INDIAN CINEMA

ADVANCED DIPLOMA IN MASS COMMUNICATION

__________________________________________________________________________________
SUBMITTED BY
SAUMYA GIRI
1 | Indian Cinema

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to

my teacher ________________________ as well as our
Head of Department_________________________
who gave me this golden opportunity to do this
wonderful assignment on the topic Indian Cinema.

It helped me in doing a lot of Research and I came to

know about many new things about Indian Cinema, and
its culture and influence over the years. I am really
thankful to them for this topic and their constant
guidance and support. Thank you for sharing your
pearls of wisdom with me.

I would also like to thank my parents and friends and

Kaustubh who helped me a lot in finalizing this project
within the limited time frame.

Saumya Giri

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INDEX

1. Introduction 3

2. Overview 6
2.1 Indian art cinema 10
2.2 Indian commercial cinema 11
2.3 regional cinema of india 12

3. Indian art cinema 13

4. Indian commercial cinema 15

4.1 Genres of Indian Commercial Cinema 19

5. regional cinema of india 20

6. conclusion 25

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1. Introduction

One of the most flourishing cinema industries found today is in India.

But the pioneers of the industry were actually foreigners. In 1896, the
Lumiere brothers demonstrated the art of cinema when they screened
Cinematography consisting of six short films to an enthusiastic
audience in Bombay. The success of these films led to the screening of
films by James B. Stewart and Ted Hughes. In 1897, Save Dada made
two short films, but the fathers of Indian cinema were Dada Saheb
Phalke who in 1913 made the first feature length silent film and
Ardeshir Irani who in 1931 made India's first talking film. With the
demise of the silent era and the advent of the talkies, the main source
for inspiration for films came from mythological texts. Films were
produced in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali. Mythology flourished
more in South India where its social conservative morals equated film
acting to prostitution. But by the 1930’s, word had spread around the

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world about the vibrant film industry in India and foreigners with stars
in their eyes landed upon Bombay shores. One of these was Mary
Evans, a young Australian girl who could do stunts. She could, with no
effort, lift a man and throw him across the room. She wore Zorro-like
masks and used a whip when necessary. She changed her name to
Nadia and was affectionately known by the audience as Fearless Nadia
and that name stuck with her through the ages. Even though she did not
speak any of the native tongues, her career spanned from the 1930’s to
1959. She had a huge cult following. The press and critics did not
appreciate her; however, the audiences could not get enough of her
stunt theatrics. Following on Nadia’s heels in 1940, Florence Esekiel,
a teenager from Baghdad, arrived in Bombay and was soon given the
screen name of Nadira. She played the love interest in a Dilip Kumar
film who at the time was a leading heartthrob. She moved on to playing
bitchy parts and was forever type cast as a ‘vamp’ – the temptress, the
bad girl. She gradually slipped into mother roles. One of her last
appearances was in Ismail Merchant Film Cotton Mary. There were
also notable male actors who made a mark on the screen. One of them
was Bob Christo, who was another Australian. He came to India
because he had seen a picture of the actress Parveen Babi and ended up
actually being in a film with her. He specialized in villain and
henchman roles. Another notable actor is Tom Alter who has played
the foreigner who does not speak the language, although he is fluent in
Hindi and Urdu, even reciting poems in Urdu on the stage. He was
raised in Mussourie, India. And then we must not forget Helen. A
Franco-Burmese refuge who broke all norms, she embodied sexuality
and filled the roles that other actresses with conservative views
shunned. She was widely sought after for her dance or ‘item numbers’
as they are called today. However, she stayed within the code of
decency wearing body stockings all the times. She did venture out of
this zone by doing a few serious roles. In the 1920’s Franz Austen, a

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German from Munich who could not utter one word of Hindi, came to
Bombay and directed 57 blockbuster films. His films were on the scale
of those made by Cecil B. DeMille. He drew his inspiration from
episodes of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, his early silent films were
richer than most that were made at the time. In 1947, When India gained
its independence, mythological and historical stories were being
replaced by social reformist films focusing on the lives of the lower
classes, the dowry system and prostitution. This brought a new wave of
filmmakers to the forefront such as Bimal Roy and Satyajit Ray among
others. In the 1960’s, inspired by social and cinematic changes in the
US and Europe, India’s new wave was founded, offering a greater sense
of realism to the public and getting recognition abroad, but the industry
at large churned out ‘masala’ films with a mesh of genres including
action, comedy, melodrama punctuated with songs and dances and
relying on the songs and the stars to sell their films. Today there is a
growing movement to make Indian cinema more real - a group of young
filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap, Anand Gandhi, and Gyan Correa,
whose film The Good Road is this year’s contender for the Oscars.
There are now more large investments from corporate houses and a
more structured industry funding independent cinema and making it a
viable and profitable business. There has never been a more favorable
time for Indian cinema than today. With a vibrant creative community,
new technology and investment interest, we are on the verge of seeing
Indian cinema transcend its national borders to project India’s socio-
political and economic influence around the world.

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2. Overview

India has one of the oldest and largest film industries in the world. It
was in early 1913 that an Indian film received a public screening. The
film was Raja Harischandra. Its director, Dadasaheb Phalke is now
remembered through a life-time achievement award bestowed by the
film industry in his name. At that point of time it was really hard to
arrange somebody to portray the role of females. Among the middle
classes, that association of acting with the loss of virtue, female
modesty, and respectability has only recently been put into question.

While a number of other film-makers, working in several Indian

languages, pioneered the growth and development of Indian cinema,

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the studio system began to emerge in the early 1930s. Its most
successful early film was Devdas (1935), whose director, P.C. Barua
also appeared in the lead role. The Prabhat Film Company, established
by V. G. Damle, Shantaram, S. Fatehlal, and two other men in 1929,
also achieved its first success around this time. Damle and Fatehlal's
Sant Tukaram (1936), made in Marathi was the first Indian film to gain
international recognition.

The social films of V. Shantaram, more than anything else, paved the
way for an entire set of directors who took it upon themselves to
interrogate not only the institutions of marriage, dowry, and
widowhood, but the grave inequities created by caste and class
distinctions. Some of the social problems received their most
unequivocal expression in Achhut Kanya ("Untouchable Girl", 1936),
a film directed by Himanshu Rai of Bombay Talkies. The film portrays
the travails of a Harijan girl, played by Devika Rani, and a Brahmin
boy, played by Ashok Kumar.

The next noteworthy phase of Hindi cinema is associated with

personalities such as Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy, and Guru Dutt. The son
of Prithviraj Kapoor, Raj Kapoor created some of the most admired and
memorable films in Hindi cinema.

Awaara (The Vagabond, 1951), Shri 420 (1955), and Jagte Raho (1957)
were both commercial and critical successes. Bimal Roy's Do Bigha
Zamin, which shows the influence of Italian neo-realism, explored the
hard life of the rural peasantry under the harshest conditions. In the
meantime, the Hindi cinema had seen the rise of its first acknowledged
genius, Guru Dutt, whose films critiqued the conventions of society and
deplored the conditions which induce artists to relinquish their
inspiration. From Barua's Devdas (1935) to Guru Dutt's Sahib, Bibi aur

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Gulam,the motif of "predestined love" looms large: to many opponents,

a mawkish sentimentality characterizes even the best of the Hindi
cinema before the arrival of the new or alternative Indian cinema in the
1970s.

It is without doubt that under the influence of the Bengali film-makers

like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, and Mrinal Sen, the Indian cinema,
not only in Hindi, also began to take a somewhat different turn in the
1970s against the tide of commercial cinema, characterized by song-
and-dance routines, insignificant plots, and family dramas. Ghatak
went on to serve as Director of the Film and Television School at Pune,
from where the first generation of a new breed of Indian film-makers
and actors - Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, and Om
Puri among the latter was to emerge.

These film-makers, such as Shyam Benegal, Ketan Mehta, Govind

Nihalani, and Saeed Mirza, exhibited a different aesthetic and political
sensibility and were inclined to explore the caste and class
contradictions of Indian society, the nature of oppression suffered by
women, the dislocations created by industrialism and the migration
from rural to urban areas, the problem of landlessness, the impotency
of ordinary democratic and constitutional procedures of redress, and so
on.

The well-liked Hindi cinema is characterized by important changes too

numerous to receive more than the slightest mention. The song-and-
dance routine is now more systematized, more regular in its patterns;
the 'other', whether in the shape of the terrorist or the unalterable villain,
has a gloomier presence; the nation-state is more fixated in its demands
on our loyalties and curtsy; the Indian Diaspora is a larger presence in
the Indian imagination and so on. These are only some considerations:

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anyone wishing to discover the world of Indian cinema should also

replicate on its presence in Indian spaces, its relation to vernacular art
forms and mass art.

The Indian film industry, famously known as Bollywood, is the largest

in the world, and has major film studios in Mumbai (Bombay),
Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Between them, they
turn out more than 1000 films a year to hugely appreciative audiences
around the world. For nearly 50 years, the Indian cinema has been the
central form of entertainment in India, and with its increased visibility
and success abroad, it won't be long until the Indian film industry will
be well thought-out to be its western counterpart- Hollywood.
Mainstream commercial releases, however, continue to dominate the
market, and not only in India, but wherever Indian cinema has a large
following, whether in much of the British Caribbean, Fiji, East and
South Africa, the U.K., United States, Canada, or the Middle East.

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2.1 Indian Art Cinema

India is well known for its commercial cinema, better known as

Bollywood. In addition to commercial cinema, there is also Indian art
cinema, known to film critics as "New Indian Cinema" or sometimes
"the Indian New Wave" (see the Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema).
Many people in India plainly call such films as "art films" as opposed
to mainstream commercial cinema. From the 1960s through the 1980s,
the art film or the parallel cinema was usually government-aided
cinema.

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2.2 Indian Commercial Cinema

Commercial cinema is the most popular form of cinema in India. Ever

since its inception the commercial Indian movies have seen huge
following. Commercial or popular cinema is made not only in Hindi
but also in many other regional languages of East and South India. Let's
look at some of the general conventions of commercial films in India.
Commercial films, in whatever languages they are made, tend to be
quite long (approx three hours), with an interval. Another important
feature of commercial cinema in India is music.

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2.3 Regional Cinema India

India is home to one of the largest film industries in the world. Every
year thousands of movies are produced in India. Indian film industry
comprises of Hindi films, regional movies and art cinema. The Indian
film industry is supported mainly by a vast film-going Indian public,
though Indian films have been gaining increasing popularity in the rest
of the world, especially in countries with large numbers of emigrant
Indians.

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3. Indian Art Cinema

India is well known for its commercial cinema, better known as

Bollywood. In addition to commercial cinema, there is also Indian art
cinema, known to film critics as "New Indian Cinema" or sometimes
"the Indian New Wave" (see the Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema).
Many people in India plainly call such films as "art films" as opposed
to mainstream commercial cinema. From the 1960s through the 1980s,
the art film or the parallel cinema was usually government-aided
cinema. Such directors could get federal or state government grants to
produce non-commercial films on Indian themes. Their films were
showcased at state film festivals and on the government-run TV. These
films also had limited runs in art house theatres in India and overseas.

The directors of the art cinema owed much more to foreign influences,
such as Italian Neo-Realism or French New Wave, than they did to the
genre conventions of commercial Indian cinema. The best known New
Cinema directors were Bimal Roy, Ritwik Ghatak, and Satyajit Ray.

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The best-known films of this genre are the Apu Trilogy (Bengali) by
Satyajit Ray and Do Bigha Zameen (Hindi) by Bimal Roy. Satyajit Ray
was the most flourishing of the "art cinema" directors. His films played
primarily to art-house audiences in the larger Indian cities, or to film
buffs on the international circuit.

In South India, art cinema or the parallel cinema was well-supported in

the state of Kerala. Malayalam movie makers like Adoor
Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan, and M. T. Vasudevan Nair were quite
successful. Starting the 1970s, Kannada film-makers from Karnataka
state produced a string of serious, low-budget films. But virtually only
one director from that period continues to make off-beat films -- Girish
Kasaravalli. In other markets of south India, like Kannada, Tamil,
Malayalam, and Telugu, stars and popular cinema rule the box office.
Still, a few directors, such as Balachander, Bharathiraja, Balu
Mahendra, Bapu, Puttanna, Siddalingaiah, Dr.K.Vishwanath, and Mani
Ratnam have achieved fair amount of success at the box-office while
balancing elements of art and popular cinema together.

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4. Indian Commercial Cinema

Indian commercial cinema, from the 1960s onwards - when

Technicolor became affordable and a regular feature of Indian films -
cinema had become the primary source of entertainment for the urban
masses. The numbers were daily increasing in leaps and bounds.

With changing times television had become an integral part of every

household and the cinema halls mushroomed almost everywhere. To a
certain extent, it was also a vehicle for educating and modernizing the
customs and practices of these masses which had outright serious social
themes. There were huge investments in the film industry and the
scenario altered more in the 21st century when the corporate houses
started investing in the Indian film industry.

A new trend began in the 1970s when the producers and audience
became the decision makers as far as the form and content of escapist

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films were concerned. But there

were directors, producers and actors who wanted to make 'quality'
films as well. At one point of time Indian cinema got divided into two
genres - the hard-core commercial movies and parallel cinema. This
phenomenon, however, is however losing its ground. The difference
between the two has been bridged as the audience today is only looking
for good films.

The 1970s witnessed the making of

some of the biggest films and the rise of
the finest stars in Bollywood. During
these crucial years, the definitive
evolution of Hindi commercial cinema
was taking place towards the star
system, escapist films, successful
formulae and these features were
adopted with some variations by all
regional commercial cinemas as well.

It is in commercial cinema that one gets

to see the 'Indianness' of Indian cinema most vividly. In terms of the
exploration of complex and multifaceted human experiences, depth of
psychological motivation and social vision, popular films may be found
wanting. However, in terms of popular response and how popular
imagination is shaped, they are highly significant. With their unique
combination of fantasy, action films, song, dance and spectacle, Indian
commercial films constitute a distinctively Indian form of mass
entertainment.

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Indian commercial films are basically morality

plays, where good triumphs over evil, and the social
order, disrupted by the actions of immoral and
villainous people, is restored by the power of
goodness. Entertainment and moral edification are
combined in a way that has direct appeal to the vast
masses of moviegoers and the idea of evil is central
in Indian commercial filmy discourse.

Indian commercial films are, as already noted, basically melodramas,

and the idea of evil plays a central role in melodramas. As many
commentators on melodrama have pointed out, the polarization
between good and bad, the clash between moral and immoral, the
antagonism between what is whole-some and what's evil is an
inescapably dominant ingredient of melodrama. Melodramas, by
definition, deal with characters who are easily recognizable - often
stereotypical and who incarnate the forces of good and evil. Evil is a
vital ingredient because melodramas seek to establish the authority of
a moral universe. By vanquishing the villain, and the evil he or she
embodies, melodramas seek to reassert the moral authority of a world
that for a while threatened to fall prey to the dark forces of evil. While
examining popular Indian films, this becomes very clear.

This concept of evil, so central to Indian commercial cinema, has been

evolving over the years in response to diverse social, cultural and
political forces. This is readily illustrated in three of the most well-
known commercial films: Kismet (1943), Awaara (1951) and Sholay
(1975). Awaara, was directed by Raj Kapoor and a smash hit not only
in India but in foreign countries such as the former Soviet Union,
whereas Sholay, is one of the most popular films ever made in India.

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There are a number of genres associated with

Indian commercial cinema. Most significant
are: mythological films with the fantastic
narrations of ancient stories and devotional
films that foreground the diverse forms of
union with divinity. There are also the romantic
films dealing with erotic passion as they
confront social conventions; historical films with fanciful stage settings
and costumes, social films that explore important social problems and
issues; and family melodramas that seek to explore tensions and
upheavals within the matrix of the family. There is nothing specifically
Indian about these genres. What is distinctive are the ways in which
they have been handled by Indian Film Directors, investing them with
a characteristically Indian cultural imprint.

Indian Commercial films play a central role in the construction of

popular Indian consciousness; they are the most dominant and
pervasive force responsible for creating in the public mind the notions
of heroism, duty, courage, modernity, consumption and glamour. The
relationship between Indian commercial cinema and modernity is
extremely close. Presently bilingual films are also in vogue. The
audience has been looking for a change for a long time and films
like Dil Chahata Hai, Life in A Metro, Dor, Mr. And Mrs. Iyer, 15
Park Avenue, Rockford, Iqbal and others are a welcome change.

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4.1 Genres of Indian Commercial Cinema

There are a number of significant genres associated with Indian

commercial cinema. Romantic love, friendship, motherhood,
renunciation, relationships, social issues are some of the most
compelling among them. As with the genres so with the themes - a
distinctively culture-specific approach is adopted, giving these Indian
commercial films a characteristically Indian outlook. So when
examining what is unique about Indian commercial cinema we need to
pay particular attention to questions of theme and genre like
Mythological Films, Devotional Films, Action Movies, Patriotic
Films, Social Drama, Comic Genre and Romantic Genre.

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5. Regional Cinema India

The three important centres where Indian cinema had its early growth
were Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, which were the principal trading
port cities of the Imperial British in India. As we have seen, Hindi films
made in Bombay found good market across the country and became the
most dominant form of film production. But Telegu cinema in Chennai,
Bengali cinema in Kolkata and Marathi cinema in Mumbai also
flourished producing its own brand of popular entertainment.
Just as Hindi cinema is categorized into mainstream and parallel
cinema, similarly the regional cinema also developed its own
mainstream and parallel cinema. The mainstream regional cinema
developed its own formulas for success depending on the demands of
its audiences and at the same time produced individual film makers
who wished to depart from main stream formula films towards the

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making of what is called `auteur’ films. Regional cinema has been

officially patronized by the government by the establishment of state
level Film development corporations and the institutionalization of
national awards, in which regional cinema is given due recognition.
Early Mumbai films can be called Marathi films because they were not
only directed by great Marathi directors like Dada Saheb Phalke and V.
Shantaram, Acharya P K Atre and Master Vinayak. They were also
produced with the help of film companies owned by Marathis and with
technicians who were from Maharashtra. But Marathi cinema in
Mumbai was soon subsumed by Hindi cinema because of Hindi
cinema’s reach and popularity. Only in recent times, with directors like
Dada Kondke, and Jabbar Patel has Marathi cinema again come into its
own.
In the East, it was Bengali cinema that was most dominant. It was in
1897 that films were shown for the first time in Calcutta. in 1919, the
first silent Bengali movie Bilwamangal was produced. Pramathesh
Barua may be considered to be the first star of Bengali films. He was
not only a brilliant actor but also directed films. In 1935 he directed and
acted in a film adaptation of Saratchandra Chatterjee's popular
novel Devdas. Among the early Bengali actors, the name of Kanan
Devi is important because she, like Devika Rani and Zubeida in
Mumbai, inspired women to shed inhibitions and become a part of the
film industry.
The 60s and the 70s were dominated by films with the lead pair of
Uttamkumar and Suchitra Sen that took Bengali cinema by storm. The
duo acted in a number of successful films and some of them remain
classics in the genre of the romantic musical cinema.

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With the release of Pather Panchali in 1955, Bengali cinema saw the
advent of parallel cinema, and along with Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik
Ghatak became internationally known directors with their socially
relevant cinema that inspired a whole generation of film makers across
the country and the world.
In the eastern part of the country, Assamese and Oriya films also carved
out regional markets. In Assam as far back as 1935, Jyoti Prasad
Agarwal directed the first Assamese film Joymati. Later, in 1987
director Jahnu Barua gave the Assamese film national and international
recognition with his film Haladhiya Charaye Baodhan Khaay. This
film won awards at the Locarno film festival. The late Bhupen
Hazarika, a renowned singer, composer from Assam is credited with
having provided excellent and unique musical scores to not only many
Assamese films but also Bengali and Hindi films.
Mohan Sunder Deb Goswami made the first Oriya talkie Sita Bibaha in
1936. In 1960 the Oriya film Sri Lokenath directed by Prafulla
Sengupta received a national award. Prasanta Nanda is recognized as a
great Oriya actor, director and screenplay writer and has received a
number of national awards. In recent times, Biswaprakash (aka ‘The
Young Rebel’) directed by Susanta Misra won a national award in
2000.
Down south, Tamil, Telegu and Malayalam and Kannada films are
extremely popular with the masses in their respective regions. Tamil
cinema has a long history and began in the 1897 when M. Edwards
screened a film at Victoria Memorial Hall in Chennai. Tamil cinema
beagn with mythologicals like Keechaka Vadham (1916)
and Draupadi Vastrapaharanam (1918) by Nataraja Mudaliar. In
1931, Kalidas was the first Tamil talkie. Just before independence,
Gemini studios produced some great films including the
famous Chandralekha. One of the unique features of Tamil cinema is

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the involvement of politicians in film making. Chief ministers C.N.

Annadurai and M. Karunanidhi have been script writers. M.G.
Ramachandran and Ms. Jayalalitha very popular actors who became the
chief minister of Tamilnadu. Today among the notable Tamil directors
is Mani Ratnam who has also made many successful films in
Bollywood.
When we think of Telegu cinema or the cinema from Andhra Pradesh,
we are reminded of NTR (N.T. Rama Rao) and of the great Ramoji
Film Studio is Hyderabad. It was in 1922 that the first Telegu
film Bhisma Pratigya by R.S. Prakash was made. This was a silent
film. In 1931 the first talkie, Bhakta Prahlad was made by Hanumappa
Munioappa Reddy. N.T. Rama, a star of Telugu films, started doing
films in the 1950s and was a very popular star. He later became the
Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh.
Interestingly, three non-Telugu directors have in recent times made
films in Telegu. They are Mrinal Sen (Oka Ori Katha, 1977), Shyam
Benegal (Anugraham, 1977 and Gautam Ghosh (Ma Bhoomi, 1979). In
1983, Narasingh Rao directed Dassi, a film that went on to win many
national awards, including the best actress award for actor Archana.
Malayalam cinema from the state of Kerala has made a great
contribution to the Indian film industry. In 1928 J. C. Daniel
directedVigathakumaram which was a silent film. In 1938 the first
talkie Balan was released. This was directed by Notani. Malayalam
cinema is characterized by the way it focuses on the realities of life
and by its deep relation with Malayalam literature. Though the
mainstream commercial Malayalam cinema comprises typical ‘masala’
film, there have been great Malayam directors who have used the film
language to create remarkable movies. A. Vincent adapted Vykom
Muhammad Basheer’s novel and made the film Bhargavi Nilayam. In
1965, Chemmeen directed by Ramu Karyat created waves and won the

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national award as the best film. In contemporary Malayalam cinema

films made by Adoor Gopalakrishnan and G Aravidan have taken
Indian cinema to new heights in artistic merit and socially relevant
content. There are a number of film societies in Kerala and the film
society movement has helped in generating and promoting good
cinema.

Today, films are made in a number of other regional languages also.

There are films in Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Kannada, Manipuri, Dogri and
Gujrati. Indian film makers are making films in English too.

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6. Conclusion

The term “Bollywood,” though often inaccurately conflated with

Indian cinema as a whole, refers just to the Hindi-language industry in
the city of Mumbai. There are several different regional film industries
throughout the country, each in a different language; the most
prominent ones are Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, and Kannada
languages. The regional cinemas share a variety of common tropes
(music, dancing, fabulous costumes, high melodrama, et cetera, ad
infinitum), with noticeable differences; in a general sense, the south
cinemas, Telugu and Tamil in particular, are more floridly rowdy than
the comparatively restrained Bollywood industry. The highest paid star
in Asia after Jackie Chan is the Tamil-language star Rajinikanth, also
known as “Superstar Rajinikanth” — who, when such things were in
vogue, featured in the Indian version of Chuck Norris jokes, owing to
Rajinikanth’s similarly titanic dominance over all forms of cinematic
villainy.

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The centennial of Indian cinema is being observed this year because of

the 1913 feature-length “Raja Harishchandra,” an adaptation of
Sanskrit epics. From there a rich cinematic tradition emerged, with
Indian films being recognized for their global commercial appeal as
early as the twenties, and through on to the present day.

Political influences (see the next point) led the Indian film industry —
which is not to say filmmakers themselves — to evolve in direct but
discrete parallel to their Western counterparts: The Golden Age of
production was roughly concurrent with the various New Waves in
Europe, the rise of blockbusters in the 1970s coincided with the time
they took off in America, and so on. Increasingly in the 21st century,
there’s been a tendency, particularly in Bollywood, to emulate
American and European films (shortening running times,

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cutting musical numbers, etc.), though this has yet to carry over to the
regional cinemas, which still proudly flaunt their idiosyncrasies.

A great deal of the creative isolation of early Indian cinema, and the
development of its own set of rules largely separate from those of the
other world cinemas, dates back to regulations the British government
established to promote British films over American ones (in the days
when Britain ruled India). After winning political independence from
Great Britain in 1947, the national film industries, already aesthetically
independent, remained that way.

Beyond the aesthetic impact of politics, the thematic content of many

Indian films naturally reflects Indian history and politics. Countless
films deal with rebellions against the British or remember rebellion
against the British fondly. The partition between India and Pakistan is
a frequent subject as well, with political tensions between the two
countries providing stories for everything from Cold War-style
espionage between the two countries to doomed romances between an
Indian boy and a Pakistani girl, to — this being India — both at the
same time.
Even a cursory, surface-level understanding of events like this can help
greatly in understanding the context of Indian films — not because
they’d be incomprehensible without it, but because they are made, for
the most part, for Indian audiences familiar with all these events, so
occasionally details are elided to avoid over-explaining. It’s not that
one can’t “get” Indian films without that, it just helps one get them in
a different way.

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28 | Indian Cinema

Not all Indian films are masala films, but masala films are uniquely
Indian. Masala films are the cinematic equivalent of the melange of
spices used in Indian cooking that provide the name. Every conceivable
genre is thrown into the pot — meaning the screenplay — and cooked
up by the director. It makes perfect sense: In making a movie for the
whole family to see, what Hollywood calls a four-quadrant blockbuster,
why not throw every existing film genre into the mix?

With multiple genres

happening
simultaneously —
let’s say, a romance
subplot, a comedy
subplot, and a
melodrama subplot all
alternating under the
auspices of an action
adventure main plot
— there are,
invariably, tonal shifts
that can take some
getting used to.
Everything is
heightened: the hero’s heroism, the heroine’s beauty, the villain’s evil.
Another, simpler way to look at masala is as you would approach
Shakespeare, or any classical dramatic literature: sudden thunderstruck
true love next to low comedy next to high drama next to history. And,
when necessary, sword fights.

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29 | Indian Cinema

Contrary to the trend in Western musicals, where great care is taken to

have the actors themselves sing — regardless of whether they actually
can — Indian films have not only never made any effort to hide the fact
that nearly all of their songs are lip-synced (with rare exceptions made
for stars who actually can sing or are famous enough that their desire
to is indulged).
The artists, called playback singers, who provide the stars’ singing
voices — like Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, or
Sukwinder Singh (to name but a tiny fraction) — are as legendary as
the faces on the screen. There is no question of “settling” for a career
as a playback singer, but it can be every bit as prestigious as acting.

One of the ways in which

the Indian film industries,
and in particular Bollywood,
resemble classic Hollywood
is in their systemic
manufacture and cultivation
of movie stars. Like
Hollywood, the history of
Bollywood is rife with failed star launches.
On the other hand, when it works, it really works. This is partly because
of the heightened nature of so many Indian movies, but also in part due
to the institutional support they receive in maintaining their glamor and
larger-than-life image. Indian movie stars really feel like movie stars.
Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor, Dharmendra, Rajesh
Khanna, Dev Anand, Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, The Three
Khans (Aamir, Salman, Shahrukh). Madhubala, Waheeda Rehman,
Asha Parekh, Shamila Tagore, Parveen Babi, Zeenat Aman, Hema

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30 | Indian Cinema

Malini, Rekha, Sridevi, Kajol, Madhuri Dixit, Aishwarya Rai, Rani

Mukerji, Kareena Kapoor.
Stars, even more so than in the West, essentially play themselves;
heroes will be introduced in dramatic low-angle shots to make them
look thirty feet tall, heroines lit glowingly as divine visions. Some films
lay it on thicker than others, but there’s never any question about who
the stars are.
Some aspects of the release calendar may look familiar to American
audiences: Big holiday blockbusters come out on Eid (the holiday
commemorating the end of Ramadan), sort of like the way they do
during U.S. holidays. Less familiar is the way Bollywood in particular
basically shuts down during cricket season. While the Indian Premier
League is on, very few releases of any consequence hit theaters, a dry
period comparable to January in the American film industry.
The Hindi industry’s version of the Oscars, the Filmfare Awards, skew
slightly more populist (which would delight all the authors of “the
Oscars are out of touch with popular taste” thinkpieces that raise
everyone’s blood pressure each year). More importantly, the Filmfares
give out an award for “Best Action,” which is just wonderful.

Ironically, a lot of Western film lovers have an easier time with Indian
arthouse and indie fare, both of which are known as “parallel cinema”
in India. (That’s an ironic title given the parallel evolution of the
American and Indian film industries.) These titles favor
naturalistic/realistic approaches. Some filmmakers known as parallel
cinema filmmakers will employ elements of pop cinema, like songs and
movie stars. One such example is Mani Ratnam’s 1998 film “Dil Se,”
which starred Shahrukh Khan, and blended serious political
commentary with a lyrical romantic tragedy.

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31 | Indian Cinema

The most famous name in this movement is the great Bengali auteur
Satyajit Ray, one of the most celebrated filmmakers in the world, let
alone south Asia. The height of Ray’s career coincides, by no accident,
with the Golden Age of Indian cinema, stretching roughly from
independence until the 1960s. Indian art cinema today often recalls
American “Indiewood” films of the late 1990s and early-to-mid-2000s:
a hybrid of arthouse and pop, backed by the industry itself but
maintaining distance from mass-market blockbusters. Like their
American counterparts, some are better than others, with the best quite
good and the worst not very.

In too many mainstream Hindi films to count, the big tough hero who
can throw cars with his mustache and is master of all that he surveys
comes home to find his mother yelling at him about his lack of

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32 | Indian Cinema

responsibility, his need to get married and other pedestrian concerns.

It’s not just something that’s played for laughs, either.
Generally (in mainstream films at least), in a choice between an
individual and either a literal family or a group standing in for one, the
moral point of view expressed is that the family/group should come
first and nearly always does. For Americans, maybe the most
individualistic people in history, this is occasionally a tough pill to
swallow — but more than any of the other items on this list, it’s
essential that one understands the source of this ingredient before
approaching these films.
—
For American audiences, Indian films offer a cultural challenge unlike
others posed by different foreign cinemas. Because of the relative
isolation of the Indian film industries with regard to the West, since it
took almost a century before any broad tendency to emulate other film
cultures arose, India occupies a unique place in film culture, one every
cinephile should explore. With the right mindset, immersion in these
waters can be a wonderful experience indeed.

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