Shashi Kapoor: An underrated actor
en an actor is as ethereally handsome as Shashi Kapoor, filmmakers tend not to go beyond looks, so for a large part of his career, he played the typical Bollywood hero — romancing the heroine, occasionally fighting a villain, singing and dancing (awkwardly). But when he got a role worthy of his talent, Shashi Kapoor put his heart and soul into it. A list of personal favourite performances by the star.
DHARMPUTRA (1961): In his first film as an adult, directed by Yash Chopra, Shashi Kapoor played a fanatic Hindu, fired by patriotic zeal and rabid anti-Muslim sentiment. He is the kind who will not sit at a table to eat, and rejects a prospective out how to make his marriage work. Later, Shashi Kapoor would play large-than-life and glamorous film heroes, but early in his career, he played an ordinary man with much empathy.
JAB JAB PHOOL KHILE (1964): This is when the industry discovered the full impact of Shashi Kapoor’s stunning good looks. He was perfectly cast in this film directed by Suraj Prakash, as Raja, and fresh-faced Kashmiri boatman. He falls in love with a rich city girl, Rita (Nanda), whose father is obviously against the match and points out CHORI MERA KAAM (1975): Shashi Kapoor has not done too many comedies in his career, this Brij Sadanah film is one of them. He played a petty criminal called Bhola, who works with a female accomplice (Zeenat Aman. They find a manuscript for a book titled Chori Mera Kaam during one of their burglaries, which they sell to a dubious publisher, named Parvin Bhai. The success of the book gets the cops, gangsters and the original writer himself after them. Shashi Kapoor looked like he was having a good time, even though the funnier scenes belonged to Deven Varma as the Gujarati publisher.
DEEWAR (1975): Written by Salim-Javed at the peak of their powers and directed by Yash Chopra, this film gave Shashi Kapoor’s career a fresh lease of life as a parallel lead. Amitabh Bachchan had the more dramatic roles as the rebel but he needed to play off his fury against the calm and righteousness of his brother played by Kapoor. To him falls the testing challenge of arresting his own NEW DELHI TIMES (1983): The only film Ramesh Sharma made, is an accurate portrayal of the nexus between politics, business and the media. Shashi Kapoor, still handsome in spite of the extra weight, played an honest journalist, Vikas Pande, who tries to do an expose on the rampant corruption and wheeling-dealing going on between politicians, but finds that his honesty has been used to manipulate him.The very powerful film fetched for Shashi Kapoor a well-deserved National Award for his performance.
UTSAV (1984): In his own production of Sankskrit classic directed by Girish Karnad, Shashi Kapoor played the villain — rare in his career as leading man. Not just that, the star known for his good looks, played a fat, paunchy villain Samsthanak, with a grotesque moustache, an evil man who falls for the beautiful courtesan Vasantsena, ends up killing her