Chor Chor

Alfred Hitchcock once described mystery as two characters conversing in a cafe, and a bomb suddenly going off under the table and a suspense thriller if the same audience is shown a saboteur placing the bomb and setting it to go off at a particular time, which would keep them guessing till the moment the time is arrived at. One would have rarely heard of a film called Chor Chor in the pantheon of great genre films in Hindi cinema but this 1974 film featuring the legendary Vijay Anand brilliantly combines the sub-genres of thriller-suspense and mystery. The song-less film was written and produced by Vijay Anand and while he featured as the lead along with Leena Chandravarkar, his one-time assistant Prem Prakash directed it. Clocking exactly 2 hours in it’s run time Chor Chor is the tale of a young man Akash (Vijay Anand) looking for his ex-policeman father’s (Iftekhar) killer and the only clues he has are his father’s dying words ‘Chandan’, a torn shirt collar with a tailor’s address in Panchgani and knowledge that the killer being physically fit to be able to jump from a 15-feet wall. A bank employee, Akash gets himself transferred to Panchgani and begins to put the pieces together but unbeknownst to him ends up being exactly where the ‘killer’ wants him. Running parallel to Akash’s quest for his father’s assassin is the killer’s own game plan. The killer has a double identity and is also known as Dr. Dharamveer (Trilok Kapoor), who blackmails the town’s bank manager Daulatram (Jairaj) to fake an illness in order for a temporary manager to take Daulatram’s place. This replacement would be the fall guy when Dhramveer robs the bank and Akash arrives as the replacement manager. He takes up a room at a guesthouse run by Hem (Leena Chandravarkar) and her mother and begins investigating a short-list of possible killers that he makes with the help of tailor who stitched the killer’s shirt. Hem befriends Akash and so does Dharamveer. While Hem aides his search as well as fall in love with him, Dharamveer creates new suspects to make Akash go around in circles. It’s a matter of time before Akash finally understands why in spite of knowing that his identify, Dharamveer is taking his own time to eliminate him and once he figures out the evil doctor’s plan to frame him for the bank robbery, Akash turns the game around. What makes Chor Chor better with every passing minute is that even though the audience knows the killer’s identity the deft screenplay still manages to keep you on the edge of the seat. Written jointly by Vijay Anand and Suraj Sanim Chor Chor combines the best of Hitchcockian suspense thriller and mystery. Here the audience is waiting for something significant to happen and unlike the classic template, both the killer’s identity as well as motive is revealed right at the onset, which gives it a Raymond Chandler esque veneer of an unsolved riddle. While it’s not surprising that Vijay Anand’s involvement makes Chor Chor a top-notch entertainer, it’s interesting to note that the man behind two of Hindi cinema’s greatest thrillers Teesri Manzil (1966) and Jewel Thief (1967), both equally celebrated for their great music, chose to make this a completely song-less film. The film has no credited music director and the title track, as well as most of the soundtrack, consists of familiar-sounding themes; some even remind you of Henry Mancini. Perhaps being in front of the camera made Vijay Anand go for a more plausible execution as far as popular Hindi cinema went and considering the era Chor Chor was made in the genre was undergoing a major overhauling. With the advent of the Angry-Young-Man a certain sense of realism had begun to seep in and thrillers of the time such as Anand’s own Chhupa Rustam (1973) or Raj Khosla’s Shareef Budmash (1973), which featured Vijay Anand as the second lead alongside elder brother Dev Anand, were getting inspired by writers such as James Hadley Chase and our very own Om Prakash Sharma, Ved Prakash Sharma and Surendra Mohan Pathak. Even after forty years Chor Chor‘s screenplay rarely misses a beat even though the narrative looks slightly stilted at places but that’s largely because of the acting or the production values. The film hinges on Vijay Anand, who unfortunately looks too old to carry off a young man number, and while Trilok Kapoor’s physicality suits Dharamveer, he appears too hurried at most places. An interesting trivia about Trilok Kapoor is that he is Prithviraj Kapoor’s younger sibling and had become so popular playing Lord Shiva in mythological films that his and Nirupa Roy’s image as Shiv-Parvati on calendars was a common sight in the1940s-50s. The year that Chor Chor released was the same where the audience had seen Vijay Anand act in Kora Kaghaz (1974) that suited him more. One can’t help but wonder if the film would have fared better had Vijay Anand opted to direct it with some other actor. Maybe a younger pre-Sholay and pre-Deewar Amitabh Bachchan would have been ideal. Largely out of circulation as well as memory, Chor Chor remains obscure and even forgotten and that is a pity for it’s a master class in screenwriting. Images courtesy: Osianama Gautam Chintamani is a film historian and the author of the best-selling Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna (2014) and The Film That Revived Hindi Cinema (2016). He tweets at @gchintamani Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs and views expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this website are personal and do not reflect the opinions, beliefs and views of ABP News Network Pvt Ltd.