Saturday 23 April 2016

21 APR 1913 - 100YEARS PIONEER MASTER DADASAHEB PHALKE FILMS

The Dream Factory : 100 Years of Cinema in India by HK Verma – Chapter – 4

December 27, 2012
Indian Cinema
The Evolution
To begin with, there was no sound – so Hindi Cinema and Indian Cinema had no separate identities. It was only after the arrival of Sound, that that Hindi Cinema aquired a separate identity.
And here we go – journey down the glorious memory lane…
In 1891 came Edison’s magic lantern. And in 1898, the Lumiere Brothers’ came up with their ‘Cinematographe’.
The first show of ‘Cinematographe-Twelve animated photographic pictures-life sized reproductinN ‘ of Louis and Auguste Lumiere, was held in Paris in December 28th in 1895. Immediately after this, the Lumiere Brothers despatched their agents to important foreign countries to hold shows of their invention.
On July 7, 1896 a special show was held in Moscow for Tsar-the same day another agent began public shows of “Twelve animated photographic pictures-life sized reproduction” at the Watson Hotel Bombay, with an audience of over two hundred people who had paid Rupees two each, a substantial amount those days. Thus, the Indian audience saw such motion pictures as Arrival of A Train, the Sea Bath, A Demolition, Parade of Guards in the same year as the British, American and Russian audiences.
Attending the Bioscope programme (as it was called those days) was one Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatvadekar of Bombay. Bhatvadekar, who was a photographer by profession, was so impressed by this new medium that he picked‑up the technical know‑how from the locally based British cameraman, and in 1898 he filmed such events as Wrestling Match in Hanging Gardens of Bombay-the first ever attempt at photographing a motion in the country by an Indian. Thereafter, he became an open‑air exhibitor of imported films. After the Wrestling Match he regularly shot newsreel material and included it in a mixed programme of imported films at his theatre. Bhatvadekar sent the material he shot, to London for processing. Infact, Bhatvadekar’s films can be termed as the “first ever motion pictures made in India. “
Among the important events filmed by Bhatvadekar were: Return of Wrangler Paranjpe, an Indian who had won distinction in mathematics at CambridgeUniversity. Another important event shot by Bhatvadekar was the celebrations of Coronation of King Edward VII. Incidentally, all these films were photographed with a Lumiere Brothers’ Camera which he had brought for 15 guineas. The camera which can hold fifty feet of film is still in excellent condition and is in the collection of the National Film Archives of India. In the later years of his life, Bhatvadekar gave up production of films and concentrated on exhibition and built a chain of theatres.
Hiralal Sen from Bengal also saw some imported motion pictures and got interested in the medium. Like Bhatvadekar, he too, immediately switched over to the film medium. But, unlike his Bombay counterpart who was concentrating mostly on news coverage, Hiralal Sen, started photographing scenes from popular Bengali plays, and went on to make other shorts and also exhibit them through his Royal Bioscope Company-the first film production concern in India. Even before his Bioscope Company started functioning properly, he was making films under the guidance of visiting experts, and his first film was A Dancing Scene From Opera-the Flower of Persia in 1898.
The filmologists from Bengal claim that Hiralal Sen actually is the pioneer of Indian Cinema, and his Flower of Persia was made a few months before Bhatvadekar’s Wrestling Match, but in the absence of any evidence of Sen’s venture, having been made and exhibited earlier, Bhatvadekar gets the honour of being the film‑maker of India.
Another claim by Bengal that Hiralal Sen made India’s first ever feature film, Alibaba in 1902 also cannot be substantiated either. If it can be proved that Hiralal Sen had made Alibaba as early as it is claimed, then Hiralal Sen gets the credit of being the pioneer of not only Indian feature film industry but the world as well, as the first feature film on record is Edwin Porter’s The Great Train Robbery was made in 1903.
Motion Pictures, which had already become a craze in the big cities, started spreading to small towns and even rural areas. A few permanent cinema houses sprang up in the big cities. Most of the permanent as well as tent cinemas exhibited films mostly from Britain, America and France.
The first story film of India, Pundalik, made in 1911 was the joint effort of two Indians, RG Torney and NG Chitre, with a British cameraman of a locally established British company. It was a photographed stage play, and was developed and printed in London. Apart from the fact that it was photographed in India, it had little to offer and was soon forgotten.
The second attempt came around the end of 1912, when Patankar, Karandikar and Divakar, three enterprising young men, pooled their savings and made Savitri, based on Hindu mythological story in which a wife brings back the soul of her dead husband from the God of death. Because of unknown reasons, this film even though completed, was never released.
During the initial years, Biblical films led the field. One such, Life of Christ was being shown in Bombay in 1910 at the America‑India Cinema. On the Christmas Eve, Dhundraj Govind Phalke was among the audience. He was closely associated with the stage and was a master magician. Phalke had seen motion pictures before, but it was this film that kindled in him the idea of a local film industry. In 1917, in an article published in a local paper, Phalke said, “While witnessing Christ on screen, I was visualising Lord Krishna, I saw the film again, the same day, and was so moved by it that I decided to make a similar film on the life of Lord Krishna. “
To learn film making, Phalke ordered books and film catalogues from abroad and also acquired a miniature camera. In the process, he mortgaged his insurance policy, sold his wife’s jewellery, disposed off his printing press, and started experiments in motion pictures, which continued for well over a year. His friends thought him to be mad, and one of them even tried to take him to the lunatic assylum.
Seeing film daily, conducting experiments for long, uncertain hours, the resultant loss of sleep, coupled with lack of means of livelihood and adverse comments from friends and relatives, the dark uncertain prospects if the experiments failed-all these factors told on his health and impaired his eyesight badly. He had to put on three pairs of glasses in order to see clearly. But nothing could stop him, except finance, and that also, he was lucky to get from his friend Y. G. Nadkarni, who loaned him a sum of Rupees ten thousand. With this money in hand, Phalke sailed for England to buy equipment for making motion pictures.
On his return, since he had no staff, his wife and children helped him unpack the cases. The raw film those days was unperforated, and so his wife helped him perforate the film-two hundred feet in three and half hours.
The camera was ready for shooting, but Phalke was not. He lacked the confidence. So he decided to shoot a short film first. He put a seed in a pot and photographed it everyday until the seed grew into a sapling. It took him a month to shoot this film which lasted a minute. It was Titled From Peanut to Plant it was a frame by frame shot of a growing plant. . a sort of prelude to animation
The experiment gave him the much needed confidence. He postponed the plan to make the film on the life of Lord Krishna, for he wanted to make it on a grant scale, and at that time, he did not have sufficient funds. Instead he started work on Raja Harishchandra, a mythological subject, almost at the same time as Louis Mercanton was making his epoch making Queen Elizabeth, starring Sarah Bernhardt, in France; Quo Vadis was being made in Italy and Student of Prague in Germany.
Dada Saheb Phalke (as he was affectionately called), however, ran into a bit of trouble when he set about selecting the cast for the film. He searched in vain for actresses. To his dismay, he found that, no one was willing to work in films, because of the stigma attached to the profession. Although Indian theatre had flourished centuries ago at the time of Kalidasa, in recent times the performing arts had come to the profession of certain castes only and were looked down upon in the social main stream. Specially the women who appeared on stage were usually looked down upon as women of ill repute.
In the face of these difficulties, he put an advertisement in the newspapers, “Handsome faces wanted for films. . . . “, which drew only third‑rate stage artistes. So much so that he had to add another line in subsequent advertisements, “Ugly faces need not apply !” With great difficulty Phalke got an actress for his film, but after he had coached her for a few days, she ditched him and became the mistress of a rich man and refused to act. With the result. Phalke had no option but to cast a slender boy Solanki, a cook by profession, as the queen in Raja Harishchandra.
The production problems were many and varied. Phalke had to do everything-direct, write and even photograph the film. It was a round the clock job, shooting during the day, and at night perforating the negative, developing the exposed film, editing and printing it. He went through this gruelling routine for eight months and completed his labour of love, Raja Harishchandra.
This 3700 feet film was shown to a packed auditorium at the Corornation Theatre in Bombay on May 17, 1913. Even though Phalke had no Sarah Bernhardt to boast of, the film was a tremendous success. Only one print was made, but on that one print only, he got amazing returns. It had an initial run of twenty‑three days-a record for those times when films ran hardly for four days. Thus the foundation stone of the Indian film industry, which was later to become the biggest film production centre of the world, was laid.
Reviewing the film after a special preview in the 5th May issue (preview was held at Bombay’s Olympia Cinema on 21st April), Bombay Chronical wrote, “an interesting departure is made this week by the management of the Corornation Theatre. . . the first great Indian dramatic film on the lines of great epics of the western world. . . It is curious that an experiment in this was so long in coming. . . it is to Mr. Phalke that Bombay owes this. . . the rest of his effort excels one’s expectations. The film was witnessed by a large crowd on Saturday night on whom it evidently made a great impression, and we have no doubt that the Corornation will have crowded houses throughout the week. “ It is surprising that, while the Chronical raved over the film, The Times of India, chose to neglect the pioneering Indian venture by not mentioning anything about it.
Phalke followed his initial success of Raja Harishchandra with Bhasumar Mohini in 1914. Even though the stigma to the performing arts was still there and getting ladies to act in films was a difficlut task, somehow Phalke was able to persuade two women, Durga and Kamla, a mother and daughter to play important female roles. This 3245 feet film was also released at the Corornation Theatre. Bhasumar Mohini was followed by Savitri. It was 3680 feet in length and was released in Bombay in June 1914.
Inspired by the success of his films here, Phalke took all the three films to London and screened them there. London’s Bioscope and Cinematograph Weekly, while praising his work, commented, “from the technical point of view, Phalke’s films are uncomparable-surprisingly excellent. “ Cecil Hepworth, the pioneer British Producer, offered Phalke funds to produce films on Indian themes in England. Phalke refused, considering it impractical to produce films on Indian milieu outside India.
On his return from England, Phalke, under his banner, Hindustan Film Company, made film after film at Nasik, including some on Lord Krishna. His choice of subjects had tremendous popular appeal. They reached entirely new and vast Indian audiences, giving them a chance to identify with the characters portrayed on the screen, something which they could not do for while watching British, American or French films.
With his knowledge of stage and magic shows, Phalke kept on experimenting, and soon achieved mastery over trick photography. One feels that he would not have succeeded in making popular films based on Indian mythology, as all the supernatural and miraculous deeds of our dieties and demons alike had to be visually created on the screen. In those days, without the colour comics and its super‑heroes, Phalke gave a visual form to the thrilling episodes by toning, e. g. for an under‑water sequence he gave blue‑tone and for a fire sequence red‑tone. This was a major task to which he applied his mind right from the beginning.
His most ambitious films were Shree Krishna Janam and Kaliyamardan (in which his daughter Mandakini played Lord Krishna). These films were so successful that the box‑office collections had to be carried in bullock‑carts under police custody (continuous shows from seven in the morning to midnight were held in those days) Phalke, who made over hundred films in his career of twenty one years, retired from active film making in 1944 and died the same year. His last film Gangavatran was a talkie for Kolhapur Cinetone.
If one studies Phalke’s career carefully, he’ll find a striking similarity between Phalke and George Melies. Both of them were art directors, script writers, directors and magicians and knew the theatre world very well.
As promoters of filmic art both of them have left a written record of their views. This they did to make their audience aware of Cinema as a new form of entertainment. Even their style of writing was similar. Melies’s writings “Vues Cinemtographiques” published in “Annuaire General et International de la photographic” were the result of Roger Aubry’s request to Melies to give the ‘genesis and process of film making’. Therein Melies said in his talk with the readers, “I will explain the film maker s difficulties in the best possible way”.
Phalke too, had offered his four article series on Indian Cinema at the request of ‘Navyug’s editor and said that he would give interesting information about cinema. He also requested his appreciative audience to analyse the motion pictures, and intended the series to be a guidance for other film makers. Most of Phalke’s contemporaries followed his pattern of film making and drew their ideas from mythology and famous legends.
Dadasaheb Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra (1913) had triggered off great enthusiasm among many aspiring filmmakers. Among them was a young man, Baburao Painter.
He was born Baburao Krishnarao Mestri in 1890 in Kolhapur. He taught himself to paint (hence the name) and sculpt in academic art school style. He and his artist cousin Anandrao Painter between 1910 and 1916 were the leading painters of stage backdrops in Western India doing several famous curtains for Sangeet Natak troupes and also for Gujarati Parsee theatres. They became ardent cinefans following Raja Harishchandra.
They turned to cinema first as exhibitors while trying to assemble their own camera. Anadrao however died in 1916 and Painter and V. G. Damle eventually put together a working camera in 1918.
With financial support from local nobility, he set up the Maharashtra Film Company in Kolhapur in 1919. Painter gathered around him old colleagues among them Damle and S. Fatehlal joined a little later by V. Shantaram-the group that later left to set up The Prabhat Film Company. He also introduced two female artisits Gulab Bai and Anusuya Bai renamed as Kamala Devi and Sushila Devi respectively. Since acting was looked down upon, the two ladies were excommunicated by their community and had to find refuge in the studio premises. As well as acting in films, they would often cook and serve food to the entire unit!!!
Baburao’s first film Sairandhri (1920) attracted the attention of the then censor board for its graphic depiction of the slaying of Keechak by Bhima. Finally it had to be deleted but the film won both critical and commercial acclaim spurring Painter on to more ambitious projects. Baburao was a man of many talents-he wrote his own screenplays, changed the concept of set designing from painted curtains to solid multi‑dimensional lived in spaces, he introduced artificial lighting and understood the importance of publicity. As early as 1921‑22 he was the first to issue programme booklets, complete with details of the film and photographs. He also painted himself tasteful, eye‑catching posters of his films.
Sinhagad (1923) proved so popular that it attracted the Revenue Department’s attention to bring about introduction of Entertainment Tax.
Baburao also made the first realistic Indian film Savakari Pash (1925) dealing with money lending, a problem that blighted the lives of countless illiterate, poor farmers. However the audience long fed on mythological fantasy and historical love was just not prepared for so strong a dose of realism and the film did not do well. Baburao returned to costume dramas.
Among those who entered film production at this stage was Dhiren Ganguly, a student at Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan. Ganguly was a painter, photographer and an actor. He had published two books of photographs in which he himself appeared in various costumes and roles. He saw some of Phalke films in Hyderabad, where he was the head‑master of an art school, and was drawn towards the medium. He left his job and proceeded to his hometown, Calcutta, to explore the possibilities of making a film.
In partnership, he produced a comedy England Returned, which was released in 1921. It was a satire on the westernised Indians, as well as orthodox Indians, who wouldn’t accept new ideas. Thus Ganguly produced the first Indian film with a contemporary background. England Returned was a tremendous success and Ganguly was prompted to make any more films after that, to mention a few, the Lady Teacher, the Marriage Tonic, Hara Gouri, and The Step Mother.
Jamsetji Framji Madan at the time was Indian Cinema’s ace showman, and its greatest entrepreneur. He belonged to minority of educated families in the country. He had started working as a prop‑boy in Calcutta. He later turned to acting and bought over the theatre he was working in. Even though he had been interested in show business right from his childhood, theatre was his love. He successfully combined his interest in the theatre with his other enterprises.
In 1907 he opened the first bioscope hall in Calcutta and in 1917 started producing films, simultaneously acquiring agencies of important foreign film producing companies as well as cinema equipment manufacturers, and then proceeded to build‑up a chain of exhibition theatres all over India, Burma and Ceylon.
Like Adolph Zukor and Louis Mercanton, Madan also believed in casting ‘famous players in famous plays’. In 1920, Madan brought Miss Patience Cooper (female stars were always billed with the title ‘miss’ in front of their names.
This performed a double function, it pointed out that they were actually women and not young men dressed‑up as women, and at the same time wrapped them in a faint but necessary aura of respectability) and Kaikhusro Adajania, both well‑known stage artistes, for their initial stage appearance in Nala Damayanti, which Madan picturised. The Italian, Eugenio De Liguro, who directed the film, played an important role in the film.
The oriental opulance with the technical hands of the West combined to make the film a sure commercial success. Bilvamangal, Shivratri, Yashoda Nadan and Dhruv Charita (all based on Hindu mythology) stuck to the Madan pattern of film making, and it seldom failed.
Those days, the film makers were mainly concerned with coping the increasing demand. They gave little thought to improving the technical side of the film making. Consequently the whole process of Indian film production was influenced by stage technique; curtains were used instead of sets, the gestures and actions of the artistes were exaggerated and unrealistic and had a crude theatrical tough and even the costumes were of the same hybrid variety as used by stage performers. Despite all this, Indian films were immensely popular, especially with the uneducated and semi‑educated classes. The educated, used to superior foreign films, however, chose to neglect the Indian products. Nevertheless, a good film of Indian manufacture drew much larger audience than any foreign film.
In the mid‑twenties, Chandulal Shah, who was working in Bombay stock‑exchange, with the help of his brother D. J. Shah, who wrote stories for mythological films, got a directorial assignment from the Imperial Theatre who were desperate to make a mythological film for a festival. Shah, though had taken the advance for a mythological film, made with notable success a social film. His next was Guna Sundari (English Version of Which Was Titled Why Husband Go Astray) which attempted to show that a wife should not only be beautiful and dutiful, but also be a cheerful companion. When released, this film created a sensation. In a way, it was a challenge to the Indian orthodox ways.
Guna Sundari was followed by Typist Girl. These two films put the Indian social film on a sound footing and at par with the mythological films-atleast in the cities. The term social film, in the language of the Indian film trade meant and still means a film in which the atmosphere, setting and costumes are modern, as distinct from a mythological or a historical film.
Chandulal Shah followed his initial success with over one hundred and thirty films. An element of sensation was always found in his films. In the later years, he built his own Ranjit Studios.
During the first World War, European and British film production received a sever set‑back. But audiences everywhere were eager to see films now, with a result that American producers, at that time established in Hollywood, were eager to fulfill this need. The American film trade thus expanded on a sound footing. At the end of the war, finding their home markets dominated by Hollywood, European nations took steps to encourage their own film industries. Great Britain introduced a quota system specifyingn that a minimum share of theatre time should be allotted to the British films. British producers also began to think of the market in British India.
In India, soon after the war, lucrativeness and newness of the trade soon brought many people in the field. Patankar and Company made the The Exile of Lord Rama-six part serial; Elphinstone Bioscope Company made Harishchandra and Bilvamangal.
During 1922‑28, three enterprising men, Dwarkadas Naraindas Sampat, Maneklal Bhogilal and Abdulaly Eusafally, arrived on the Indian film scene. It was largely due to their efforts that Bombay became the pioneer of talkies in the country, He grew restless with monotony and craved for something new, and so joined hands with Abdulaly Eusafally and went into exhibition of foreign films. With the profits they formed the Imperial Film Company in 1926.
Dwarkadas Sampat started the Kohinoor Film Company, which not only produced some of the most successful films lime Bhakta Vidoor, Malati Madhav and Sati Anusaya, but also provided training to people like Nandlal Jaswantlal, Mohan Bhavnani-who later became the pillars of the film trade-and produced artistes like Goharbai, Zebunissa and Rampiyari.
Inspite of the difficulties faced by the film makers those days, efforts to improve the quality of Indian films continued, Baburao Painter founded his famous Maharashtra Film Company in Kolhapur, and went to the extent of converting a projector into a motion picture camera, and made Good Night. In this film, for the first time an attempt was made to wed art with commerce.
The stage, however, influenced the selection of themes and stories for films. The favourite theme those days was mythology. Mythological stories mean those stories whose historical authenticity is partly or wholly open to question, but which through tradition are popularly accepted in good faith as true. A common factor of these stories is the part played by miracles.
These stories were and still are inseparable part of faith of an overwhelming mass of the Indian public and there is nothing in them that is derogatory to basic standards of morality. They present deep rooted moral and spiritual ideals, personalities idealised through centuries. They depict the Golden age which most people believe existed and which most religions hope to bring about.
When someone wanted to deviate from the mythological subject, the only other theme they could think was adventure. Action was the key note of the time, and for this kind of films the artist’s ability to jump from tree to tree, and from tree to a waiting horse, was more important than his acting talents or even looks. The dare devils stunts such films contained were crudely faked, but to the engrossed audience any lack of realism was unnoticable. The physical impact, the mounting suspense, the death‑defying leaps swept the spectators. They stamped their feet and often cried out in spirit of participation with the actors.
Netaji Palkar (1927) directed by V. Shantaram and Karna (1928) directed by Damle and Fatehlal were huge hits. However after a few more silent films, the Maharashtra Film Company pulled down its shutters with the advent of sound. Baburao was not particularly keen on the talkies for he believed that they would destroy the visual culture so painfully evolved over the years.
He returned to painting and sculpture, his original vocation barring sporadic ventures like remaking Savkari Pash in sound in 1936, Pratibha(1937), one of his few preserved films which is a good illustration of Painter’s control over big sets, lighting and crowd scenes and Lokshahir Ramjoshi (1947) on Shantaram’s invitation.
BM Dave in 1925 started Sharda Film Company, and at the same time, Manek B. Patel started Krishna Film Company. Both these companies specialised in this type of film making. Krishna Film Company made some highly successful action films, namely The Victim and The Vieled Enemy, both starring Miss Ermeline and Nandram Pahelwan. It’s biggest hit however was At the Clang of Fetterns, featuring Miss Gulab and Nandram Pahelwan.
Among Sharda Film Company’s successful and popular titles are the Vamp-with Miss Ekbal in the female lead; Jan‑E‑Alam with Miss Mani and Jani Babu, and Masked Terror featuring Master Vithal and Miss Kumudini.
Master Vithal: He debuted as a child artiste at Rajapurkar Natak Mandali and made his first film appearance as a dancing girl in Maharashtra Films’ Kalyan Khajina (1924)-but Master Vithal was the consummate action hero of his time! The major break came with Sharada Studios Ratan Manjari (1926)-this was his first lead role and he remained with the studio as major lead over many years.
The stunt film genre was his forte and he consolidated his position with historical films based on Rajput and Maratha themes. These determined his image-the fearless, noble hero loved by all.
Subsequently he moved to Sagar Movietone, and was engaged in a lawsuit with Sharada Studios, defended by no less than M. A. Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan.
Master Vithal starred in India’s first talkie, Alam Ara (1931), and later in the super successful Ramshastri (1944).
Baburao Painter, when he founded the Maharashtra Film Company, had an altogether different approach to Cinema. He used it much in the same way as DW Griffith did, as a vehicle for social propaganda through historical interpretation. Though Painter possessed none of the attributes of Griffith as an innovator, what he did share with him was his penchant for the spectacular and the changing quality of atmosphere. Griffith made the spectacular Birth of A Nation, while Painter dazzled everyone with his Sairandhri. Painter, painted meticulously each frame of the print in color thus Sairanadhari, can have the distinction of being the first colored Indian Motion Picture. Again, incidentally, both men were essentially painters.
Chandulal Shah who with his leading lady Miss Gohar had formed the Ranjit Film Company produced Rajputani and Husband and Wife. He himself wrote and directed both these films with Miss Gohar teamed with the Indian screen’s Rudolf Valentino, D. Billimoria, in the first and Raja Sandow in the other. Both the films fit the Shah pattern of film making.
Along with Bombay Talkies, New Theatres and The Prabhat Film Company, Chandulal Shah’s Ranjit Studios was one of the great institutions of the studio era. With stars like Gohar, E Billimoria, Madhuri, Motilal, Khurshid and KL Saigal on its payroll, the studio’s boast was: “There are more stars in Ranjit Studios than in the heaven!”
Ironically, Chandulal Shah entered the Film Industry purely by chance. Born in 1898 in Jamnagar, he studied at SydenhamCollege in Bombay and in 1924 got a job at the Bombay Stock Exchange. The following year he was called by the Laxmi Film Company to direct a film Vimla (1925), as its director Manilal Joshi was bedridden. Chandulal Shah not only directed the film but also went on to do two more pictures for the company, Panch Dadda (1925) and Madhav Kamkundala (1926) before returning to the Stock Exchange.
His solicitor friend Amarchand Shroff who was with the Laxmi Film Company brought him to Kohinoor Film Company where he first came into contact with Gohar, a contact that eventually developed into both a personal and professional relationship.
The first film independently directed by him at Kohinoor was Typist Girl (1926) starring Sulochana and Gohar made in 17 days. The film did extremely well at the box‑office leading Shah to direct another five films for the studio all featuring Gohar. Of these the most famous was Gunsundari (1927). This silent film about a dowdy housewife, who loses her husband to another woman but wins him back after transforming herself, was a record‑breaking success. Shah himself made the film thrice, directing the first two versions in 1927 and 1934 and it was a success each time. Its story has become a staple of Hindi cinema and has been retold several times over the years with slight variations.
Jealousy amongst the staff at Kohinoor drove Shah and Gohar to seek greener pastures at Jagdish Film Company where Shah wrote and directed four films all with Gohar before forming his own Shri Ranjit Film Company in 1929 in partnership with Gohar and with finance from Vithaldas Thakoredas. Ranjit Film Company churned out 39 silent films in little more than 3 years from 1929‑32!
With the advent of sound, Ranjit Film Company, became Ranjit Movietone. Ranjit eventually acquiring four sound stages and achieved an output of six features a year, which stretched over more than a decade of uninterrupted successes. The company specialized in socials. During the 1930s Ranjit had on its payroll of about 300 artists, technicians and others. It produced films in Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati. Ranjit brought an assembly line approach to their film‑making.
Mid‑budget socials, satires and the stunt film were their cup of tea. The factory approach that they had adopted enabled them to be the biggest producers in India in those times. Their films suggest the solid entrenchment of genres associated with the post World War II Hindi Cinema, ranging from films around Nirupa Roy’s mythological mother figure to those with Motilal and Saigal. Important films include Sati Savitri (1932), Barrister’s wife (1935), Achut (1940), Tansen (1943), Moorti (1943) and Jogan (1950).
Besides Filmmaking, Chandulal Shah also devoted a lot of time to the organizational work of the Indian Film Industry. Both the Silver Jubilee (1939) and the Golden Jubilee of the Indian film Industry (1963) were celebrated under his guidance. He was the first president of The Film Federation of India formed in 1951 and even led an Indian delegation to Hollywood the following year.
Shah had directed many of Ranjit’s earlier talkies and tried unsuccessfully to achieve a comeback as a director with the Raj Kapoor-Nargis starrer, Paapi (1953) after a gap of 13 years. (His last film as director before this was Achut (1940), which incidentally was Gohar’s last film too). Shah’s continuing obsession with The Stock Exchange and the races led to massive losses and finally he was left with no option but to allow the takeover of his labour of love – Ranjit Studios by his creditors. He died almost a pauper in 1975.
In the meantime, Baburao Painter’s Maharashtra Film Company suffered a severe set‑back when few of its employees, Shantaram, Fatehlal, Damle, Dhaber and Kulkarni formed their own Prabhat Film Company in Kolhapur itself. Under Shantaram’s direction Prabhat produced string of financially successful and aesthetically significant films. Their very first was Gopal Krishna, followed by Khooni Khanjar, Bajar Batoo, Udaikal, Chandrasena, and Zullum. During the thirteen years that Painter’s Maharashtra Film Company existed, he made a number of films, notable among them being Sinhagada (1923), Kaliyan Khajan (1924), Shahala Shah (1925), Sati Padmani (1925) and Ran Hamir also in 1925. Rajaram Vanakurde Shantaram (popularly known as V. Shantaram) in his early teens worked in railroad workshop. On part time basis he worked at a tin‑shed cinema doing odd jobs, such as, rewinding the film and painting posters. He eventually graduated to an usher.
At the Cinema he studied the films closely, specially Phalke films-the stories he had heard from his elders and was much impressed by them. Thus when years later he made his first sound film, Ayodheya Raja, it wasn’t a surprise that he selected this story, as it was the same story which has launched Phalke’s career. Leaving the tent Cinema to join Baburao Painter’s Maharashtra Film Company he worked in every conceivable capacity there, from a cleaner to laboratory assistant, special effects man and even as an assistant cameraman. Because of the miscellaneous nature of his job, he acquired confidence and mastered the craft. So, when he directed his very first film, Gopal Krishna, though the facilities available were primitive, he made a film which even at that time was thematically and technically much ahead of its time.
Other outstanding films of the era were-Imperial’s The Wrath in which an actor played Mahatma Gandhi, and as expected, was banned. Ram Rahim on Hindu‑Muslim unity; Wedding Night adopted from Victor Hugo’s Harnani, Anarkali based on a moghul love story; The Cinema Girl,
On the Bombay front, Father India and Sindbad the Sailor. Naval Gandhi made Sacrifice based on Rabindranath Tagore’s play of the same name about the independence struggle. This was one of the major achievements of the silent era in India, and so was Mohan Bhavnani’s Vasantsena, a historical love tale. While these films proved immensely popular and did indicate a groping for better values, the bulk of the production, not surprisingly, remained trivial and corny.
Brahmachari (1938): An ordinary young man Audumbar (Master Vinayak) inspired by a lecture on bachelorhood and nationalism by the Deshbhakta Jatashankar (Javdekar), renounces his desires, throws away his collection of movie star posters, starts exercising in Hanuman tradition. He also joins the Self-Help Institute of the Acharya Chandiram (Malvankar) where he devotes himself to spinning and wielding the broom. All his discipline however comes to naught as he encounters Kishori (Meenakshi), the young and charming daughter of a visiting forest officer. . . and what follows is hilarious.
A brilliant combination of wit, satire and romance, Brahmachari a bilingual made in Marathi and Hindi boldly ridiculed puritanical social norms and at the same time had the audience laughing uncontrollably. The dialogues by Acharya PK Atre in the Marathi version and the situations in which the hero finds himself sparkle with wit and the film moves along at a quick tempo greatly helped by Vinayak’s performance in the central role, a simple minded innocent pitted against entrenched hypocrisy and fossilized beliefs. Though he was called Audumbar in the Marathi version, in the Hindi version he was called Kanhaiya and was a total antithesis of the original Kanhaiya (Lord Krishna) the great lover.
Vinayak’s aversion to religious bigotry and social hypocrisy combined with Atre’s keen sense of satire make for an extremely entertaining film with outrageous humour and gentle mockery. Damuanna Malvankar has his first major success in the role of the Acharya Chandiram.
Meenakshi also makes her first appearance in a Vinayak film. She went on to act in several of his films-Devata (1938), Brandichi Batli (1939), Ardhangi (1940) and Badi Maa (1945).
Brahmachari was a big success during its time and made cine history by running for twenty-five weeks in Bombay and fifty-two weeks in Pune. Incidentally, Brahmachari was perhaps one of the first Indian films in which the heroine appeared in a bathing costume in a sensational seduction song!
It was in this atmosphere that the Government of India appointed the Indian Cinematograph Committee in 1927. It was essentially set up to study the adequacy of censorship in India, and the possibility of encouraging ‘Empire films’ in India. ‘Empire films’ meant, British and Indian films. The committee consisted of three Indian and three Britons with an Indian as its Chairman. Their study revealed how the tensions of the time were reflected in films. Political censorship those days was intense; for instance, sub‑titles such as “My Brother’s only sin was to love his country”, and “Dreamt of a day when the Government would be a Government of the people, by the people and for the people” were deleted. Censors was very touchy about communal questions as well. The films by this time, had not learnt to speak, and all the dialogues/messages had to be conveyed through sub‑titles. This was after all The Silent era.
Submitting its report after extensive research and over four hundred interviews, the committee felt that there was no need to give any preference to films produced by the Empire. The committee found censorship differing from province to province in India, and suggested the formation of a Central Board of Film Censors to help develop uniformity. It urged for Govermental help in financing Indian films and favoured the establishment of a training school for film technicians.
The report of the Indian Cinematograph Committee-a valuable record for the film historians-got buried among Government archive material and was taken out after independent India appointed a similar committee more than twenty years later.
The film trade, which the first enquiry committee had so minutely observed and studied, was in for some drastic changes.
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