Who killed the mystery movie?

A stills from Teesri Manzil, a timeless Bollywood thriller

A classic whodunnit returns to theatres while we steer frustratingly clear of fresh kills

Raja sen

Posted On Wednesday, September 08, 2010 at 02:06:33 AM

Vijay Anand’s rollicking 1966 murder mystery, Teesri Manzil, returns to selected theatres this Friday, and the Shammi Kapoor-Asha Parekh-Helen starrer is a timeless piece of Bollywood history, a taut, engaging thriller with a gorgeous soundtrack, a film that stays entertaining even decades after the curtains fell open on who actually dun it. And while it’s all very well to look nostalgically at Shammi twisting those effeminate lips into a screen-conquering pout, goddess Helen in full, peacocked groove, R D Burman’s killer songs and Nassir Hussain’s wonderfully plotted script, it seems equally apt to lament the death of the thriller in Hindi cinema. They don’t make ‘em like they used to, true, but they don’t even seem to really try anymore. We haven’t had a serviceable whodunnit in ages. The murder mystery has always been a genre that has enjoyed immediate appeal, so it isn’t as if box office prospects are limited. Tell a story right, hinge it all on a final reveal, and audiences go back gleeful, knowing they have been asked to think, to wonder, to decipher, and are eventually going home with the best kind of bang for their buck, the unexpected kind. Start with a body, throw in a slew of suspects with winked-at motives and dubious alibis and let the truth come eventually to light: If that sounds simple, it’s not; making a good film never is. But if we keep mucking up various genres – horror, for example, which we persist with despite being laughable year after year – why on earth have we given up on movies that genuinely surprise, on such a basic, beautiful cinematic archetype? A good mystery never fails, and yet we don’t take enough cracks at it. Sure, our resident Men In White throw something together every few years, but the only true conundrum in Abbas-Mastan films is how they get seemingly intelligent actors to come aboard. Sriram Raghavan’s striking thrillers, meanwhile, are whydunnits more occupied with comeuppance than clues, even if elaborately plotted backwards, as the genre demands. Back in 1997, driving past Delhi’s Savitri theatre, a bunch of us screamed out the killer’s identity to an infuriated audience queued up to watch Rajiv Rai’s Gupt, and several decades ago, a friend’s father watching Jewel Thief was pestered to buy snacks during the interval. He didn’t give in, and the popcorn-man vindictively hissed the villain’s identity, ruining everything in one fell swoop. Can you remember the last time a Hindi film had an effective spoiler audiences needed to be shielded from? Nowadays, it’s all the same: boy gets girl, friends fall in love, lovers commit suicide, the father’s acquiesce, rich kid learns to do dishes, hockey team wins… We might occasionally be making some films that work, but we aren’t really working that hard on the surprise. read more HERE