Forty-two years ago he made classic 'Guide' which will be screened on Tuesday at the Cannes film festival and 84-year-old Dev Anand's excitement at this recognition is palpable.
CANNES: Forty-two years ago he made classic 'Guide' which will be screened on Tuesday at the Cannes film festival and 84-year-old Dev Anand's excitement at this recognition is palpable.
Ever-energetic Dev Anand drove straight from the airport to the sprawling Villa Paradisiaque, where Hinduja brothers hosted a lunch for Indian celebrities and others attending the festival.
The Hindujas' association with the actor and 'Guide' goes back all the way to the time when the film was released, he said adding that Srichand P Hinduja was the man who first distributed the movie.
"It is wonderful that a film made 42 years ago has found some resonance here today. When I had made it, people thought I had gone mad and was committing professional hara-kiri," Dev Anand said, standing on the lawns overlooking the city of Cannes and its stunning waterfront.
The actor-director-producer, who was the Guest of Honour at the lunch yesterday, spoke of how honoured he was that his 1966 superhit 'Guide' had been included in the Cannes Classics section. The print of 'Guide' to be screened in Cannes on Tuesday is a spanking new one and it has been upgraded to the wide-screen format with six-track digital Dolby sound.
"The greatest high in the act of film-making comes when your point of view synchronises with the world's reactions and a hit is born," Dev Anand said. "It is this excitement and anticipation that keeps a film-maker going."
"Your mind must stay young. The body may age, but it always ends up doing the mind's bidding," the actor told the gathering.
"I want all of you to be present at the screening (of 'Guide')," Dev Anand said at the event, where invitees included Mumbai film-makers Ketan Mehta, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Sudhir Mishra as well as Additional Secretary in Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Uday Kumar Verma and Director of International Film Festival of India Neelam Kapur.
"I have come here as learner. I am here to learn from you. The only festival that I have ever been to before this was the one in Berlin when 'Hum Dono' was screened there. That was where 'Guide' first began to take shape. I went to the US from there, read Pearl S Buck's novel and even met the
writer," the veteran actor reminisced.
He fondly remembered a party that followed the 'Hum Dono' screening in Berlin. "They were all there - Maximilian Schell, Jimmy Stewart, James Mason - and tandoori chicken was flown in from Frankfurt," he said with a twinkle in his eyes.
"I want all of you to be present at the screening (of 'Guide')," Dev Anand said.
The Cannes Classics screening of 'Guide', however, is going to be no more than another stop in the unstoppable Dev Anand's life. His latest film 'Chargesheet', he reminded his numerous admirers at the party, was due for release in July.
And soon after that, he would begin work on an international film to be shot entirely in Scotland.
"I am looking for a girl aged 19 or 20 to play the film's female lead," he announced in the course of a brief pre-lunch speech.
Immediately, a bunch of girls, one from Los Angeles, another from South Africa and yet another from Russia, stepped up to stake their claims. Dev Anand was charm personified.
"You are so pretty," he told the American student, "but it is not me but the script that will choose the right actress."
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