'''Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron'''


aka Who Pays the Piper
1983 143’(130’) col Hindi
d/s Kundan Shah pc NFDC co-s Sudhir Mishra
dial Ranjit Kapoor, Satish Kaushik c Binod
Pradhan m Vanraj Bhatia
lp Naseeruddin Shah, Ravi Baswani, Bhakti
Bharve, Om Puri, Satish Shah, Pankaj Kapoor,
Satish Kaushik, Neena Gupta, Deepak Qazir,
Rajesh Puri, Zafar Sanjari, Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Extraordinary slapstick comedy, a genre almost
unknown in Indian cinema since Kishore
Kumar’s early films. Two bumbling
photographers, Vinod Chopra (N. Shah) and
Sudhir Mishra (Baswani), are employed by
Shobha (Bharve), the editor of a scandal sheet,
Khabardar. They have to spy on millionaire
property developer Tarneja (Kapoor) and
police commissioner D’Mello (S. Shah). The
photographers uncover dirty business between
Tarneja and his equally unsavoury rival Ahuja
(O. Puri). The commissioner is killed by one of
the builders who, as a result, wins the contract
to build a flyover that collapses shortly
afterwards. The photographers get hold of
D’Mello’s corpse in order to prove that he was
murdered, but they lose it, which gives rise to
an extended sequence where everyone chases
everyone else. In the end, the photographers
are framed for the collapse of the fly-over. The
film, set in the same early 80s of e.g. Anand
Patwardhan’s documentary Hamara Shaher
(1985), refers directly to specific corrupt
Bombay politicians of the period. The collapse
of the flyover, shown in a video clip in the film,
is in fact footage of the actual Byculla Bridge in
Bombay which collapsed shortly before the
film was made. Commissioner D’Mello refers to
the then police chief Julio Ribeiro (who
appears in the Advertising Club meeting in
Patwardhan’s documentary), Tarneja and Ahuja
are a composite picture of Bombay’s biggest
builder Raheja, while the Shobha who runs a
scandal sheet is an allusion to Shobha
Kilachand, aka Shobha De, former editor of a
film gossip and city magazine. In addition, the
film repeatedly refers to e.g. Antonioni’s Blow
Up (1966) and to New Indian Cinema,
including some of Shah’s former FTII
colleagues: film-makers Vinod Chopra (on
whose Sazaaye Maut, 1981, Shah had been a
production manager) and Sudhir Mishra, who
lend their names to the photographer duo. The
Albert Pinto code-word of the two amateur
sleuths refers to Saeed Mirza’s film (1980).
Large posters of Kumar Shahani’s Maya
Darpan (1972) and Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti
(1969) can be seen pasted on the walls during
the chase. The film was a mild commercial
success and influenced mainly a brand of TV
comedy (cf. Shah’s TV series Yeh Jo Hai
Zindagi, 1985, and one he made together with
Mirza, Nukkad, 1987).

[[Film]]