Negativity Melted, Myth Not: Inside Kamal Amrohi's Resurrection and Meena Kumari's Indian Fictional Epic "Pakeezah"

On the night of February 3, 1972, the prints of "Pakeezah" arrived at the Maratha Mandir Cinema in Mumbai, pulled by four horses. Bands played outside, police held back thousands of people who had gathered at the gates, and inside, the film's star Meena Kumari sat next to her husband, director Kamal Amruhi, and held her wrist to […]

On the night of February 3, 1972, the prints of "Pakeezah" arrived at the Maratha Mandir Cinema in Mumbai, pulled by four horses. Bands played outside, police held back the thousands who gathered at the gates, and inside, the film's star, Meena Kumari, sat next to her husband, director Kamal Amruhi, who during the screening held her wrist so tightly that her fingernails bled.

Amrohi's son, Tajdar, was in the theater that night. His father never took his arm away. RELATED STORIES Elizabeth Banks Officially Set to Play Karen Reed in Amazon Series 'Reacher' Renewed for Season 6 Ahead of Season 5

Tajdar Amrohi says, "He just smiled, and she smiled in shame." And it seems that even after 54 years, it feels like it happened yesterday. Popular in Variety

Kumari died on March 31, 1972, a few weeks after the film's release. Now, the Film Heritage Foundation's (FHF) 4K remake of Pakizeh, with the Amrohi family, is back in front of audiences. Thierry Fermo makes his world premiere at the Lumière Festival in Lyon on Wednesday. Then on October 18 at the London Film Festival's BFI Imax, which Foundation Director Shivendra Singh Dangarpur will present with Tajdar Amrohi, his sister Rukhsar Amrohi and Kamal Amrohi's grandson Bilal Amrohi. Dangarpour says he heard the Imax screening sold out "in no time."

The film is set in Lucknow, when the era of the Nawabs (Muslim nobility) is fading. Kumari plays the role of Sahibjan, who was born in a graveyard to an Atlas rejected by her husband's aristocratic family. Raised in a brothel, Sahibjan grows up to become the most famous female lawyer of her time, although she longs for love and respect. Then Salim, a forest officer played by Raaj Kumar, mistakenly wanders into his train compartment while asleep. Caught by her legs, he leaves her a note in verse and slips away. When they meet again, they fall in love, but the disgrace of his career stands between them.

Few Hindi films have such a heavy story. Amrohi was already married and had three children when he married Kumari. Rukhsar grew up with his mother in the family's hometown of Amruha in Uttar Pradesh until he was 13, while his father lived in Bombay (now Bombay) with Kumari, whom the children called Choti Ami (Little Mother). Amruhi conceived Pakeezah in the mid-1950s around Kumari, his wife and his muse, and it began shooting in 1956 in black-and-white before switching to Eastmancolor and then CinemaScope. Production ceased in 1964 when the couple separated, and Kumari's health declined dramatically in the following years. Joseph Wirsching, the film's German cinematographer, who had come along with Himansu Rai and Devika Rani from Bombay Talkies, died midway through. The composer Gholam Mohammad died in 1968 after writing the songs and finished Naushad. Background Score

Despite all this, Amrohi refused to give up the film.

His daughter Rokhsar Amrohi says: "His relationships, his health, his wealth - he left everything in "Pekizeh".

She remembers that every request from the house, from new decor to things for herself, got the same answer: after "Pekize". His tunics, which usually arrived from Lucknow every six months, were worn thin during the shoot. When he pressed her to reorder, he told her that people came to see her, not her clothes.

"I'll order all of these after 'Pekize' - I'll get 24, not 12 - but let my 'Pekize' come into the cinema," he recalled her saying.

Tajdar Amruhi says that by the time the film was ready for release, his father had no money to keep for himself and was deep in debt. Rukhsar says the capitalists forced him to dismiss Ghulam Mohammad's music as old-fashioned and instead give credit to Laxmikant-Pyaralal or Shankar-Jaikishan. He declined, whether or not that meant a movie would be made.

The life of the family itself revolved around production. When Kumari left and the shooting stopped, Amrohi brought Rukhsar and his mother back to Amrohi. He didn't want anyone to say that his first wife and daughter had come and kicked Kumari out. He later wrote to Rukhsar asking him to raise his small hands in prayer to complete the picture. He had expected to complete it in a year, and now it felt like a rope around his neck

"Isn't this a sacrifice?" he says

Siblings are protective of how they remember their father's marriage. Tajdar Amruhi is adamant that the couple never divorced, saying that Kumari asked Amruhi to promise that she would never divorce, calling him Chandan, her pet name. He also backtracks on the widely held narrative that actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis and composer Khayyam convinced Kumari to return to films in 1969. He says Dutt deserves credit for stepping up to him, but many others in the industry, including Ashok Kumar, had insisted on the same.

"Honestly, if Meena ji didn't want to complete this film herself, she wouldn't have wanted to," he says.

"Pakeezah" also didn't become a hit because its star died weeks after its release, he says, but his sister also refuses to read. If that were the case, he argues, "every producer-director would be praying that one of their lead artists would leave the world after the film was finished and the film would be a success. It's not. The good is good and the bad is bad and won't be released."

Tajdar Amruhi was at St. Elizabeth's Hospice in Malabar Hills when Kumari died and says it was the first time tears were seen in his father's eyes. Amrohi died in 1372 and was buried next to him. Her son sees it as some kind of divine decree on decades of rumors about the couple.

As Shah Jahan immortalized Mumtaz Mahal by building Taj Mahal, Kamal Sahab [Sir]he says that Chhoti Ammi immortalized Meena ji worldwide by building 'Pakeezah'.

For Rukhsar Amrohi, who also calls Kumari Choti Ami, the film is a symbol of the couple's love, made by her father for his love for Kumari. He says: "Pekize" is the love child of our Baba [Father] and Choti Ami.

For Dangarpur, the film goes back to his own childhood. He was 3 years old when he published it, and his grandmother, Usha Rani, Maharani (queen) of Dumraon in Bihar, was obsessed with it. He played the LP of it and later took her to see it when it was re-released. He founded the FHF in her memory in 2014 and has wanted to restore "Pakeezah" ever since.

"It's one of my fondest memories of the remake and the most important film of my life," he says. "He was the driving force behind seeing this rebuild."

It turned out to be one of the most difficult tasks the foundation has undertaken. When the FHF team examined the original film camera negative at the Bombay laboratory, it had melted, leaving no image on the celluloid.

Tajdar Amruhi says: "Mina ji went into a coma two days before her death, and negative "Pakize" also went into a coma.

The team reconstructed the film from an in-house print, a CinemaScope print and a reverse color negative held at the National Film Archive of India, which Dangarpur referred to the P.K. Nir. The sound negative also survived. A two-year remake was performed at L'Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna and the soundtrack was remixed in 5.1.

Shooting on and off left its scars. Day and night sequences did not match from one part of the film to the next. Opticals move in and out of focus, meaning the image blurs and changes. Padma Khanna and the other doubles performed some of the dances instead of Kumari, which made the continuity puzzle more difficult.

"You have to make sure you don't do something that he didn't do, or elevate it to that level, but keep exactly his vision, the way he envisioned the film," Dangarpour says.

He points viewers to the tracking shot at the end of "Chalte Chalte" where the camera pans over a fountain. For him, it shows what film camera crews did before zoom lenses became common. The film also has an anniversary this month: Dangarpur notes that October 8 was the 100th anniversary of its leading man, Raaj Kumar, who replaced an aging Ashok Kumar as Salim.

FHF has encountered missing negatives before. Dangarpur says the remade Shulai had the same problem. The foundation's work on English, August, which was remade from a print, and Shaji N.'s Cannes-winning Follower. So was Caron, for which only subtitled prints survive.

"A lot of money is spent on production, a lot of money is spent, but very little money is spent on maintaining these elements," he says. "This is a very sad story from the history of Indian cinema.

The Foundation has had a busy 12 months on the festival circuit. "In Who Annie Gives It That Ones" to Berlin, "Amma Ariyan" to Cannes and "English, August" to Venice, with stops including New York, Toronto, Shanghai, Singapore and the Tri Continents Festival. Dangarpur says FHF deliberately schedules Indian blockbusters like 'Sholay', 'Pakeezah' and 'Amar Akbar Anthony' alongside independent titles. That way, Western audiences who would otherwise never see them will have the opportunity. "Pakeezah" is set to tour the Smithsonian and the Academy and the makers have extensive plans for a release in India.

Further FHF restorations are Shyam Bengal's Bhumika and Mandi, John Abraham's Agraharatil Kazuthai (The Donkey in the Brahmin Village) and Aribam Syam Sharma's Imagi Ningthem (My Son, Dear Beham). Abraham's film will be Foundation's first remake in Tamil. With Criterion, FHF is bringing back Bimal Roy's 'Bandini', 'Devdas' and 'Madhumati' as well as Satyajit Ray's 'Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne' and plans to take on 'Piravi'.

Tajdar Amrohi still regrets that "Pekize" did not receive an award. When she once complained to her father, the director just smiled.

"All the people who come to look at the picture - this is my prize," Tu Nekele Eyaw told his son.