Question

10 lines details for sone ki chidiya

Answer 1

Sone ki chidiya, pure gold does not fear the smelter
yves 3 Juin 2018 10
Nutan

Watching Sone ki chidiya (the golden bird, Shaheed Latif, 1958) has been a bit of an adventure, because even though I knew it was good, it doesn’t exist with subtitles, and some time has passed before I could get round to understanding everything. And here I need to thank Madhulika Liddle of Dusted off fame, whom I appealed to in search for explanations, and who very helpfully answered my questions and gave me lengthy explanations. I am also indebted to this book: Take 2 by Deepa Gahlot (published in 2015), who lists “50 films that deserve a new audience” in which Sone ki chidiya is filmed and evaluated. Maybe I’ll speak about it soon. Those of you who haven’t seen the film can watch it on Youtube here. And the story can be found here (thanks IMDb user!).

The film’s important for a fan of Nutan because it’s placed almost at the beginning of her career (even if it’s already her 16th movie!) and tackles some essential things in terms of cinematography. We owe this to the perceptiveness of its author, Ismat Chugtai, the feminist urdu writer and educator who wrote the screenplay. She became Shaheed Latif’s wife in 1943 and was repeatedly sued in court for her progressive views on womanhood, motherhood and sexuality. In the film she is questioning the role of actresses, the way they’re used, and the values of the cinema as an art and social instrument. Nutan being the lead role for this critical story meant that she endorsed some of its ideas and struggles, and her career can be better understood thanks to the movie (check the comments for a discussion of this statement).


Basically one can say that Sone ki chidiya tries to make sense of what cinema means in terms of social improvement, and naturally it’s very critical of the drifts which the exploitation of artists and the financial profits to be drawn from the silver screen meant for it as an art. And as actresses are one of the most important cinematographic commodities, it’s logical that Chugtai’s screenplay focusses on a young woman’s place in the business. The title of the film says it: new young girls are an immediate potential source of income (a golden bird - does the word in Hindi carry the same double-entendre?) and clearly this commodification was one of the main reasons why actresses had a bad rap in the past. How could they perform on the stage and still maintain that their bodies and faces are not for sale? On the other hand, such heavy questions are made lighter by the film’s humour, which also serves to alleviate its (melo)drama.

So it all revolves around Lakshmi, played by a fine Nutan. Lakshmi is an orphan who’s first dumped from place to place by relatives who don’t want the burden she represents. Soon enough though, the ironic opposite will take place, and everybody will want her! How? Well, she’s an artist, she likes poetry, singing, art and luck has it that one day she’s noticed by people involved in pictures. And here’s the first trait of humour: photographers come to the home where she’s kept by greedy “bhaion” because she provides them with her contract money. As soon as the photographers appear, everybody in this hare-brain family want their picture taken, and they crowd in front of the camera, actually hiding Lakshmi behind them and obliging the photographer to look for his model!