Qila Of A Film, Why Was The Great Dilip Kumar’s Last Film So Awful? Subhash K Jha shares his unpublished interview with Dilip Kumar about the film.
Dilip Kumar had much to be proud of. The unmitigated fiasco Qila, released on 10 April, 1998, was not one of them. The film, directed by Umesh Mehra, was released under great stress, and Dilip Kumar confessed to me he was not proud of it.
“One makes mistakes. I’ve certainly had my share of mishaps in my career and in my personal life, too, though I am not telling you about those! I won’t say I regret doing Qila. It was an interesting experience. I wish it had turned out better. It is rather sad that it was my last-released work, hence likely to have maximum recall-value. Never mind,” Dilip Saab once told me when we met at his Pali Hill bungalow as his devoted wife Saira Banu fussed over him.
The mythical Meena Kumari’s last film was not the timeless Pakeezah but an atrocity named Gomti Ke Kinare where she looked ill at ease, and not only for health reasons. And India’s biggest celluloid superstar Rajesh Khanna’s swan song was the terrible Riyaasat.
Hard to believe that Dilip Kumar’s career as an actor ended with Quila in 1998… or did Dilip Kumar end his career prematurely because of Qila, a purported suspense thriller where everything that could possibly go wrong, did go wrong, leaving the Thespian’s farewell performance more than a tad misconceived.
Why did the great actor, perhaps the most accomplished actor ever in Indian cinema, agree to be part of a film so infuriatingly infantile? In Qila, released on 10 April 1998, Dilip Kumar was cast in a double role for the first time since the blockbuster Ram Aur Shyam in 1966. In between, he did a triple role in the disastrous Bairaag. Qila was directed by Umesh Mehra, whose track record was no great shakes.
Dilip Kumar’s co-star in Qila was Rekha, who also starred with Dilip Kumar in the unreleased Aag Ka Dariya. The film, directed by S V Rajendra Singh Babu, never made it into theatres. There was some talk of restoring and releasing the film some years ago. Providentially, all such talk died a quiet death.
The same is true of Kalinga, the film that Dilip Kumar was officially directing in the 1990s. Unofficially, he had directed several of his films, including Ganga Jumna and Dil Diya Dard Liya . Kalinga cost its poor producer, Sudhakar Bokade, all his wealth, savings, and property. This was also the last film that Raj Kiran shot for before he disappeared.
A few years ago, the nation woke up to the jolting news that Kalinga would be dusted off the shelf and released. The brainwave proved abortive. In fact, posthumous releases must be legally banned.
