© Blackwell Publishing 2004

History Compass 2 (2004) AS 087, 1–4

Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.Oxford, UKHICOHistory Compass1478–0542© Blackwell Publishing 2004XXXOriginal ArticleA Brief History of Cinema from Bombay to ‘Bollywood’A Brief History of Cinema from Bombay to ‘Bollywood’

A Brief History of Cinema from Bombay to ‘Bollywood’

Kaushik

Bhaumik

Open University

Abstract

The Bombay film industry began in 1896 with the exhibition of imported filmsand soon diversified into production of feature-length films. Adventure romancefilms dominated the silent period. With the onset of the talkies, romantic melo-drama mixed with social realism dominated by music became the principal filmgenre of Bombay cinema. This cinema is thought to have reflected the socialreformist agenda of the Nehruvian state. The 1970s saw the advent of the multi-generic entertainment extravaganza replete with dramatic dialogue and spectacu-lar song and dance sequences (popularly referred to as

masala

films). The

masala

film continues to dominate Bombay film production and has, since the 1990s,

assumed global popularity.

It could be said in hindsight that the Bombay film industry began withthe first exhibition of films in India in 1896. But it was the money anda thriving film culture generated by exhibitions in the first decades of thetwentieth century that laid the foundations of the industry. From 1913,when the first proper feature-length was produced, until the present daythe industry has churned out thousands of films and in the process movedfrom a position of extreme cultural marginality to one of global successand critical attention. Beginning with predominantly mytho-folkloricfilms, the industry quickly discovered the charms of the romance film andthe attractions of the romantic star in the 1920s and these have remainedits chief selling points. In the 1930s, however, a marginal trend of socialrealism made a deep impact on the generic output of the industry and itshistory since then has been that of negotiating the tensions between socialrealism and the adventure romance. The coming of the talkies broughtwith it the dramatic entry of music, something that defines the industryin most people’s minds. Today, Bombay cinema is seen as an exotic spec-tacle consisting of music, extravaganza, romantic fantasy and melodrama.It is seen as an ideal escapist entertainment genre catering to the needs ofall classes of audiences, skilfully manipulating music, melodrama and real-ism to reach out to the middle and working classes.

Social realist and adventure-romance films came into separate existencein the 1920s and for a brief period in the 1930s the two came together

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in the mass popular cinema market in the films of Homi Wadia featuringFearless Nadia. However, even in the 1920s Sulochana, the first superstarof Bombay films, regularly performed in films belonging to both genres.But in the post-independence era the industry shifted predominantly tothe romantic melodrama centred mostly around questions of social reformof marriage and class. The adventure-romance, although highly popular,was banished to the B-film circuit. The 1950s saw the stars and directorsthat the Bombay industry is most remembered for come into form –Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy, Nargis, Dilip Kumar and DevAnand. This decade and the following one saw the production of suchfilm classics as

Awaara

,

Mother India

,

Pyaasa

,

Do Bigha Zameen

,

Madhumati

,

Mughal-e-Azam

,

Guide

and many more. The industry too came toattain mass popularity as most parts of India were reached by themedium. Musically these decades produced a corpus of film songclassics that are remembered, heard, seen and sung even today. Songswere mostly pop versions of Indian light classical and folk music mixedwith Broadway musical styles. By the 1960s music directors like S. D.Burman had begun to introduce jazz and rock rhythms into Hindi songs.The films of this period have received maximum critical attention inscholarly writing, most writers seeing in the social-realist romance theembodiment of the Nehruvian ideology of reform through the creationof the ideal Indian citizen. One strand of criticism has chosen to callthese films the ‘feudal family romance’ representing the societal tensionsin Nehruvian India caught between traditional social relations andmodernity.

From the mid-1960s, however, films took a turn towards the multi-generic entertainment extravaganza and the return of the adventureromance to the centre of Bombay cinema.

Sholay

, recently voted thetop Indian film, was a perfect melange of the adventure romance meldedwith older social realist cinematic norms albeit with inflections fromSergio Leone and the Hollywood Western. Adventure romance wasadapted into the social realist realm through the action film that reachedmaturity with the arrival of Amitabh Bachchan, arguably the mostsignificant filmic icon in Bombay cinema’s history. Mainstream ‘angryyoung man’ films moved towards B-Hollywood action cinema rather thanthe Hollywood new wave. Some critics see the increasing emphasis onindividual vigilante heroism in the films of this period as a symptom ofthe crisis of the Indian state that culminated in the imposition of anational emergency in 1975. Musically the 1970s was dominated by theoeuvre of Rahul Dev Burman who covered the entire gamut of newmusical trends from jazz-funk, fusion and folk-rock to the Californiasound while keeping the basic Indian light classical and folk lines in place.The next two decades saw Hindi film music dissolve into the globalspread of club music and influencing emerging trends in rap and ravemusic in England.

© Blackwell Publishing 2004 History Compass 2 (2004) AS 087, 1–4

A Brief History of Cinema from Bombay to ‘Bollywood’ 3

Since the 1970s the multi-generic entertainment extravaganza, popularlyreferred to as

masala

films, has remained the basic format of the popularHindi film. In the 1990s, however, a new wave of directors consisting ofMani Rathnam, Ram Gopal Varma and Vidhu Vinod Chopra amongstothers brought in a tougher political edge to Bombay cinema adaptinglessons learnt from the Indian parallel cinema movement of the 1970s,Hong Kong cinema and the Hollywood new wave. Other filmmakersturned towards extravagant family melodramas with

Hum Aapke HainKoun . . . !

, considered by many critics as an extended marriage videobreaking all box-office records. Recent writings on this cinema haveemphasised the impact of the tensions generated by economic liberalisa-tion in India that has profoundly affected Indian lifestyles and generatednew kinds of social tensions of which the rethinking of the relationshipbetween tradition and modernity has come to occupy centre-stage. Bom-bay cinema has gone global with unprecedented audiences flocking theworld over to watch a ‘Bollywood film’ – a term that is resisted by theindustry itself as disparaging in its implication of Bombay cinema being apoorer cousin of Hollywood.

Bombay cinema remains a critical enigma for film scholarship (andfor non-Indian viewers). Despite attempts to read inflections of historicalresonance into the films they remain remarkably resistant to any easyideological readings. Traditional tools of scholarship like genre analysis,readings of star images or literary critical deconstructive moves havefailed to reveal the relationship between society and cinema. Twothings need to be emphasised. Firstly, this cinema fits into a differentkind of audience attention where absorption into the film narrative interms of conventional narrative complexity is minimal. It is seen to fitinto a world of urban life where very few people have the time towatch films and think about them in terms of high cultural discourse.This lends Bombay films a sheer performative immediacy that resistsliterary readings (this is probably one of the reasons why historicalwritings on Bombay films have focused mainly on pre-1970s cinema).Secondly, the Bombay film is predominantly built in terms of itssonic structures with the main impact of the film depending on acomplex layering of sounds that encompass dialogue, music and songs.The sonic map of the film sets up the rhythm of the film, acting beingsubsidiary to sound. Additionally, the material aspects of the image –clothing fashions, urban domestic lifestyle artefacts and public spaces –refer back to contemporary popular culture practices with an immediacythat makes them difficult to historicize. A historical deconstruction ofBombay cinema would be tantamount to writing a sensual social historyof modern India, a difficult task to achieve. However this very mix ofmelodrama, romance and ironic reportage-style ethnography is the secretof why Bombay cinema continues to affect Indians in such profound wayseven today.

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