B. R. GOWANI
Pakistani actress/producer/director Shamim Ara (1938-2016) PHOTO/Dawn
Putli Bai’s mother, a dancer, wanted to be an actress but didn’t get an opportunity and so she couldn’t become one. But Putli Bai was fortunate enough to become an actress. On the other hand, her desire to enact roles where heroine was strong and would fight for her rights didn’t materialized because the characters she was offered were that of a helpless woman, a victim of society and/or family, who was sometimes also thrown out of the house. However, her desire to play roles depicting a strong woman got fulfilled through other actresses whom she directed in her home productions. She made several films where female characters were very strong. Some of those movies were Miss Hong Kong, Miss Istanbul, Miss Colombo, Miss Singapore, Lady Commando, Lady Smuggler. But by the time when she started direction in 1976 with Jeo Aur Jeenay Do, the times had changed and so it became easier, as she told a BBC interviewer, for her to make such films. If I am not mistaken, she can be called the most prolific woman director of South Asia in the decades of 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. It was a big thing then to direct films in a male dominated society. She took to direction in 1976, but as a producer, she made Saiqa in 1968 which was based on a Urdu novel of the same name. It was an OK film, but most of the other films she produced/directed were absolutely rubbish. Her real strength lied in her acting prowess and her mesmerizing voice.
It was in 1956, when Putli Bai’s family from India was visiting their relatives in Pakistan, that film director Najam Naqvi’s talent-detecting eyes saw the acting potential in Putli Bai. He was impressed by her and cast her in his film Kunwari Bewa (Maiden Widow). Naqvi introduced Putli Bai as Shamim Ara. It was not too long before Shamim Ara established herself as a bankable star and an actress. She was offered some comic roles, but most of her characters were tragic and she did justice to those roles.
The decades of 1950s and 1960s can be termed as the golden period of Urdu language films in Pakistani cinema. Although plagiarizing of Indian films had begun very early on in 1955 with film Nauker, and most of the stories were formulaic, it was the music, lyrics/poetry sung by playback singers, and dialogues (which were quite melodramatic at times) which were of good quality. To be fair, there were directors like Khurshid Anwar, and few others who knew their work and took it seriously. Shamim Ara worked in dozens of films in the 1960s and was very impressive in some of them, such as Khurshid Anwar’s Hamraz (Confidant), where she played a double role; Humayun Mirza’s Aag ka Darya (River of Fire), where she played the role of a nautch girl; and Raza Mir’s Lakhon Mein Ek (One in a Hundred Thousand), where she played the role of a Hindu girl. Her acting was brilliant in Lakhon Mein Ek but the film had no grey shades – everything was either good or bad, that is, all the Hindus (except the heroine and her father) were villains. Hamraz was well made where Shamim Ara’s brilliant acting in totally different roles was visible. In Aag ka Darya, her nautch girl character was pitted against a dacoit, played by equally good actor Mohammad Ali. The film had some powerful dialogues by Riaz Shahid, one of the most sharp writers of that period. Except the story line, which was copied from an Indian film Mujhe Jeene Do (Let Me Live), other things in the film were original and good.
Her acting talent would have gotten more opportunities if she had found success in finding work in India because that industry is huge and, in comparison to Pakistan, produces more better pictures.
In 2010, Shamim Ara went into coma post brain surgery from which she never recovered. She passed away on August 5 this year in a London hospital.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com