More than 50 years later, Pakeezah returns in a restored version for modern audiences
I first watched Pakeezah just 16. Even then, 34 years after its release, its visual lyricism felt almost otherworldly – the immersive sets, vibrant colours, poetic Urdu dialogue and classical music created the scale of a grand opera on-screen. It was the kind of film that could leave an indelible mark on a teenager, even decades after it was made. Now, more than half a century after its 1972 release, Pakeezah has been restored in 4K (the sharpest resolution possible today) by the Film Heritage Foundation of India, and will have its world premiere at Festival Lumière in Lyon, France, this October.
“Pakeezah has been the most important restoration [of film] in my lifetime,” says Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, director of the Film Heritage Foundation of India that has also restored films from cult classics like Sholay (1975) to arthouse milestones like Mandi (1983) to Satyajit Ray’s globally acclaimed Aranyer Din Ratri (1970), amongst several others.
Perhaps no other film in the history of Indian cinema carries quite such a formidable constellation of legends. Written and directed by Kamal Amrohi, it stars Meena Kumari, the undisputed queen of tragedy, alongside Raaj Kumar with music from the genius of Ghulam Mohammed, and Naushad. A labour of love, made over 14 years, Pakeezah traversed the shift from black-and-white films to colour, and nothing quite like it has ever been made again in the history of Indian cinema.
A still from Pakeezah (1972), via Film Foundation of India
Restoring it, therefore, was never going to be straightforward. The biggest blow came when the Film Heritage Foundation of India discovered that the original camera negative – the most valuable element for a restoration – had melted and was almost gone, leaving the restoration team “heartbroken”. But hope survived when an interpositive of the film and, later, a colour reversal internegative (CRI) was found at the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in Pune.
Despite the source material not being qualitative, Dungarpur believed the film was too important to lose hope. “I wanted to revive this film because I knew that it has influenced a whole generation of filmmakers, including the likes of Sanjay Leela Bhansali,” he says and convinced the producers on the importance of bringing Pakeezah to the current generation who “had never seen Meena Kumari on the big-screen”.
After its Lyon premiere, followed by a screening at the BFI London Film Festival, Pakeezah will make its way back to Indian cinemas. A film once thought to be slipping away will finally be seen again where it belongs.
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