Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Timeless Comedy Chupke Chupke Turns 50

You don't laugh at a Hrishikesh Mukherjee film. You smile through it, again and again, even fifty years later.

- Sundeep Bhuto

There was something about Hindi cinema in 1975. The range of genres that one witnessed in films that year was almost schizophrenic in nature - Deewaar and Jai Santoshi Maa, Mausam and Ranga Khush... one can go on. Nothing exemplified this better than two films that starred two of Indian cinema's biggest stars but in roles so disparate that it beggars belief they were the product of the same time.

Sholay, starring Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra, stunned audiences with its violence and ferocity. Approximately four months before Sholay fired the imagination of Indian viewers, the two stars — along with Jaya Bhaduri, who was a part of the film — featured in another film that could not have been more different. A laugh riot from the beginning to the end, Chupke Chupke is now considered a bona fide comedy classic of Indian cinema. Celebrating its 50th anniversary this month, marking half a century of its enduring appeal, Chupke Chupke continues to charm viewers with its wit, warmth and joie de vivre.

A UNIQUE CONCEPT IN A CHANGING CINEMA LANDSCAPE

Chupke Chupke was released in an era when the likes of Sholay and Deewaar were defining mainstream Indian cinema. The 1970s were a industry was in the midst of transitioning from the more light-hearted, musical melodramas of the 1960s to socially relevant, action-packed blockbusters. Within this changing landscape, Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Chupke Chupke offered a refreshing departure with its blithe situational comedy and its focus on humour over spectacle.