Jewel Thief (1967)

This is an old essay of mine from when I first started writing long pieces. My thinking has changed in a lot of ways and I don’t know if I’d frame things the same way today as I did 15 years ago so take this with a big grain of salt.

Also: MAJOR SPOILER ALERT for the film. It’s worth watching completely unspoiled first. Jewel Thief is still one of my all time favorite movies. (February 15, 2022)

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It was my antagonist -- it was Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution. His mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them, upon the floor. Not a thread in all his raiment -- not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not, even in the most absolute identity, mine own!
Edgar Allan Poe, "William Wilson"

We have met the enemy and he is us.
Walter Kelley, "Pogo"

When Vijay "Goldie" Anand's Jewel Thief was made in 1967, India was beginning an identity crisis that is, to an extent, still working itself out today. As the country settled into independence and shook off the remnants of British colonialism, the serious, socialist-minded films of the 1940s and 1950s, the height of creativity for film makers like Raj Kapoor (Sree 420) and Mehboob Khan (Mother India), had played themselves out and a new, carefree cinema had taken their place. Raj Kapoor's everyman "tramp" character, who often did not have two rupees to rub together, gave way to his brother Shammi Kapoor's playboy character who was more concerned with romancing heroines in films like Junglee (1961), Professor (1962), and Teesri Manzil (1966) than in social justice. Where Raj Kapoor's films had emphasized the importance of community over individual wealth, the films of the 1960s celebrated individual wealth. The West was still associated with immorality but materialism had become Indianized. In these carefree films of the 1906s, if the hero was not wealthy, the heroine certainly was and a parade of fabulous interiors and costumes were guaranteed even if the association of Western clothing and ideals with debauchery remained unchanged. Jewel Thief used the same elements of the new popular films to criticize this materialism, making the connection between wealth and the debauched West explicit and showing that materialism and traditional values are unable to coexist.

Goldie's brother Dev Anand plays the main character Vinay, who is introduced to the audience heading into a jewelry store. Vinay talks himself into a job, going against the wishes of his father who wants him to take a job in the civil service, and begins a flirtation with the jeweler's daughter Anjali (Tanuja). Soon after, Vinay starts to be mistaken for a mysterious man named Amar. Most importantly, he is taken to be Amar by Amar's fiance, a lovely young woman named Shalini (Vjaynthimala) who has been traveling with her brother Arjun (Ashok Kumar). Vinay's path in life hits a snag when he starts to fall in love with Shalini just as the jewelry store he works for is robbed by his look-alike Amar, who turns out to be the eponymous jewel thief. The police ask Vinay to go undercover as Amar to penetrate the gang and bring Amar to justice. After an elaborate cat and mouse game which takes him all the way to Nepal, Vinay is trapped in Amar's hideout where the truth comes out that Amar is a fiction and a ruse to deflect attention from the real criminal, Arjun. Shalini was also a pawn in the ruse, as Arjun had kidnapped her younger brother and forced her to play along in exchange for her brother's safety, and she confesses her true nature to Vinay as an innocent in the game. Arjun's master plan is to use electro-shock therapy to erase Vinay's memory and implant false memories of "Amar." Vinay manages to trick Arjun into thinking that his plan worked, when, in fact, Vinay is only pretending to think that he is "Amar." The film ends with a giant deception as Arjun plans to steal the crown from the prince of Nepal during a large dance number. Vinay has already tipped off the police and is able to bring the real criminals to justice and live happily ever after with Shalini.

The most important plot device that Goldie twists for his own ends in Jewel Thief is that of the double role. In popular Hindi film, an actor is said to be performing a double role when he portrays two characters in the same film. Double roles were often used because they allow the producer to get twice as much work out of a single actor or to allow an actor who was established as a hero or heroine to branch out into a villain or character role. Typical stories include identical siblings with contrasting personalities who were separated at birth (An Evening in Paris, 1967), reincarnation into an identical looking person (Madhumati, 1958), or the villain who is unrelated but conveniently identical to the hero, which causes no end of problems for both (Don, 1978). An Evening in Paris is a good example of the type of film that Goldie was playing with in Jewel Thief. Shammi Kapoor and Sharmila Tagore starred in this frivolous film which centered on a wealthy young woman, Deepa (Sharmila Tagore), and the attempts of Shyam (Shammi Kapoor) to win her heart. The obstacles in their path to true love included "Suzy" (also Sharmila Tagore), Deepa's twin sister, who was raised in the West by a gang of thieves and would like nothing better than to take Deepa's wealth and boyfriend for herself, and the blond coiffed Shekhar (played with panache by the eternal screen villain Pran) who would like to marry Deepa for that same wealth. Deepa, despite living in Paris and being wealthy, is a good Indian girl. She neither drinks nor smokes and when Suzy takes Deepa's place, as always happens in double roles like this, it is Suzy's predilection for drinking and smoking—habits always associated with Westernized women—that finally give her away. An Evening in Paris fetishizes the trappings of the Western world with the materialism of Deepa, who sports a parade of fabulous frocks as well as a bikini, along with the glamorous Paris location for the main action and a tour of exotic locales such as Beirut, Lebanon during the song picturizations, while at the same time telling the audience that Indian values are superior to those of the West.

The double role in Jewel Thief deceptively plays with audience expectations for a typical double role. For a large portion of the film, the audience is left to wonder if Vinay and Amar are twins separated at birth or if, perhaps, they are just simply identical. The twist that Amar is fictional within the narrative of the film is quite a shock. And, since Vinay and the audience do not realize this until the film is almost over, there are a few scenes in which the viewer is unsure if the character portrayed by Dev Anand is Amar, Vinay, Vinay pretending to be Amar, or Amar pretending to be Vinay. For example, the opening scenes show Vinay entering the jewelry store only to get anxious when the police arrive. This is suspicious behavior and immediately sets the audience against Vinay, even though it is later revealed that Vinay is nervous about the police because he has angered his father who is the police chief and not because he has committed a crime. The feeling that something is not quite right remains. Later, after Amar has been introduced, Vinay gets a tip that Amar's girlfriend works dancing in a hotel. Vijay Anand cuts to Amar's girlfriend, Helen, dancing in the hotel ("Baithe Hai Kya Uske Paas"). Vinay disguised as Amar enters, but with the audience still unaware that Amar is fictional, the identity of Vinay is in question.

Ultimately, Amar is not only a fictional character within the narrative of Jewel Thief, but like the portrait of Dorian Grey, Amar represents what Vinay could become if he continues down the path of greed that he begins at the start of the film. During the first part of the film, before the introduction of Amar, the audience is shown that Vinay is not a good man. He goes against the wishes of his father by entering the jewelry trade instead of becoming a civil servant and while a hero who goes against the wishes of his elders may be redeemed if his intent is true and he manages to convince his elders that his plan is a good idea. In the aforementioned Junglee, Shammi Kapoor's character goes against the wishes of his mother but in that case, the mother is clearly portrayed as unreasonable and Shammi's character goes against her wishes for true love. In Jewel Thief, however, Vinay does not merely disagree with his parents, he also disrespects his father, who represents traditional values and community through his job as police chief, and, even worse, Vinay encourages his mother to do the same, disrupting the traditional family unit. Vinay also uses criminal language, jokingly claiming to have "stolen" a necklace that he gives to his mother. His desire for material goods overcomes his duty to his family and by extension the community and nation. Amar represents this internal desire of Vinay's for material gain at the expense of family and community. Goldie drops hints very early in the film. For example, when Anjali and Vinay are out at dinner, a man comes over to return money to "Amar." After some mild dissuasion, Vinay accepts it, which shows not only that Vinay is greedy but that "Amar" is a part of Vinay. This is made even more clear in two particular scenes. In the first, Shalini gives Vinay a set of clothes to wear that are identical to Amar's. When we see Vinay in the clothes, it is as a reflection in Shalini's mirror. Later, when Vinay is trapped in Amar's lair, he enters Amar's room only to be faced with himself. The camera pulls back to reveal that "Amar" is a reflection of Vinay.

Amar and his associated wealth is not merely ostentatious, he is also given associations with the West. For example, the women who populate Amar's world are not only glamorous, but also very Western with names like Helen and Julie. Helen and Julie wear Western clothes and operate outside of the traditional Indian family structure. Not only do they smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, which for female characters had become signals of Westernization, but Helen lives alone instead of with her family. As recently as 2005, when Aishwarya Rai, a well-known Indian actress appeared on the David Letterman show, she mentioned that she continued to live with her parents. David Letterman asked, "Is it common in India for elder children to live with their parents?" to which she replied, "It's common in India to live with your parents...it's also common in India that we don't need to take appointments with our parents to meet for dinner." Helen's individualist living situation can then be seen belonging to Western culture rather than a traditional Indian culture. Julie, on the other hand, tells Vinay, who is posing as Amar, that she is pregnant, implying that she and Amar have a sexual relationship even though they are not married.

The other two women in the film, Shalini and Anjali are more complicated that the Westernized caricatures of Helen and Julie. Anjali, the jeweler's daughter, is wealthy, but she is still Indian, in contrast to Helen, with her Western living situation. Anjali lives with her father and dresses in clothing that is chic and modern, but also Indian. For example, in the picturization for "Yeh Dil Na Hota Bechchara," she wears a sporty salwar kameez in bright reds and blues. Yet, Anjali is also not a good person. She is much like Vinay in that she is very materialistic. She also drinks alcohol and is sexually forward, two things usually associated with Westernized characters like Helen and Julie. Anjali even performs a provocative and seductive song, yet she is never coded as Western. At first taken in by her charming exterior, Vinay soon realizes that Anjali may appear to be a good, Indian girl, but she is corrupted. Shalini, on the other hand, does not appear to care for material things and her wardrobe is traditional, albeit with a 1960s twist leading to a few memorable outfits like a red saree with what appear to be white cotton balls glued to it. Where Anjali is just as single-minded in her pursuit of Vinay as Helen or Julie, Shalini allows him to pursue her, a more traditional role. Anjali shows that the bad habits associated, in films, with Westernization can also be Indian.

The locations have a similar coding. Everything associated with Amar is modern, glitzy, and Western while the things Vinay is eventually drawn to are traditional. Interiors associated with Amar like Helen's apartment, the high-roller club where "Amar" pulls a caper, and Amar's lair, are filled with designs evoking commercial art of the West from the early to mid-20th century. For example, the jeweler, who was working with Arjun the jewel thief, has a wet bar in his living room shaped like a champagne flute next to a martini glass. It looks like something from a Henry Mancini album cover. Helen's apartment has a large stained-glass light sculpture resembling the work of Piet Mondrian. To contrast, when Vinay and Shalini are shown together in song picturizations the locations used are very traditional. They are shown in a lush garden ("Aasmaan Ke Neeche")—a background often used to evoke the mythic love story of Ram and Sita; in the beautiful mountain-top scenery of Nepal ("Dil Pukare Aare Aare"); on an island in the middle of a lake ("Rula ke Gaya Sapna Mera"); and at the court of the King of Nepal ("Hoton me Aisi Baat"), which may be both glitzy and exotic, but is certainly neither modern nor Western.

Throughout Jewel Thief, Vinay is tempted by the materialism and individualism of the new age and yet, at the end, he chooses a traditional girl and the moral values of his father. At the start of the film, Vinay is on the fast track to a life much like that of Amar's. Without thinking much about his duties to his family, Vinay could have easily ended up working for the jeweler and married to the jeweler's daughter. Instead, fate intervened with Shalini, who is the epitome of a good Indian woman. The self-sacrificing Shalini, who participates in the ruse for her brother's safety despite her feelings for Vinay and her dislike of deception, shows how powerful devotion to family can be. "Amar," Vinay's Westernized mirror-image is vanquished at the end and Vinay returns to his father's good graces and wins the hand of the good Indian woman. The conflict between materialism and community would be tackled much more explicitly in later films such as Manoj Kumar's Purab aur Pachhim (1970), which was recently updated in 2007 as Namastey London, showing that the conflict of values is still being worked out on the stage of East and West.

(Originally posted November 16, 2008)