07-08-2004, 02:04 AM
<b>Indian cinema: A reel-by-reel account </b>
Invaluable trivia, splendid packaging and some great photographs, ranging from rare discoveries from the archives to stunning pictures of contemporary times, make The Bollywood Saga engrossing reading both for nostalgia seekers and new converts to the incredible charm of Hindi cinema, says Chandan Mitra
What makes cinema in India so different from the rest of the world is that watching a movie here is a collective experience, and also part of everybody's growing up process. Arguably things are changing now, especially in the metros with the setting up of multiplexes and the loosening of parental taboos about children watching "morally corrupting" Bollywood fare.
Many of today's parents, indeed even some grandparents, grew up in a milieu where one had to bunk classes and save from meagre pocket money to watch the latest Hindi blockbuster. Nowadays, this is no longer the preponderant reality and family viewing is very much in vogue especially in the aftermath of colour television, movie channels, the on-its-way-out VCR and the recent advent of DVD.
Going through Ismail Merchant's introduction to Dinesh Raheja and Jitendra Kothari's masterly work, The Bollywood Saga, revived memories of the joie de vivre that was associated with watching Hindi movies in my own childhood. I don't remember which film I first watched in a cinema hall, but I do remember halls being sweaty, uncomfortable places with wooden seats in the only "affordable" rows in front and noisy fans whirring overhead often drowning the crackling sound emanating from faulty loudspeakers. Much of my own growing up years were spent in small towns like Hooghly which boasted only two adjacent halls, Kairi Talkies and Rupali, and Barbil in Orissa which had just one.
The hall in Barbil had wooden chairs and viewers would often arrange them in semi-circles so that they could volubly exchange views on whatever unfolded on screen. Tea and jhalmuri vendors moved about freely and people lit up beedies with merry abandon. It wasn't possible for smalltowners like me in the mid-60s to visualise what a PVR would look like some day.
I can heartily recommend Raheja-Kothari's latest offering to all aficionados of Hindi cinema, those who have loved this genre for the sheer joy it brought to our lives. They are masters of story-telling and their passion for trivia makes this volume compelling reading. In this book, they have solved what was a big mystery to me all these years. I often wondered how cinema became popular in India even during the age of silent films for the dialogue would appear as a sub-title. Considering that even today, nearly 30 per cent of Indians can't read and write, how did ordinary people in the 1920s (when the literacy rate was around 20 per cent), manage to follow the scripted dialogue?
This volume informs us that silent movies had their own story-tellers in every auditorium. A man would stand at a corner in front of the screen, megaphone in hand, shouting out the dialogue as it appeared in each scene! The authors also quote music director Naushad recalling how music was introduced into cinema. Apparently, musicians sat before the screen and played the harmonium, tabla, accordion and other such instruments to match the mood of the scene being enacted! That, Naushad points out, marked the evolution of background music in Indian films. It is impossible not to raise a toast to the sheer genius of the pioneers of the Indian film industry; it's no wonder that today it is the world's biggest.
Reading about the placing of a live orchestra in front of the screen brought back memories of the time when there used to be a raised platform, like a dais in every movie hall. I realised this while organising the premiere of Manoj Kumar's Roti, Kapda aur Makaan way back in 1974 in my capacity as secretary of the St Stephen's College Students' Union Society. In charge of arrangements, I had to visit Chanakya theatre in Delhi to identify the position from which then Vice-President, BD Jatti, would inaugurate the show.
To my surprise, I found a narrow aisle in front of the giant screen that could be accessed from a side door. The microphone was placed on the "stage" and the luminaries gave brief speeches from there. Film premieres were relatively staid affairs those days, since there were no TV channels or page threes to report such events. Still, people paid up to Rs 500 for a ticket, just to catch a glimpse of their favourite stars.
Having reviewed the Raheja-Kothari duo's earlier authoritative work, Encyclopedia of Hindi Cinema, I have no doubt in concluding that they have emerged as the genre's best chroniclers. In this volume, they have introduced a number of snippety subjects - ranging from singing actresses of yesteryear, to notable lyricists of the '50s and '60s, the end of the Mangeshkar monopoly, the vogue for foreign locales, the evolution of the villain and so on. These make for easy reference material although I found the range a bit deficient.
For instance, there is hardly any study of the comedian phenomenon and only a passing reference to Mehmood, pointing out that at one stage he commanded about the same fees as the hero. While Asrani and Jagdeep are mentioned in the context of Sholay, Rajendra Nath of the striped underwear fame, whose very entry on screen would lead to guffaws around the hall, is missing. Similarly, I was surprised to find no reference to KN Singh in the list of villains and more importantly, Anand Bakshi's among songwriters.
The music section too is sketchy for the later years, although the coverage of RC Boral, KC Dey, KL Saigal and Pankaj Mullick is quite extensive and illuminating. The volume is meticulously produced and that's not an easy task when chronicling over 5,000 persons and an equal number of movies. The only slip, and rather a silly one, that I spotted was in a picture caption: A still of the famous Yeh dosti song sequence from Sholay with Dharmendra standing behind Amitabh Bachchan on the motor-bike mistakenly mentions the Member of Parliament from Gurdaspur (Vinod Khanna) instead of the Member of Parliament from Bikaner!
The best part of the work is that it makes engrossing reading both for nostalgia seekers like myself and new converts to the incredible charm of Hindi cinema. Another major attraction is the photographs, ranging from rare discoveries from the archives to stunning pictures of the contemporary multi-colour age. It brings the story of Bollywood right down to the present day. Covering eight decades of cinema without significant lapses amounts to a sterling achievement.
Particularly insightful are the authors' observations on the continuities - a page devoted to analysing the three versions of Devdas is most authoritatively written - that link filmdom's past with the present and leads on to the future. We shall look forward to similarly colourful and attractively designed monographs from Raheja and Kothari in the years to come.
Invaluable trivia, splendid packaging and some great photographs, ranging from rare discoveries from the archives to stunning pictures of contemporary times, make The Bollywood Saga engrossing reading both for nostalgia seekers and new converts to the incredible charm of Hindi cinema, says Chandan Mitra
What makes cinema in India so different from the rest of the world is that watching a movie here is a collective experience, and also part of everybody's growing up process. Arguably things are changing now, especially in the metros with the setting up of multiplexes and the loosening of parental taboos about children watching "morally corrupting" Bollywood fare.
Many of today's parents, indeed even some grandparents, grew up in a milieu where one had to bunk classes and save from meagre pocket money to watch the latest Hindi blockbuster. Nowadays, this is no longer the preponderant reality and family viewing is very much in vogue especially in the aftermath of colour television, movie channels, the on-its-way-out VCR and the recent advent of DVD.
Going through Ismail Merchant's introduction to Dinesh Raheja and Jitendra Kothari's masterly work, The Bollywood Saga, revived memories of the joie de vivre that was associated with watching Hindi movies in my own childhood. I don't remember which film I first watched in a cinema hall, but I do remember halls being sweaty, uncomfortable places with wooden seats in the only "affordable" rows in front and noisy fans whirring overhead often drowning the crackling sound emanating from faulty loudspeakers. Much of my own growing up years were spent in small towns like Hooghly which boasted only two adjacent halls, Kairi Talkies and Rupali, and Barbil in Orissa which had just one.
The hall in Barbil had wooden chairs and viewers would often arrange them in semi-circles so that they could volubly exchange views on whatever unfolded on screen. Tea and jhalmuri vendors moved about freely and people lit up beedies with merry abandon. It wasn't possible for smalltowners like me in the mid-60s to visualise what a PVR would look like some day.
I can heartily recommend Raheja-Kothari's latest offering to all aficionados of Hindi cinema, those who have loved this genre for the sheer joy it brought to our lives. They are masters of story-telling and their passion for trivia makes this volume compelling reading. In this book, they have solved what was a big mystery to me all these years. I often wondered how cinema became popular in India even during the age of silent films for the dialogue would appear as a sub-title. Considering that even today, nearly 30 per cent of Indians can't read and write, how did ordinary people in the 1920s (when the literacy rate was around 20 per cent), manage to follow the scripted dialogue?
This volume informs us that silent movies had their own story-tellers in every auditorium. A man would stand at a corner in front of the screen, megaphone in hand, shouting out the dialogue as it appeared in each scene! The authors also quote music director Naushad recalling how music was introduced into cinema. Apparently, musicians sat before the screen and played the harmonium, tabla, accordion and other such instruments to match the mood of the scene being enacted! That, Naushad points out, marked the evolution of background music in Indian films. It is impossible not to raise a toast to the sheer genius of the pioneers of the Indian film industry; it's no wonder that today it is the world's biggest.
Reading about the placing of a live orchestra in front of the screen brought back memories of the time when there used to be a raised platform, like a dais in every movie hall. I realised this while organising the premiere of Manoj Kumar's Roti, Kapda aur Makaan way back in 1974 in my capacity as secretary of the St Stephen's College Students' Union Society. In charge of arrangements, I had to visit Chanakya theatre in Delhi to identify the position from which then Vice-President, BD Jatti, would inaugurate the show.
To my surprise, I found a narrow aisle in front of the giant screen that could be accessed from a side door. The microphone was placed on the "stage" and the luminaries gave brief speeches from there. Film premieres were relatively staid affairs those days, since there were no TV channels or page threes to report such events. Still, people paid up to Rs 500 for a ticket, just to catch a glimpse of their favourite stars.
Having reviewed the Raheja-Kothari duo's earlier authoritative work, Encyclopedia of Hindi Cinema, I have no doubt in concluding that they have emerged as the genre's best chroniclers. In this volume, they have introduced a number of snippety subjects - ranging from singing actresses of yesteryear, to notable lyricists of the '50s and '60s, the end of the Mangeshkar monopoly, the vogue for foreign locales, the evolution of the villain and so on. These make for easy reference material although I found the range a bit deficient.
For instance, there is hardly any study of the comedian phenomenon and only a passing reference to Mehmood, pointing out that at one stage he commanded about the same fees as the hero. While Asrani and Jagdeep are mentioned in the context of Sholay, Rajendra Nath of the striped underwear fame, whose very entry on screen would lead to guffaws around the hall, is missing. Similarly, I was surprised to find no reference to KN Singh in the list of villains and more importantly, Anand Bakshi's among songwriters.
The music section too is sketchy for the later years, although the coverage of RC Boral, KC Dey, KL Saigal and Pankaj Mullick is quite extensive and illuminating. The volume is meticulously produced and that's not an easy task when chronicling over 5,000 persons and an equal number of movies. The only slip, and rather a silly one, that I spotted was in a picture caption: A still of the famous Yeh dosti song sequence from Sholay with Dharmendra standing behind Amitabh Bachchan on the motor-bike mistakenly mentions the Member of Parliament from Gurdaspur (Vinod Khanna) instead of the Member of Parliament from Bikaner!
The best part of the work is that it makes engrossing reading both for nostalgia seekers like myself and new converts to the incredible charm of Hindi cinema. Another major attraction is the photographs, ranging from rare discoveries from the archives to stunning pictures of the contemporary multi-colour age. It brings the story of Bollywood right down to the present day. Covering eight decades of cinema without significant lapses amounts to a sterling achievement.
Particularly insightful are the authors' observations on the continuities - a page devoted to analysing the three versions of Devdas is most authoritatively written - that link filmdom's past with the present and leads on to the future. We shall look forward to similarly colourful and attractively designed monographs from Raheja and Kothari in the years to come.