Indian cinema before Om Shanti Om

Did you know that Bollywood produced movies much

before Om Shanti Om was made?

BD Garga, a highly regarded film historian, concludes an essay on Indian films by quoting critic Andrew Sarris: movies are livelier than ever. Movies are sillier than ever. Take your pick. All analyses of this subject have to eventually negotiate these binary bumps. Of course, it is not as though only Indian cinema has been a source of exasperation to those who believed in the grand promises made by the new art. Disillusionment has deepened darkness in screening rooms across the world. Somewhere in his Histoire(s) du Cinema, Godard comments that cinema was nothing but a peddler who supplied us with cut-price signs. But later, he also suggest that cinema has the capacity to reclaim its power to express restorative truths. There, the binary bumps again.

To take one’s pick from the Indian movies of the nineties, one would have to choose from the many ‘romantic musicals’ clamouring for attention. Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, a 1994 blockbuster is one example. It focused on rituals connected with marriage and examined such themes as the conflict arising from the pressure to adhere to family codes and the need to follow personal impulses. It was a clean fare: love, music and goofiness completely unblemished by violence or vulgarity. Audiences across India received the film with great affection.

A later release, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai replicates the formula successfully. Its vision of the ideal Indian woman a demure mother-figure, secure in the shadow of her man -- no doubt annoying to many -- is obscured by such fripperies as dances and elaborate script ploys to keep the lady away from the hero until the very end. At any rate, the audience reaction convinced producers to tick off similar conventions at a furious rate (I did not see many movies of that age, so correcy me if I presume too much). Formulaic postulations, it seems, can fail as far as action films are concerned. The disappointing performance of Major Saab, despite the presence of the original Indian superstar, Amitabh Bachchan, must encourage movie moguls to fete the virtues of family entertainment.

One cannot proceed further without paying obeisance to Bachchan though. His sinewy figure shimmered on Indian screens for nearly two decades. His rise began in the seventies, a troubled period blighted by an increase in crime, corruption and a degeneration of political institutions. The events were to lead to the Emergency of 1975. Bachchan, who often played the angry, embittered youth, was not always on the right side of the law. In Deewar for example, he is forced by circumstances to turn to smuggling. But the moral stand of the director is unambiguous in the end: Bachchan’s wealth and power are shown to be worthless. His righteous brother, a police officer by the way, crushes him by saying that although he may have the palatial houses and the cars, their mother has chosen the son who treads the straight and narrow. Sholay, a history-defining curry western, had Bachchan playing an endearingly gruff crook who redeems himself by sacrificing his life while fighting a greater evil.

The period preceding the Bachchan era was dominated by fluffy love tales frequently starring Rajesh Khanna. The mainstream did not provide works that could have endured as serious documents. But in 1969, Mrinal Sen with Bhuvan Shome, inaugurated the New Indian cinema. His appearance could not have come at a more appropriate time. The stars of such influential figures as Mehboob Khan and Bimal Roy were waning. Their attempt to make sense of the world around them was particularly important because it came so early in the evolving history of Indian cinema. Roy’s Sujata (1959) was a sensitive study of the caste system. In fact, to underscore the point that cinema is a powerful instrument because it can stare at uncomfortable social constructs, it must be pointed out that issues related to caste were examined by Achyut Kanya as early as the thirties .

This brings us back to the binary bumps. If SS Vasan produced a Busby Berkeley-scale spectacle (Chandralekha, 1948), then there was also Uday Shankar’s genre-twisting Kalpana. The following years were to be privileged by KA Abbas’s Dharti ke Lal, framed against the terrible Bengal famine of 1942; Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (The Song of the Road); and Guru Dutt’s meditation on artistic angst, Kaagaz Ke Phool.

The miracle of cinema appeared in India just months after its birth in Paris. It has kept pace, both stylistically and in terms of thematic sophistication. It is likely that commercial imperatives will continue to assail our filmmakers’ desire to craft narratives that seek to clarify the absurd reality of our lives. So, as Indian cinema keeps its engagement with history, the twin bumps of market forces and redemptive impulses will continue to shape it contours.