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Subject: General Studies (Paper 1 - Indian Heritage and Culture, History & Geography of the World & Society)

Topic: Culture - Art Forms (Indian Cinema)

 INDIAN CINEMA

PRE-CINEMA AGE

Telling stories from the epics using hand-drawn tableaux images in scroll paintings, with accompanying live sounds have been an age old Indian tradition. These tales, mostly the familiar stories of gods and goddesses, are revealed slowly through choreographic movements of painted glass slides in a lantern, which create illusions of movements. And so when the Lumire brothers’ representatives held the first public showing at Mumbai’s (Bombay) Watson’s Hotel on July 7, 1896, the new phenomenon did not create much of a stir here and no one in the audience ran out at the image of the train, speeding towards them, as it did elsewhere. The Indian viewer took the new experience as something already familiar to him. Harischandra Sakharam Bhatwadekar, who happened to be present for the Lumiere presentation, was keen on getting hold of the Lumiere Cinematograph and trying it out himself rather than show the Lumiere films to a wider audience. The public reception accorded to Wrangler Paranjpye at Chowapatty on his return from England with the coveted distinction he got at Cambridge was covered by Bhatwadekar in December 1901 - the first Indian topical or actuality film was born.

In Calcutta (Kolkata), Hiralal Sen photographed scenes from some of the plays at the Classic Theatre. Such films were shown as added attractions after the stage performances or taken to distant venue where the stage performers could not reach. The possibility of reaching a large audience through recorded images which could be projectedseveral times through mechanical gadgets caught the fancy of people in the performing arts and the stage and entertainment business. The first decade of the 20th century saw live and recorded performances being clubbed together in the same programme.

The strong influence of its traditional arts, music, dance and popular theatre on the cinema movement in India in its early days, is probable responsible for its characteristic enthusiasm for inserting song and dance sequences in Indian cinema, even till today.

History

Raja Harishchandra (1913) was the first silent feature film made in India. It was made by Dadasaheb Phalke, By the 1930s, the industry was producing over 200 films per annum. The first Indian sound film, Ardeshir Irani’s Alam Ara (1931), was a super hit. There was clearly a huge market for talkies and musicals; Bollywood and all the regional film industries quickly switched to sound filming.

The 1930s and 1940s were tumultuous.times: India was buffeted by the Great Depressions World War II, the Indian independence movement and the violence of the Partition. Most Bollywood films were unabashedly escapist, but there were also a number of film makers who tackled tough social issues or used the struggle for Indian independence as a backdrop for their plots.

In the late 1950s, Bollywood films moved from black-and-white to colour. Lavish romantic musicals and melodramas were the staple fare at the cinema. Successful actors included Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoqr. In late 1960s and mid 1970s, violent movies’s era was started but romantic movies also co-existed and Dharmendra was a major star. In the late 1970s and 1980s, romantic confections made way for gritty, violent, films about gangsters and bandits. Amitabh Bachchan, the star known for his “angry young man” roles, rode the crest of this trend. In the early 1990s, the pendulum swung back towards family-centric romantic musicals with the success of such films as Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994) and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995).

Moreover, Indian cinema entered into a new theme based era that targeted the social ills and evils, like ‘Company’, ‘Onkara’, ‘Shoot Out’. These films are directly the mirror of our social evils occurring here and there. Another kinds of films like ‘Corporate’ targeted the malpractices happening in corporate companies. Today, the film makers are more keen to raise the. political and social lacuna presenting in their film.

At last, it is very much important to say that the films are taking the subjects from the society and we are also taking from the films. In other words, film and society are reciprocal to each other and the films are the mirror of any society. The Indian film industry has preferred films that appeal to all segments of the audience and has resisted making films that target narrow audiences. It was believed that aiming for a broad spectrum, would maximise box office receipts. However, film makers may be moving towards accepting some box-office segmentation, between films that appeal to rural Indians and films that appeal to urban and overseas audiences.

Regional Cinema

The first film in Southern India was made in 1916 by R. Nataraja Mudaliar - Keechaka Vadham. As the title indicates the subject is again a mythological from the Mahabharata. Another film made in Madras - Valli Thiru -Manam (1921) by Whittaker drew critical acclaim and box office success. Hollywood returned Ananthanarayanan Narayanan founded General Pictures Corporation in 1929 and established filmmaking as an industry in South India and became the single largest producer of silent films. Kolhapur in Western Maharashtra was another centre of active film production in the twenties.

In 1919 Baburao K. Mistry - popularly known as Baburao Painter formed the Maharashtra Film Co. with the blessings of the Maharaja of Kolhapur and released the first significant historical - Sairandhari (1920) with Balasheb Pawar, Kamala Devi and Zunzarrao Pawar in stellar roles. Because of his special interest in sets, costumes, design and painting, he chose episodes from Maratha history for interpreting in the new medium and specialised in the-historical genre. The exploits of Shivaji and his contemporaries and their patriotic encounters with their opponents formed the recurring themes of his ‘historicals’ which invariably had a contemporary relevance to the people of a nation, who were fighting for liberation from a colonial oppressor.

The attack against the false values associated with the Western way of life and their blind imitation by some Indians was humorously brought but by Dhiren Ganguly in his brilliant satirical comedy -England Returned (1921) presumably the first ‘social satire’ on Indians obsessed with Western values. And with that another genre of i Indian cinema known as ‘the contemporary social’ slowly emerged. Baburao Painter followed it up with another significant film in 1925 - Savkari Pash (The Indian Shylock) an attempt at realistic treatment of the Indian peasant exploited by the greedy moneylender.

In Bengal, a region rich in culture and intellectual activity, the first Bengali feature film in 1917, was remake of Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra. Titled Satyawadi Raja Harishchandra, it was directed by Rustomjee Dotiwala. Less prolific than Bombay based film industry, around 122 feature films were made in Calcutta (Kolkata) in the Silent Era.
The first feature film in Tamil, also the first in entire South India, Keechak avatham was made during 1916-17, directed by Nataraja Mudaliar.

Marthandavarma (1931) produced by R. Sunder Raj, under Shri.Rajeswari Film, Nagercoil, directed by P. V. Rao, got into a legal tangle and was withdrawn after its premiere. Based on a celebrated novel by C.V. Raman Pillai, the film recounts the adventures of the crown prince and how he eliminates the arch-villains to become the unquestioned ruler of the Travancore- State. The film has title cards in English and Malayalam, some of which are taken from the original text. A few of the title cards and action make obvious reference to the Swadeshi Movement of the time. Had it not been for the legal embargo, the film would have had a great impact on the regional cinema of the South.

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