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The past-as-hunting-ground is the theme-song of star filmmakers like Shah Rukh Khan-Gauri Khan-Farah Khan in Om Shanti Om, a take-off on the 1980 Karz and a recall of the 1970s. Then there is the other genuflection to the 1970s, Johnny Gaddar.

Is there a creativity crisis among the top lot in the Hindi cinema world? Or is it nostalgia? Why this intense backward glance? Is it an escape route for the masters of escapist extravaganzas into their own past?

Farah Khan is unabashedly sentimental about old Hindi films, by which she means those by Manmohan Desai and Subhash Ghai. What exists earlier is pre-history for her, and most probably for King Khan as well.

This is quite understandable given the fact that they are young seniors, who feel a little lost between a fast moving present which pushes them into the recent past but who are quite uninterested and bored with a distant past. The 1970s seems to serve as a happy playground of their fancy and they have come up with a charming confection.

There is something harmlessly fake about this nostalgia surge. But a reality check would help. The 1970s were neither too romantic despite Bobby nor too musical despite the reign of RD Burman-Kishore Kumar.

That Farah and Shah Rukh are looking at the 1970s through rose-tinted spectacles is a little too evident. It is no folly, but it needs to be noted. Farah and others like her are sincerely looking for the magic of old Hindi cinema, and her definition of the old is struck in the 1970s and registers itself through the kitsch of the period.

But frankly, there was something terribly wrong with the 1970s Hindi cinema, especially because of the dominance of Amitabh Bachchan. It was the pseudo, nonsense action thrillers that sent the memorable melodies and dances which were the staple of Hindi films into exile.

There was no room for song-and-dance in a Bachchan film because his long legs and his baritone filled up the frame. Unfortunately most accounts of both Bachchan and the 1970s are written by admirers who are a little too starry-eyed about him. There are others who have been overwhelmed by that faux Indian Western, Sholay, which barely passes muster as a classic.

We do not have a proper historian as yet, which is not the fault of the film world as such but which is to be attributed to the idiocy of our intellectuals who either see nothing or see too much in popular culture. Whenever the culture critics have appropriated popular Hindi films they have made it so esoteric with their interpretations that you cease to recognise the most familiar things. So, the dark mediocrity of the 1970s Hindi cinema is yet to be recorded. But that is another story.

Back to Farah’s 1970s fetish.OSO bases itself in a 1980 film, Karz, of Ghai whose story line is borrowed from a forgettable Hollywood film, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, and whose only bright spot was the presence of the beautiful Jennifer O’Neill, who had ravished the imagination of the 1970s’ teenagers with her role in The Summer of ‘42.

The genealogical cinematic lines of OSO are thus confusing. And one remembers Karz for its beautiful Laxmikant-Pyarelal score, and Rishi Kapoor’s dancing. For the rest it was just a potboiler. But the film was a hit. Do not be surprised if OSO is a hit. But do not call it a tribute to the golden age of Hindi cinema. That would be plain untruth.