When ‘villain of the millenium’ Pran shocked the audience as he played a noble soul in Manoj Kumar’s Upkar

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It was once said that mothers would not name their newborn sons Pran for the fear that they would turn out like the on-screen villain. Still remembered as the quintessential villain of Hindi cinema, Pran’s name became synonymous with the bad guy in movies, starting from the 1950s until the 1980s. So much so that when he was labeled as the ‘Villain of the Millennium’ by a popular film magazine in the year 2000, he embraced it with joy. Such was the aura of his personality that the audience just knew that if Pran was in the film, he would be up to no good so when he played a positive role for a change, the audience was left dumbstruck.

This happened for the first time in 1967 when Pran played a rather positive role in Manoj Kumar’s Upkar. Based on Lal Bahadur Shastri’s slogan ‘Jai Jawan Jai Kisan’, Upkar was a propaganda-driven film that highlighted the sacrifices of farmers and soldiers, and their role in building the nation. This was shortly after the 1965 Indo-Pak war, and Shastri’s death in 1966. The country needed something they could rally behind and Upkar did the trick. Here, Pran played Mangal chacha, Bharat’s (Manoj Kumar) confidante and moral compass, who is his guiding light. The audience watching today might not understand the significance of Pran playing this role but at the time, it was the most unexpected role that he could have played, and yet, the audience loved him for it.

pran Manoj Kumar, Pran and Kamini Kaushal in a behind-the-scenes photo from Upkar. (Photo: Express Archives)

With films like Madhumati, Jis Desh Men Ganga Behti Hai, Kashmir Ki Kali among many others, Pran had established himself as the go-to bad guy. Pran was well aware of his name’s power on screen so even in the credits, his name would appear at the end of the cast list as ‘… and Pran’ in big bold letters so the audience knew what was in store for them.

In Upkar, we see Pran singing ‘Kasme vaade pyaar wafa sab…’ and empathise with the man who has possibly been deceived by society a few times. As he sings the line ‘Duniya vale tera ban ke, tera hi dil todenge…’, you understand his cynicism, but appreciate how he supports Bharat despite his personal reservations. His fight for Bharat against the evil Charandas (played by Madan Puri) until the end, was something that Pran had never done on screen before.

Upkar is not really a film that would connect with an audience in 2022. It is over-the-top, and every emotion is dialled up to the maximum, but it is quite evident why a film like this would work at the time. The closest analogy we have to this today is the Akshay Kumar genre of patriotism that works for the larger movie-going population.

In his later years, Pran played a lot of roles that could not be just classified under good or evil – like Zanjeer, Amar Akbar Anthony, Don among others. In fact, his cameo in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’ Guddi, which was a behind-the-scenes look into the world of movies, gave the audience sneak peek into the difference between his reel and real personality.

Upkar was a big step in the life of an actor who would eventually be known as the greatest villain of all time in Hindi cinema, and his legacy stands stronger because of characters like Mangal chacha that disrupted the expectations of the movie-going audiences.

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