Gumnaam (1965)

 

Director: Raja Nawathe

Screenplay: Dhruva Chatterjee

Based on And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Cast: Nanda as Asha; Manoj Kumar as Anand ; Pran as Barrister Rakesh; Helen as Kitty Kelly; Mehmood as the Butler; Dhumal as Dharamdas; Madan Puri as Dr. Acharya; Tarun Bose as Madhusudan Sharma; Manmohan as Kishan

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #222

 

Here, life is gorier than death.

With its opening Gumnanm starts off well bolting out of the gates - a man orders another man to be run over, with a will being immediately passed on, only to be shot by a mysterious man dead and the film to kick into the opening credits of a city road at night with a mix of proto garage rock guitar against orchestral strings for emphasis. Even the fact it is not really a horror film, instead adapting the Agatha Christie story And Then There Were None, is compensated by the fact that you get a lot of gothic moments and even sets straight out of a horror story. The one tragic aspect is that, unfortunately, Gumanaam does have a bad ending. Following ten people and an airplane staff member who are taken to a mansion on an island where the ten chosen individuals will be murdered one by one in a revenge plot, I feel this has to come up front in the narrative, as this is a pitch perfect example of when tying up the loose ends and concluding the results to leave everyone happy can ruin all the good.

Particularly when everything beforehand is very good, in its own idiosyncratic logic as a Bollywood film made in the sixties with its own distinct structure, giving this a huge distinction separate from other films of this type of plot. Ten people are selected for a trip to a luxurious mansion. Even this prologue, to set that detail up, has its own literal song and dance. Many will know this film because its main theme played here, the rock n roll/surf guitar hybrid Jaan Pehechan Ho, was later used in the 2001 adaptation of Ghost World, but in context you have a nightclub of Western iconography and sixties colour (with purple and pink prominent throughout), with white suits on men, elegant Western night dresses for women, and Lone Ranger black masks for everyone. This immediately establishes that, as a pulp/psychotronic or just merely distinct piece of pop culture from India, this will be idiosyncratic.

One logic step you need to adapt to is that, of course, a lot of Bollywood including this one will have musical numbers even in the least expected genres. Bollywood's reinterpretation of A Nightmare on Elm Street (Mahakaal (1994)) had one, so will this. It has an odd touch in that, even when the cast learn that they will be killed off one-by-one, and even after this happens, they will still have comedy scenes, a romance between two of the cast members which includes a musical sequence in the rain, a trope in Bollywood which gets around their censorship with a very explicitly symbolism and in the lyrics, and musical numbers every least expected place in general. And yet, if you let yourself go with this, it does not prove an issue at all. In fact, whilst not three hours long like many Bollywood films, the two and a half hour length actually proves a virtue in that you get to live with these characters even if they are archetypes. The songs themselves for the cast even here add a lot more to their personalities by allowing them to stand out.

Archetypes definitely have to be on mind as there are aspects here which are not acceptable today or are part of cultural customs which would not be held high on. This film does have the duality between the chaste, good female character in Asha (Nanda), the niece of the deceased man, and Kitty Kelly (played by Helen), the later a Westernised figure who represents decadence played Helen with all the fashion iconography of the West, including the odd decision to go swimming in her normal clothes at one point, and the prolific and legendary Nanda wearing traditional dress. However, thankfully even this film undercuts this at points despite being embroiled in this stereotyping - you do actually like Kitty Kelly, even if she is complicit in the original murder, even having her own musical number despite all the deaths that have happened of just enjoying life, and there is a sequence where the two women get drunk and have a drunken musical number which is almost triumphant, all in spite of the male lead acting in a chauvinist brutal way to undercut it afterwards. There is also the butler, played by legendary comedic role veteran Mehmood, who is a character you eventually realise is played by an actor in blackface, or explicitly more faked tanned, his darker skin at one point used as detraction by Kitty Kelly in one moment her character is undercut in a terrible way.

It has not aged well, but with the actor Mehmood even at his most buffoonish, the butler also happens to be the best character of the film. Making his entrance on the levitating onto his feet on the dining table in a body bag, the Butler, despite being a nameless figure, stands out even as a broad cartoonish character for fun, a figure I immediately was won over with as the one person in the island who will not be killed, having to make sure everyone is fed and the mansion is kept running, and can act like his own Greek chorus to everyone as a result. In response to one of the most evocative touches of the film, a female voice singing through the island the cast is one a song of "someone is anonymous " that everyone and the viewer hears frequently, he has heard that cursing song so much, a "hit in the jungle", that it annoys him, and even the prop of his lilac tea set, stuck to the serving tray, becomes memorable for Mehmood waving it about. Even in mind to the problematic nature of the character being in blackface, and a ridiculous bowl cut hair style and Chaplin moustache that suggests just a cheap comedy figure, he becomes a sincerely lovable figure. He even gets a musical number, just after the one scene of racism, where he proclaims regardless of the colour of his skin he is still a great lover, which does not deal with the tastelessness of before, but offers a soothing pill as he gets to be a lothario in a nearly surreal dance number in his dreams of ancient psychotronic temple architecture, with dancing women, psychedelic colours and statues with flashing lights built into them.

It does become a chimera of emotions due to the tonal and genre shifts, justifying the gothic horror tag for its brief moments in the holy temple in the environment, and it works as much due to director Raja Nawathe making this a stylish film to match the content. The colours, the canted camera angles etc. but also completely inspired moments such as a female character playing a grand piano intertwining with the non-diagetic score at the same time, all of which makes sure this never becomes a dull or conventional piece, something which sadly one could have done with this premise. It is entirely with a shame the film has to have a conclusion, and that the one chosen was what we end up with. [Major Plot Spoilers] Between the fact that it involves a character never seen, baring in disguise, as the culprit, and a generic crime related explanation, it absolutely feels out of place even if it might have been impossible for Gumnaam to fully be satisfying, between the premise's contrivances to how to even explain the ghostly female voice we here throughout. Even how abruptly the film ends, resolving itself with an airplane acting as a deus ex machina with police on board, falters the film. [Spoilers]. It is undeniably, though, something pure in terms of a snapshot of a non-Western culture's take on cinema, and all the wild playfulness and distinction that can entail, in how genre tropes cliché in the West even at this time are turned on their head and what appealed to its nation's audience.. It has obvious issues, including problematic content, but this indefinable film in terms of genre is compelling for never, until that unfortunate ending, being predictable.