for the shots of the actors. As a result, rarely is anyone seen entirely clearly, making the house a perfect physical manifestation of the murky moral landscape in which its adult inhabitants find themselves.

I also really enjoyed Mukherjee's reliance on some somewhat old fashioned, but totally charming graphic-oriented visual storytelling devices:

After a flashback shows us the prosecution's version of events, the defendant has his say...

...but the psychedelically-colored negative effect tells us that it's all just a crazy tissue of lies.

Who will Sharmila choose? Sanjeev....

...or Amitabh?

The Amitabh-o-gram not only reads itself to you, but shows you Amitabh's face as it does.

All in all, Faraar brings to mind classic cinematic melodrama in the tradition of Douglas Sirk and Nicholas Ray, That, to me, adds up to a pretty high recommendation.

And, of course, Weng Weng as "Bobby".