The figure of the outsider deployed in the films of the 1950s!
An outsider is a person who’s always in a state of transition. He always tries to fit in and always has a sense of sacredness from being to be outcast from city life. He has a different position in society. He either by choice or by force is different from the people around him and people who do not ”fit in” for various reasons. A person whose life is full of struggles and lives on the margins of society and does not belong anywhere completely. He lives in between different worlds. He become less capable of identifying him within a single group of people, whether that is a nationality, a community, or a circle of friends.
Talking about the Bollywood, it has deployed the figure of the outsiders very well in the 1950s era. If we start from Raj Kapoor’s film ‘Shree 420’, the movie depicts how big cities treat new people and the way they are forced to suffer for even a simple life to live. The scene in which Raju delivers an order in a hotel room, where he meets Maya. Raju, while waiting for Maya; starts playing cards alone. Maya found Raju playing cards impressively, she makes a plan and forcefully takes innocent Ranbir Raju to a party where she forces Raju to gamble and win for her. He plays for her and wins almost 20,000Rs that night for Maya but she betrays Raju and takes away all the money and gives him a mere Rs10. This shows how his innocence, simplicity, and honesty does not work in a big city and people misuse innocent people. Even Seth Sona Chand Dharmadant, the man whom Raju beats in gambling contacts him and offers him a partnership for all his future gambling. He agrees and starts conning people this shows how rich people easily trick outsiders into their dirty games. Even Sona Chand Dharmadant tries to con poor people by taking advantage of Raju’s name. He tried to loot money from them for his benefit by giving them false promises. Playing with their feelings and does not care about their sufferings.
Next example can be taken from ‘Jaagte Raho’, it looks at the city as a nightmare. The movie narrates the naked truth of life’s challenges in the city, especially for the unsophisticated, naive, and innocent souls who land up to make it big there. Every second of your life is a struggle even if it is for a drop of drinking water. The film centers on poor villager Mohan who comes to a city in search of a better life and he looks for some water to quench his thirst. But he is mistaken for a thief and stumbles into a building in his search for a hiding place. Whilst evading capture, he inadvertently exposes the venality and dishonesty of the building’s middle-class occupants. What happens when a man [Raj Kapoor] from a village comes to town in search of work but is deemed a thief when he breaks into a building just to quench his thirst? While running away from a group of men led by young Iftekhar, Raj Kapoor ends up unintentionally discovering closets full of skeletons in the middle-class occupants’ homes. A drunk’s (Motilal) fetish of making his wife dance to excite him, an honourable man’s ‘honest living’ of producing fake currency, a couple’s (Pradeep Kumar and Smriti Biswas) secret romantic endeavour whilst the girl’s parents are asleep are just some of the shocking incidents that Raj Kapoor comes across behind closed doors. The final Raj Kapoor outburst speaks of the frustration that a poor outside man has to face during a hypocritical society.
One more example can be taken from ‘Do Bheega Zameen’, zamindar (Sapru) wants to construct a factory and needs to merge Shambu’s little two-acre plot into his land. Under the pretext of an old loan the unlettered Shambhu had taken, he made up a situation where Shambhu has to return the loan within two months, else he loses his land. Tearing himself away from his beloved wife, Shambhu goes to Calcutta to earn the money but no one treats them well even when Shambhu asks the shopkeeper a simple question that where he can find a job, he replies very rudely. Even Shambhu’s belongings were stolen by someone when he was sleeping on the footpath. The film ends with the family returning to their land only to witness a factory already standing on their ‘do bigha zameen’, the chimney’s black smoke, literally and figuratively, blowing away their hopes.
