Kiss Day 2022 | Evolution of the kiss on the Indian silver screen

A postcard shows a still from the 1925 silent film 'Prem Sanyas' ('The Light of Asia'), starring Seeta Devi (born Renee Smith) and Himanshu Rai. (Via Wikimedia Commons)

Scene 1: Year: 2021. Tall waves thrashing by a beach. The man in singlet, the woman in a spaghetti top kiss. Those long kisses in the film Gehrayiaan have created a hullaballoo. Everyone is gaping - and talking of it.

Scene 2: Year: 1932. A woman in cleavage-revealing outfits kissed 86 times in one film. Yes, 86 times in Zarina, a film that was released 90 years ago. There were no conversations in the film directed by Ezra Mir. It was still the silent film era. Actor Zubeida’s skimpy attire and the passionate smooching stirred a truckload of controversy, and the film was later removed from the circuits.

But Zubeida was not the first one to kiss on an Indian screen - it was Seeta Devi in the 1929 silent film A Throw of Dice which narrates the story of two kings vying for the love of a hermit's daughter.

In the 1930s, the filmmakers were not puritans. Kisses were many and long. There was a four-minute kiss between Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai in the 1933 film Karma. The reel-life couple were also real-life husband-wife and got away with the onscreen snog fest. But nothing beats the kiss-count of the 1936 film Shokh Dilruba which was directed by J.P. Advani featuring S. D. Narang, Jena - the film had 150 kisses!

But by the late 1930s, kisses were quick to dissolve from the screen. There was no legal restriction but for the next five decades, Hindi films remained mainly kiss-free, with a few exceptions. The kiss surreptitiously appeared in Sangam (1964) in which the protagonists (Raj Kapoor and Vyjayanthimala) are kiss spectators - they watch a European couple kissing in Paris, and in Mera Naam Joker (1969) Raj Kapoor was passionately kissing Ksenia Ryabinkina.

Vyjayanthimala with Dilip Kumar in Bimal Roy's 'Madhumathi' (1958). (Image via Wikimedia Commons)

The late 1960s witnessed a mini-sexual revolution with voices being raised in favour of a kiss. In its 1969 report, the GD Khosla Committee stated that “No court of law will hold that a kiss by itself, irrespective of the circumstances in which it takes place or the individuals between whom it is exchanged, is indecent or immoral”.

The same year, 13-year-old Rekha making her acting debut in Anjana Safar kissed Biswajeet. The Censors snipped off the smooch but that kiss made it to the front cover of Life (Asia edition) accompanied with an article titled ‘India's Kissing Crisis’.

In the early 1970s, the Kapoors were setting kissing trends: Rishi Kapoor kissed Dimple Kapadia in Bobby (1973), and Shashi Kapoor and Zeenat Aman’s kiss in Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978) created a huge furore. Not only because a kiss was a kiss but also because her breasts were heavily exposed. When Karishma Kapoor and Aamir Khan locked lips for nearly 10 minutes in Raja Hindustani (1996), the kiss finally returned after decades of repression. Films like Murder (2004), Julie (2004), and Hawas (2004) took kissing to another level - desire became something to acknowledge, and - though tentatively still - celebrate.

Though Hindi films are getting bolder (more real), the top stars of the firmament are still kiss-shy. Amitabh Bachchan does not kiss much except that one tiny kiss in Black (2005). After years of being King Khan, Shah Rukh Khan shed his kiss-coyness in Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012). His lip-lock with Katrina Kaif was discussed in The New York Times with the headline Defuse Bombs? That's Nothing Next to Love. Salman Khan has lived by the no-kiss onscreen rule but he finally kissed Disha Patani in Radhe (2021).

Salman Khan's first screen-kiss happened as recently as last year, in 'Radhe'. (Photo by Shrinivaskulkarni1388 via Wikimedia Commons 4.0)

From that kiss by Seeta Devi in 1929 to the recent Geeli Puchi (part of Ajeeb Dastaans, an anthology on Netflix) in which Konkona Sen Sharma and Aditi Rao Hydari indulge in a split-second interchange of cheek kisses rife with hesitation and passion, the meeting of mouths has come full circle on the Hindi film screen.

The kiss in Malayalam cinema

While most know of the Devika Rani-Himanshu Rai kiss 1933, not many talk of Marthanda Varma, a 1933 Malayalam black and white silent film in which AVP Menon and Padmini lock lips. That kiss also acquires importance because it was the second film of the Malayalam film industry.

In the 1970s and '80s, Malayalam films did not have much qualms about an occasional steamy scene but a lip lock was taboo. However, a few filmmakers, including Padmarajan and Bharathan, did experiment with the onscreen kiss.

Inspired by The Blue Lagoon, a love story of two runaway teenagers, Ina (1982) created outrage when onscreen lovers Master Raghu and Devi kissed boldly. A few years later, the orthodox ranted against the sensuous and kissing scenes in Vaishali (1988) that depicts the tale of sage Rishyasringan being seduced by Vaishali, a devdasi. Njan Gandharvan (1991) climaxed with a long lovemaking scene. The film tanked at the box office but is now being hailed as a masterpiece.

Fahadh Faasil, called the actor who talks with his eyes, is often credited for upping the lip-game for Malayalam cinema. When he kissed Ramya Nambeesan in Chaapa Kurishu (2011), the meeting of mouths changed forever. A year later, in the final scene of Nidra (2012), Sidharth Bharathan, and Rima Kallingal jump into a river with their lips still locked.

Actor Fahadh Faasil (Image: screen grab from 'Malik'/ Amazon Prime Video)

What started out as unconventional and bold choices by Fahadh Faasil has been taken forward by actor Tovino Thomas who began kissing onscreen in Mayanadi (2017) and created a stir in Theevandi (2018) and is currently being talked for the most smoking-hot kiss in Malayalam cinema.

In Kala (2021), a bearded Thomas and Divya Pillai stand close as raindrops hit a crescendo outside. Thomas dangles a cigarette, lights it, inhales and kisses Pillai on the mouth. The kiss itself might not seem significant, it is the aftermath that sets the screen on fire. Thomas exhales a cloud of smoke that swathes the two seductively.

The kiss in Bengali cinema

Nobody expected Satyajit Ray - the Satyajit Ray - to break the bhadralok norm of all things prim and prudish. In Ghare Baire (1985), a story set in 1907 on the estate of a rich Bengali, actors Swatilekha Chatterjee and Soumitro Chatterjee engage in Ray’s first full-blown onscreen kiss. For most, it was a sacrilege on celluloid and sheer blasphemy for boldly presenting a Rabindranath Tagore classic.

That year, the sensibilities of the lay and the mighty were to be bruised further by director Aparna Sen in Paroma, her second film after the extraordinary 36 Chowringhee Lane. Though the audience do not see the lip on lip, the camera repeatedly dollies up to the entangled Rakhi Gulzar and Mukul Sharma, the illicit kiss and the love making later create a mesmerising symphony of desire, fulfilment and womanhood.

While bhadralok fumed over lustful kissing, legendary Bengali actor Uttam Kumar tore the veil when he questioned the absence of onscreen kiss. “If there are scenes of smoking and drinking in Bengali films, why there are no scenes of kissing?”, he famously wondered. His wish was fulfilled later. Director Srijit Mukherjee thinks that Parambrata-Anirban's kissing scene in Second Man, Sushmita Sen-Yeshu Sengupta's smooching scene in Nirbak and Abir-Parno’s deep kiss in Rajkahini have made the Bengali film ‘adult’.

For the Bengalis, no one turned the screen more ‘adult’ than Qaushiq Mukherjee, aka Q, dubbed as India's most dangerous filmmaker by CNN. His sexually explicit films (Gandu, Tasher Desh, Ludo, Garbage) have been tagged experimental and pornographic, but Q does not kneel to normative definitions. He says he wants ‘to create some sort of physical disturbance’ in the conscience of his audience.

The kiss saga continues. Guy de Maupassant was right. “The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.”