5 pages essay after watch films and 2 readings

The Bollywood Reader

Edited by Rajinder Dudrah and Jigna Desai

Open University Press

Open U niversity Press McGraw-Hill Education McGraw-Hill House Shoppenhangers Road Maidenhead Berkshire England SL62QL

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First published 2008

Copyright © Rajinder Dudrah and Jigna Desai 2008 for selection and editorial matter.

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The McGraw·Hi/1 Compames

2

Indian cinema: pleasures and popularity by Rosie Thomas

The pseudo-intellectuals here try to copy Westerners. We think we're better than Westerners- they can't make films for the Indian audience.

- Bombay film-maker

Discussion of Indian popular cinema as 'other' cinema is immediately problematic. There is no disputing that, within the context of First World culture and society, this cinema has always been marginalised, if not ignored completely. It has been defined primarily through its 'otherness' or 'difference' from First World cinema, and consumption of it in the West, whether by Asians or non-Asians, is something of an assertion: one has chosen to view an 'alternative' type of cinema. However, this is a cinema which, in the Indian context, is an over-ridinglv dominant, mainstream form, and is itself opposed by an 'Other': the 'new', 'parallel', 'art' (or often simply 'other') cinema which ranges from the work of Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal and various regional film-makers, to Mani Kaul's 'avant-garde' or Anand Patwardhan's 'agitational' political practice. In these terms Indian popular cinema is neither alternative nor a minority form. Moreover, in a global context, by virtue of its sheer volume of output, the Indian entertainment cinema still dominates world film production, and its films are distributed throughout large areas of the Third World (including non-Hindustani-speaking areas and even parts of the Soviet Union), where they are frequently consumed more avidly than both Hollywood and indigenous 'alternative' or political cinemas. Such preference suggests that these films are seen to be offering something positively different from Hollywood, and in fact, largely because it has always had its own vast distribution markets, Indian cinema has, throughout its long history, 1 evolved as a form which has resisted the cultural imperialism of Hollywood. This is not, of course, to say that it has been 'uninfluenced' by Hollywood: the form has undergone continual change and there has been both inspiration and assimilation from Hollywood and elsewhere, but thematically and structurally, Indian cinema has remained remark­ ably distinctive.

Corresponding to this diversity of contexts, each constructing Indian popular cinema as a different object, has been considerable confusion of critical and

22 THE BOLLYWOOD READER

evaluative perspectives. This article will examine the ways in which this cinema has been discussed by critics in India and abroad, and will suggest that, as a first step, the terms of reference of the Indian popular cinema itself should be brought into the picture. It attempts to do this, using material from discussions with Bombay film-makers2 about what, for them, constitutes 'good' and 'bad' Hindi cinema in the 1970s and '80s.3 Points will be illustrated through the example of one very popular, and at the time of release generally lauded, film, Naseeb (1981 Destiny),4 whose producer/director, Manmohan Desai, is Bombay's most consistently com­ mercially successful film-maker. It will be suggested that, while First World critical evaluation outside these terms of reference is, at best, irrelevant and also often racist, to impose a theoretical framework developed in the West - particularly one concerned with examining textual operations and the mechanisms of pleasure - does allow useful questions to be asked, as well as opening up the ethnocentrism of these debates.

The most striking aspect of First World discourse on Indian popular cinema must be its arrogant silence. Until home video killed the market in the '80s, the films had been in regular distribution in Britain for over 30 years, yet ghettoised in immigrant areas, unseen and unspoken by most non-Asians. Even in 1980, when the first Bombay film (Amar Akbar Anthony) was shown on British television, it passed more or less unnoticed: the BBC not only programmed it early one Sunday morning, without even troubling to list it with other films on the Radio Times film preview page, but pruned it of all its songs and much narrative, including most of the first two reels, which are, not surprisingly, crucial to making any sense of the film. Although the situation has begun to change over the past two years, largely through the initiative of Channel Four's two seasons of Indian entertainment cinema, the traditional attitude remains one of complacent ignorance. Cliches abound: the films are regularly said to be nightmarishly lengthy, second-rate copies of Hollywood trash, to be dismissed with patronising amusement or facetious quips. British television documentaries have a long tradition in perpetuating these attitudes, for the baroque surface of the Hindi film, particularly if taken out of context, makes for automatic comedy. Even Time Out's TV section recently announced Gunga Jumna (a classic of Indian cinema, but obviously unpreviewed) with the smug throwaway: 'Sounds turgid, but who knows?'. 5

W here popular Indian films have been taken at all seriously, i t has either been to subject them to impertinent criticism according to the canons of dominant Western film-making:

Mother India is a rambling tale of personal woe, narrated episodically zn unsuitably pretty Technicolour. 6

or to congratulate them patronisingly:

All told, a disarmingly enthusiastic piece of Eastern spectacle, exaggerated zn

presentation and acting, exotic, and yet charmingly naive . . . . 7

They have generally been looked at as 'a stupendous curiosity' - even the '50s, as an ethnographic lesson, a way to:

INDIAN CINEMA: PLEASURES AND POPULARITY 23

... get to close grips with a handful of (India's) inhabitants. That Indians make the

same faces as we do when they fall in love astounds me beyond measure ... . 8

But the most general theme since the 1960s has been unfavourable comparison with the Indian art cinema:

It all goes to prove once again that Satyajit Ray is the exception who proves the rule of Indian film-making. 9

As Indian art cinema is comparatively well known and enthusiastically received in the West, and much conforms to conventions made familiar within European art cinema, Western audience assumptions about filmic form can remain unchal­ lenged. In fact, the art films serve mostly to confirm the 'inadequacy' of popular cinema to match what are presumed to be universal standards of 'good' cinema­ and even of 'art'. Western critics are perhaps not completely to blame, for they take their cues from the Indian upper-middle class intelligentsia and government cultural bodies, who have a long tradition of conniving at this denunciation and somewhat ironically, themselves insist on evaluating the popular films according to the canons of European and Hollywood film-making. One commonly hears complaints about the films' 'lack of realism', about the preposterous 'singing and dancing and running round trees', and that the films are 'all the same' and simply 'copy Hollywood'. To dislike such films is, of course, their privilege. W hat· is disturbing is the tone of defensive apology to the West and the shamefaced disavowal of what is undoubtedly a central feature of modern Indian culture. Thus, for example, Satish Bahadur, comparing popular cinema unfavourably with Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali (which 'was a work of art . .. an organic form'), refers to its 'immaturity' and asserts:

The heavily painted men and women with exaggerated theatrical gestures and speech,

the artifi'cial-looking houses and huts and the painted trees and skies in the films of

this tradition are less truthful statements of the reality of India ... . 10

Even Rangoonwalla, who has devoted considerable energy to compiling much of the published material available on Indian cinema, dismisses the work of the 1970s as 'a very dark period, with a silly absurd kind of escapism rearing its head,'11 and he is tolerant of popular cinema only if it attempts 'sensible themes'.

One of the central platforms for this kind of criticism is the English language 'quality' press. Week after week, the Indian Sunday Times and Sunday Express

I

produce jokey review columns which score easy points off the apparent inanities of Hindi cinema. Typical is a Sunday Times feature entitled 'Not Only Vulgar but Imitative', which skims through all the critical cliches: absurd stories, poor imitations of Hollywood, lack of originality, and finally the myth of a golden age - of the 1960s (sic) -when commercial films were 'gentle, warm-hearted, innocent'. Most significant is the fact that the article appeared - by no coincidence - in precisely the week that Bombay was full of Western delegates to the annual film festival. It makes no bones about its intended audience, to whom it defers:

24 THE BOLLYWOOD READER

not surprisingly the �st cares little for these films. All that they stand for is exotica,

vulgarity and absurdity . . . 12

Naseeb was, of course, received within this tradition. The Sunday Express review was captioned: 'Mindless Boring Melange', and, for example, described a central scene - in fact one that was spectacularly self-parodic, in which many top stars and film-makers make 'Guest Appearances' at a party- as:

a 'homage' to . . . all those who have, in the past thirty years, brought the Hindi film

down to its present state of total garish mediocrity. In fact, the film encapsulates the

entire history of our sub-standard 'entertainment' - elephantine capers . . . the

manufactured emotion, ·the brutal ism in talk and acting, the utterly 'gauche'

dances . . . 13

The tone is echoed throughout the popular English-language (hence middle-class) press, and even among regular (middle-class) film-goers there appears to be huge resistance to admitting to finding pleasure in the form. Thus letters to film gossip magazines ran:

�nt to make Naseeb? Don't bother about a story or screenplay. Y&u can do without both. Instead rope in almost the entire industry ... Throw in the entire works:

revolving restaurant, London locales, and outfits which even a jive year old would be

embarrassed to wear to a fancy dress competition. Now, sit back, relax, and watch the

cash pour in. 14

Manmohan Desai's concept of entertainment still revolves around the lost and found

theme, with a lot of improbabilities and inanities thrown in ... But how long can such

films continue to click at the box-office? Soon audiences are bound to come to their

senses.15

There are also, of course, more serious and considered critical positions within India, notably of the politically conscious who argue, quite cogently, that Hindi cinema is capitalist, sexist, exploitative, 'escapist' mystification, politically and aesthetically reactionary, and moreover that its control of distribution networks blocks opportunities for more radical practitioners. It should, of course, be remembered that what may be pertinent criticism within India may be irrelevant - or racist - in the West, and apparently similar criticisms may have different meanings, uses and effects in different contexts. However, two central objections to all the criticisms do stand out. One is the insistence on evaluating Hindi cinema in terms of film-making practices which it has itself rejected, a blanket refusal to allow its own terms of reference to be heard. The second is the reluctance to acknowledge and deal with the fact that Hindi cinema clearly gives enormous pleasure to vast pan-Indian (and Third World) audiences. In view of this, such supercilious criticism does no more than wish the films away. Dismissing them as 'escapism' neither explains them in any useful way, nor offers any basis for political strategy, for it allows no space for questions about the specifics of the audiences'

INDIAN CINEMA: PLEASURES AND POPULARITY 25

relationship to their so-called 'escapist' fare. What seems to be needed is an

analysis which takes seriously both the films and the pleasures they offer, and which attempts to unravel their mode of operation.

Clearly, a body of 'film theory' developed in the West may mislead if it is used to squash Hindi cinema into Western film-making categories, particularly if it brutalises or denies the meanings and understandings of participants. Thus, for example, Hollywood genre classification is quite inappropriate to Hindi cinema and, although almost every Hindi film contains elements of the 'musical', 'comedy' and 'melodrama', to refer to the films in any of these ways imposes a significant distortion. Certainly no Indian film-maker would normally use such classifications. Important distinctions are marked instead by terms such as 'social', 'family social', 'devotional', 'stunt' or even 'multi-starrer' (terms hard to gloss quickly for a Western readership). However, the concept of genre, in its broadest sense - as structuring principles of expectation and convention, around which individual films mark repetitions and differences16 - does appear to be potentially useful in opening up questions about Hindi ciru!ma 's distinctive form. In the first place, it moves immediately beyond the tired rantings about Hindi cinema's 'repetitiveness' and 'lack of originality' - although, on this point, some of the Bombay film-makers are in fact many steps ahead of their so-called 'intellectual' critics:

People seem to like the same thing again and again, so I repeat it . . . but you always

have to give them something different too ... There can be no such thing as a 'formula

film' - if there were, everybody would be making nothing but hits . . . 17

Secondly, it points to questions about narrative structure, modes of address and conventions of verisimilitude that, at the least, help organise description which can take Indian cinema's own terms of reference mto account and from which further questions about spectatorship and pleasure become possible. The rest of this article attempts to illustrate such an approach.

Contrary to common 'intellectual' assumptions within India, the Indian mass audience is ruthlessly discriminating: over 85 per cent of films released in the last two years have not made profits/8 and these have included films with the biggest budgets and most publicity 'hype'. There is a clear sense among audiences of 'good' and 'bad' films, and the film-makers. committed as they are to 'pleasing' audiences, make it their business to understand, and internalise, these assessments. While the yardstick of commercial success is of course central- for film-makers a 'good' film is ultimately one that makes money - they do also have a working model of (what they believe to be) the essential ingredients of a 'good' film and the 'right' way to put these together. This model evolves largely through the informal, but obsessive, post-mortems which follow films whose box-office careers confound expectations, and is undergoing continual, if gradual, redefinition and refinement.

Bombay film-makers repeatedly stress that they are aiming to make films which differ in both format and content from Western films, that there is a definite skill to making films for the Indian audience, that this audience has specific needs and expectations, and that to compare Hindi films to those of the West, or of the Indian 'art' cinema, is irrelevant. Their statements imply both a sense of the

26 THE BOLLYWOOD READER

tyranny of this audience and a recognitiOn of the importance of a class link between film-maker and audience. The example of the barely educated Mehboob Khan, whose cult classic Mother India (1957) still draws full houses today, is often cited proudly - buttressed by assertions that his film is 'of our soil', 'full of real Indian emotions' - and by that token inaccessible to the emotionally retarded, if not totally cold-blooded, West. 19

W hatever the critics' cliches may suggest, no successful Bombay film-maker ever simply 'copies' Western films. Of course, most borrow openly both story ideas and sometimes complete sequences from foreign cinemas, but borrowings must always be integrated with Indian film-making conventions if the film is to work with the Indian audience: no close copy of Hollywood has ever been a hit. 20

Film-makers say that the essence of 'Indianisation' lies in: ( 1) the way that the storyline is developed; (2) the crucial necessity for 'emotion' (Western films are often referred to as 'cold'); and (3) the skilful blending and integration of songs, dances, fights and other 'entertainment values' within the body of the film. There is also the more obvious 'Indianisation' of values and other content, including reference to aspects of Indian life with which audiences will identify, particularly religion and patriotism. It is, for example, generally believed that science fiction would be outside the cultural reference of the Indian audience, and censorship restrictions mean that films about war, or overtly about national or international politics, risk being banned.

The film-makers' terms of reference often emerge most clearly when discuss­ ing a film which is judged a 'failure'. A trade press review21 of Desh Premee ( 1982 Patriot), one of Manmohan Desai's few unsuccessful films, is particularly revealing.

Desh Premee has all the ingredients that make a film a hit, yet every aspect is markedly defective. Firstly, the story has a plot and incidents but the narration is so

unskilled that it does not sustain interest. There is no grip to the story. The situations

are neither melodramatic, nor do they occur spontaneously, but look forced and

contrived. Secondly, the music side is not as strong as the film demands. All songs are

good average, but not one song can be declared a superhit. Thirdly, emotional appeal

is lacking. Although there are a few scenes which try to arouse feelings, they fail to hit

their objective. Fourthly, production values are average, considering the producer. The

traditional grandeur of Manmohan Desai is missing, as are technical values.

Desh Premee has no sex appeal. The romantic part is too short. Comedy scenes and melodramatic scenes are missing . . . [My precis: the stars' roles are not properly

justified . . . . several appear for too short a time . . . action, thrills and background

music are only average . . . }

Several of the scenes look like repetitions from many old hits and there is no dose

of originality in the film . . . Although every formula film is basically unrealistic and far from the truths of life, everything can still be presented with acceptable realism and

logic. But in this film there are several 'unbelievables' even with normal cinematic

licence granted. This is not expected from any seasoned film-maker. 22

Particularly interesting is the order in which defects are listed: the screenplay is recognised to be crucial, the music (i.e. the songs) of almost equal importance,

INDIAN CINEMA: PLEASURES AND POPULARITY 27

'emotional appeal' a significant third, and fourth are production values, or expensive spectacle. A 'dose of originality' and 'acceptable realism and logic' are additional points of general importance. Big stars are a decided advantage (viz. 'the ingredients that make a film a hit'), but cannot in themselves save a film - particularly if not exploited adequately, and in contrast, Naseeb on its release had

been particularly praised for 'Assembling the biggest starcast ever (and) ...

justifying each and all of them.'23 Two themes emerge from this review: firstly that of the expected narrative

movement and mode of address, and secondly, the question of verisimilitude.

Narrative

Indian film-makers often insist that screenplay and direction are crucial and the storyline only the crudest vehicle from which to wring 'emotion' and onto which to append spectacle.

It's much more difficult to write a screenplay for Naseeb than for a J,%stern or 'art' film, where you have a straight storyline. A commercial Hindi film has to have sub-plots and gags, and keep its audience involved with no story or logic. 24

The assertion that Hindi films have 'no story' is sometimes confusing to those unfamiliar with the genre. 'Who cares who gets the story credits? Everyone knows our films have no stories', and, in fact, the story credits are often farmed out to accommodating friends or relatives for 'tax adjustment' purposes. However, Hindi cinema has by no means broken the hallowed bounds of narrative convention, and the most immediately striking thing about Naseeb is the fiendishly complex convolutions of this multi-stranded and very long succession of events, which neverthless culminate in an exemplarily neat resolution. W hat is meant by 'no story' is, first, that the storyline will be almost totally predictable to the Indian audience, being a repetition, or rather, an unmistakable transformation, of many other Hindi films, and second, that it will be recognised by them as a 'ridiculous' pretext for spectacle and emotion. Films which really have 'no story' (i.e. non-narrative), or are 'just a slice of life', or have the comparatively single-stranded narratives of many contemporary Western films, are considered unlikely to be successful.

The difference between Hindi and J,%stern films is like that between an epic and a

short story. 25

Not only is a film expected to be two-and-a-half to three hours long, but it is usual for the plot to span at least two generations, ('beginning with the main protago­ nists' births or childhoods and jumping twenty or so years often in a single shot) to the action of the present. There is of course good evidence that Hindi films have evolved from village traditions of epic narration, and the dramas and the charac­ ters, as well as the structure, of the mythological epics are regularly and openly

28 THE BOLLYWOOD READER

drawn upon. Film-makers often insist that: 'Every film can be traced back to these stories', and even that 'There are only two stories in the world, the Ramayana and the Mahabharat.'26 In fact, it is the form and movement of the narrative that tends to distinguish the Hindi film, the crux of this seeing that the balance between narrative development and spectacular or emotional excess is rather different.[ . . . ]

Verisimilitude

Beyond the basic suspension of disbelief on which cinema depends, any genre evolves and institutionalises its own conventions, which allow credibility to become unproblematic within certain parameters. 26• 27 Compared with the conventions of much Western cinema, Hindi films appear to have patently preposterous narra­ tives, overblown dialogue (frequently evaluated by film-makers on whether or not it is 'clap-worthy'), exaggeratedly stylised acting, and to show disregard for psycho­ logical characterisation, history, geography, and even, sometimes, camera place­ ment rules. 28

Tolerance of overt phantasy has always been high in Hindi cinema, with little need to anchor the material in what Western conventions might recognise as a discourse of 'realism', and slippage between registers does not have to be marked or rationalised. The most obvious example is the song sequences, which are much less commonly 'justified' within the story (for example, introduced as stage performances by the fictional characters) than in Hollywood musicals. Hindi film songs are usually tightly integrated, through words and mood, within the flow of the film 'In my films, if you miss a song, you have missed an important link between one part of the narration and the next'29 and misguided attempts to doctor Hindi films for Western audiences by cutting out the songs are always fatal. However, the song sequences (often also dream sequences) do permit excesses of phantasy which are more problematic elsewhere in the film, for they specifically allow that continuities of time and place be disregarded, that heroines may change saris between shots and the scenery skip continents between verses, whenever the interests of spectacle or mood require it. [ ... ]

The spectator

It would appear that the spectator-subject of Hindi cinema is positioned rather differently from that of much Western cinema. In fact, even on the most overt level, Indian cinema audience behaviour is distinctive: involvement in the films is intense and audiences clap, sing, recite familiar dialogue with the actors, throw coins at the screen (in appreciation of spectacle), 'tut tut' at emotionally moving scenes, cry openly and laugh and jeer knowingly. Moreover, it is expected that audiences will see a film they like several times, and so-called 'repeat value' is deliberately built into a production by the film-makers, who believe that the keys to this are primarily the stars, music, spectacle, emotion and dialogue - this last having a greater significance than in Western cinema.30

INDIAN CINEMA: PLEASURES AND POPULARITY 29

What seems to emerge in Hindi cinema is an emphasis on emotion and

spectacle rather than tight narrative, on how things will happen rather than what will happen next, on a succession of modes rather than linear denouement, on familiarity and repeated viewings rather than 'originality' and novelty, on a moral disordering to be (temporarily) resolved rather than an enigma to be solved. The spectator is addressed and moved through the films primarily via affect, although this is structured and contained by narratives whose power and insistence derives from their very familiarity, coupled with the fact that they are deeply rooted (in the psyche and in traditional mythology).

Whether, and how, one can relate the 'spectator-subject' of the films to the Indian 'social audience'31 is not immediately clear, although certain comparisons with other discourses within India through which subjectivity is lived are sugges­ tive. For example, it has been suggested32 that Hindu caste, kinship and religious 'ideologies', in particular beliefs in destiny and Karma, position a decentred, less individuated social subject. One can also point to specific cultural traditions of performance and entertainment which must be of direct relevance, notably the forms on which early cinema drew, from the performances of the professional story-tellers and village dramatisations of the mythological epics, to the excesses of spectacle ('vulgar' and 'garish' according to contemporary critics) of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Urdu Parsee theatre with its indulgent adaptations of Shakespeare and Victorian melodrama. Beyond this, one must remember that Sanskrit philosophy boasts a coherent theory of aesthetics which bears no relation to Aristotelian aesthetics and, rejecting the unities of time and place and the dramatic development of narrative, the theory of rasa (flavours/ moods) is concerned with moving the spectator through the text in an ordered succession of modes of affect (rasa), by means of highly stylised devices. All Indian classical drama, dance and music draw on this aesthetic.

Of course, most present-day film-makers make no conscious reference to this heritage and, for example, the privileging of spectacle and music can be accounted for in many other ways, not least the pragmatic one that, to make money, the films need to appeal across wide linguistic and cultural divides within India itself. 'Tradition' cannot be used to provide too neat an 'explanation' of the present form -apart from anything else, Indian cultural 'tradition' is a heterogeneous assimila­ tion of Sanskritic, Islamic, Judeo-Christian and many other influences, and could be selectively drawn upon to 'explain' almost any present form. Moreover, invoking tradition also holds dangers of uncritically romanticising the present form as exotically 'other' and ignoring its diverse influences and constant evolution. Its role should rather be seen as one of a framework of terms of reference within which certain developments have been stifled, others allowed to evolve unproblematically, and which can be used to throw light on the different possibilities of forms of address which might be expected or tolerated by an Indian audience.

This article has attempted to examine Indian popular cinema's 'terms of reference' by placing it within a number of contexts: primarily that of the film-makers' own descriptions of their films and generic expectations, but also briefly that of audiences, and of earlier and co-existing cultural forms and traditions. There is, of course, the problem of the infinite regress of context: no

3 0 THE BOLLYWOOD READER

description of conditions and discourses could ever be 'adequate' to contextualis­ ing Indian cinema. But any criticism which ignores the specificity of the textual operations and pleasures of Indian popular cinema will remain caught up in the confusion and condescension which marked British responses to the London release of Aan in 1952:

But having proved themselves masters of every cliche in the 'Western cinema, its

remarkable producers should have a look around home and make an Indian film. 33

Notes

The first Indian feature film, a mythological, D. G. Phalke's Raja Harischan­ dra, was released in 1913.

2 This refers here primarily to those employed in the film industry as producers, directors, writers and distributors.

3 Films produced in the Hindustani language (and primarily in Bombay) account for less than 20% of pan-Indian film production. However, they alone are distributed throughout the country and, having the biggest budgets, stars and hence prestige, influence almost all regional language film-making.

4 Naseeb's box-office returns rank with those of three other films as the highest of 1981. It is one of the most expensive 'multistarrers' ever produced in India (distribution rights sold for a little over £2 million in total).

5 Geoff Andrew in Time Out, August 2-8, 1984. 6 James Green, in the Observer, March 26, 1961, referring to Mother India. 7 'ER' in the Monthly Film Bulletin, September 1952, vol 19 no 224, referring to

A an.

8 Virginia Graham in The Spectator, July 18, 1952, referring to Aan. 9 Monthly Film Bulletin, August 1963, vol 30 no 355, referring to Gunga Jumna.

10 A Vasudev and P Lenglet (eds) Indian Superbazaar, Vikas, Delhi, 1983, p 112. 11 F Rangoonwalla, Indian Cinema Past and Present, Clarion, Delhi, 1983. 12 Khalid Mohamed in Times of India, 'Sunday Review', January 8, 1984. 13 Sunday Express, May 3, 1981. 14 Iqbal Masud in Cine Blitz, July 1981. 15 Star and Style, November 13, 1981. 16 Stephen Neale, Genre, London, British Film Institute, 1980. 17 Manmohan Desai, in interview with the author, May 1981. 18 Trade Guide, January 5, 1985. Video piracy has had a particularly harsh effect

on the Bombay film industry. However, even in the late '70s it is alleged that only 10% of releases made 'sizeable' profits (Report of the Working Group on National Film Policy, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, May 1980, p 17).

19 It has, in fact, been generally well received in the West and is the only Indian film ever to have won an Oscar nomination (Best Foreign Film, 1958).

20 W here European and Hollywood cinemas have drawn upon literary traditions for their story ideas, Hindi cinema has primarily looked to other films for basic

INDIAN CINEMA: PLEASURES AND POPULARITY 3 1

stories to adapt. Inspiration from Hollywood is often integrated with storylines from the Indian mythological epics, e.g. a recent proposal 'for a cross between The Omen and the Mahabharat'. The only virtual frame-to-frame remakes of Hollywood films (Khoon Khoon of Dirty Harry and Manoranjan of Irma La Douce) flopped disastrously. So did Man Pasand, based closely on My Fair Lady, a failure which the BBC ignored in its dismissive documentary on the film in 1982.

21 There are two weekly Bombay trade papers, Trade Guide and Film Information. Their reviews are generally respected in the film industry (unlike all other press reviews, especially the Sunday critics') and do in fact have a good record in predicting subsequent box-office performance.

22 Trade Guide, Special Edition, April 2, 1982 (with slight stylistic adaptations). 23 Trade Guide, May 3, 1981. 24 K K Shukla, screenplay writer of Naseeb, in interview with the author, April

1981.

25 Javed Akhtar, screenplay writer, in interview with the author, February 1981. 26 The two key mythological epics of India. 27 Stephan Neole, Op. at. 28 Camera placement rules can be disregarded, particularly in action (fight)

scenes, which seem to be allowed something of the non-continuity conventions of song sequences.

29 Raj Kapoor, film-maker, in interview on Visions, Channel Four, February 1983.

30 Audiences often talk of dialogue as a central draw, and books and records of film dialogue sell sometimes better than collections of film music.

31 Annette Kuhn, 'Women's Genres', Screen, January-February 1984, vol 25 no 1, p 23.

32 L Dumont, Homo Hierarchicals, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979. 33 is footnote 32 above.