Publicity still for Do aankhen baarah haath (1957)

Do aankhen baarah haath won many awards at international film festivals, including the Silver Bear in Berlin, and it remains the only Hindi mainstream film that has been screened at the London Film Festival to date. However, it was only post-1955 and the release of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955) that ‘art cinema’ emerged in India. In the 1950s many films were produced within the mainstream that would now be regarded as ‘middle class’ or more ‘realist’ than movies produced today. The genre of DABH, the social problem film (rather than the social), emerged in the 1930s as the coming of sound encouraged the growth of a more literary cinema, with increased emphasis on the word rather than the spectacle. Shantaram’s socials at Prabhat (including Duniya na mane) were outstanding examples of this genre. It flourished in the 1950s in the hands of film-makers such as Bimal Roy (Bandini, Devdas, Do bigha zamin and Madhumati) and B. R. Chopra (Naya daur and Nikaah) and is certainly the ancestor of the 1970s’ middle-class cinema of Hrishikesh Mukherjee (Abhimaan, Anand and Gol maal) and others.

V. Shantaram was one of the founders of Poona’s Prabhat Studios, but when he left Prabhat to found his own studio, Rajkamal Kalamandir, he continued to make films in this genre along with more mainstream colour films such as Jhanak jhanak payal baje (1955).

DABH argues that prisoners, even murderers, are human beings who can be redeemed if they are well treated, and is very different from B. R. Chopra’s Kanoon (1960), which directly opposes the death penalty. Shantaram’s father was a Jain, a member of a religious group known for its strict respect for all forms of life, and the character he plays in this film, Adinath, has a Jain name. Adinath is jailer who believes that prisoners are human beings too, and he takes six prisoners to his experimental farm, Azad Nagar (Freetown), where he demonstrates he can prompt them to reform by giving them trust and respect. He becomes their father figure, or Babuji, whose two eyes (do aankhen) watch their twelve hands (baarah haath), whose prints they give him in case he should need to report their escape, and which work the land in honest labour. His compassion and self-sacrifice are the qualities for which this film has been most celebrated. However, the film is not relentlessly preachy, and Sandhya, as the toy-seller, provides many light­hearted moments, although she is also the focus for discourses about sexuality and motherhood.

The film contains several haunting songs, notably ‘Ae malik tere bande hum’ (music by Vasant Desai and lyrics by Bharat Vyas), whose rendition by Lata Mangeshkar (picturised on Sandhya) at the death of Babuji is one of her most loved songs, and the catchy ‘Tak tak dhoom dhoom’ which is repeated several times. The black-and-white cinematography in an expressionist style that had been popular in earlier Indian cinema comes is outmoded by the 1960s, but this is a fine example of its last flourish.

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1957, Genre – Crima/Drama, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Rajkamal, Director –V. Shantaram, Music Director – Vasant Desai, Cast - V. Shantaram, Sandhya, Ulhas, B. M. Vyas, Baburao Pendharkar, Paul Sharma, K. Date, S. K. Singh

V. Shantaram

After Barua’s Devdas set a nationwide trend for apocalyptic despondency, Shantaram felt the need to relay a more positive message to the country’s youth. Consequently, he made his masterpiece Aadmi (’39), where even after the hero loses his girl, he is shown not giving in to gloom but committing himself to his work.

Similarly, a strong strain of social commentary ran through most of V Shantaram’s many classics, each of which had a central theme: Do Ankhen Barah Haath (reintegration of criminals), Aadmi (rehabilitation of prostitutes), Padosi (communal harmony), Dahej (the evils of dowry) and above all Duniya Na Mane, where Shanta Apte plays a fiery adolescent protesting her marriage to an old man by making his life miserable. It seemed, whenever Shantaram wanted to expose the infections afflicting society, he would make another epochal film.

With his penchant for using dialogue as action, Shantaram’s films have been accused of resembling filmed theatre. While this is not entirely untrue, fact remains that he blended both forms to evolve an aesthetic of his own. He showed his fluency over the visual language of cinema too, in the famous opening shot from Amrit Manthan (’34) which was the close-up of Chandramohan’s eye as he searched for a victim to sacrifice.

From his debut in 1920, till his death in 1990, Shantaram was not only present at every important milestone of Indian cinema, he was responsible for a good many landmarks himself.

A stage actor with the Bal Gandharva theatre group, Shantaram joined Baburao Painter’s Maharashtra Film Company in 1920. Working his way up, he played the lead in Saukari Pash (’25), widely accepted as India’s first art film. Shantaram started Prabhat with four partners in 1929 and directed several noteworthy films like A mrit Manthan (’34) and Amar Jyoti (’36), introducing great talents like Chandramohan, Durga Khote and Shanta Apte.

After his classic trilogy: Duniya Na Mane (’37), Aadmi (’39) and Padosi (’41), Shantaram left Prabhat. He started his own Rajkamal Studios with the super hit Shakuntala, whose heroine, Jayshree, became Shantaram’s common law spouse as he remained married to his first wife. They did the biographical superhit Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (’46), together but their 50s movies were rather disappointing and Shantaram rejuvenated himself by shifting his attention to Sandhya. She contributed towards making the dance epic Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje (’55), a huge success, followed by Do Ankhen Barah Haath (’57). Navrang (’59), interestingly showed an artiste who glamorizes his wife in his fantasies to make her his muse. Though critics like Baburao Patel dismissed it as “mental masturbation of a senile soul”, Navrang too was an unqualified hit.

In latter years, he successfully adopted Von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel as Pinjra ( harking back to his visit to Germany in 1933), but age dictated that he decrease his workload.

Multiple wives, several children, a sprawling studio in the heart of Bombay and legendary status! He was one of the lucky few who achieved immortality before death.

Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957)

Cast: V Shantaram, Sandhya

Director: V Shantaram

Music: Vasant Desai

Lyrics: Bharat Vyas

Capsule Review: Like the prolific filmmaker’s other humane drama Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani made 15 years earlier with Shantaram and his real-life wife Jayshree in the lead, Do Aankhen … is the quasi-biographical story of a jailor (Shantaram) and his efforts to humanize six criminals. As was his font, Shantaram shot this rugged masculine homage to humanism in the outdoors, thereby moving away from the studio- made dramas that are still the norm in mainstream Hindi cinema. The locales add considerably to the authentic mood of moral rehabilitation. The actors, especially Sandhya (the director’s second wife) who is the only female presence in the plot (besides one of the prisoner’s old blind mother who makes a fleeting appearance) are stylized and parabolic. Playing a toy seller who saunters into the jailor’s rehabilitation plans, Sandhya’s wild gesticulations in the fun-song Chuk dhum chuk dhum are a jolting homage to the style of acting in Marathi theatre. The famous director stepping into the hero’s garb is far more restrained in expressing the anguish of an idealist.