Table Of ContentENVISIONING ASIA
CINEMA INDIA
The Visual Culture of Hindi Film
RACHEL DWYER AND DIVIA PATEL
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ENVISIONING ASIA
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CINEMA INDIA
The Visual Culture of Hindi Film
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REAKTION BOOKS
DEDICATIONS
Rachel: For my Bombay homegivers, Imtiaz, Maithili, Rekhi, Udita and Shaad
Divia: To my grandfather, Bhanabhai S. Patel
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
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London ECIM 3JU, UK
www.teaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2002
This work is published with the support of the Society for South Asian Studies
Copyright © Rachel Dwyer and the Board of Trustees of
the Victoria and Albert Museum 2002
Rachel Dwyer and Divia Patel assert their moral rights to be identified
as the authors of this book.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the publishers.
Series design by Ron Costley
Printed in Hong Kong
British Library Cataloguing in Publishing Data
Dwyer, Rachel
Cinema India: the visual culture of Hindi film. — (Envisioning
Asia) '
1.Motion pictures — India — History
I. Title II. Patel, Divia
791.4'3'0954
-
ISBN I 86189 124 5
Contents
Preface,6
Introduction, 7
t Indian Cinema, 13
2 Film Style: Settings and Costume, 42
3 The Art of Advertising, 101
4 Advertising and the Communication of Meaning, 183
Conclusion2,1 5
References2,19
Select Bibliography, 232
Acknowledgements, 233
Photographic Acknowledgements, 234
Index, 23 5
Pretace
This book is the result of a collaboration of two authors who have,
over the last decade, witnessed the rising interest in Indian cinema
and the visual culture of India. The authors’ aim is to provide a unique
insight into aspects of this field of study, which hitherto has not been
researched or written on in any great depth. It brings together Rachel
Dwyer’s extensive knowledge of Indian cinema and Divia Patel’s
expertise in Indian art and design. Thus, in chapters One and Two,
Rachel Dwyer has written an overview of the history of Indian
cinema, followed by an in-depth study of the visual style of films as
created through sets and costumes. In chapters Three and Four Divia
Patel examines the visual culture of film advertising, first from an
historical perspective and then by means of a study of the greater
meaning of these cinematic images and their use in a wider field. The
Introduction and Conclusion are jointly written.
Many Indian cities have changed their names in recent years. For
this book the authors have preferred to use Bombay (for Mumbai),
Poona (for Pune}, Calcutta (for Kolkatta), Madras (for Chennai) and
Baroda (for Vadodara).
“>
Introduction
‘One of the most significant phenomena of our time has been the
development of the cinema from a turn-of-the-century mechanical toy
into the century’s most potent and versatile art form. In its early
chameleon-like phase the cinema was used variously as an extension
of photography, as a substitute for the theatre and the music hall, and
as part of the magician’s paraphernalia ... Today the cinema commands
the respect accorded to any other form of creative expression. In the
immense complexity of its creative process, it combines in various
measures the functions of poetry, music, painting, drama, architecture
and a host of other arts, major and minor.’!
So wrote Satyajit Ray in 1948. Less then ten years later he was to
become India’s first internationally acclaimed film director. Ray’s
words, however, were not an accolade to the Indian film industry,
rather they were an observation of the cinemas of Italy, France,
Germany and the Soviet Union. For, according to Ray, India had failed
to produce anything that could match their quality. He felt that the
Indian film industry needed ‘a style, an idiom, a sort of iconography of
cinema, which would be uniquely and recognizably Indian.’ Influenced
by these other cinemas he made his first film, Pather Panchali, for
which he won an award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956. Since
then Ray’s distinct ‘art-house’ films, made in black and white, with
their simple linear narratives conveying realism and emotional truth,
have come to define, and be regarded in the west as synonymous with,
Indian cinema.
Yet this is not the only cinema of India. Today, more than fifty years
later, India has developed many cinemas, each with its own film styles,
each with its own combination of ‘poetry, music, painting ... and a host
of other arts’, and of those many cinemas it is the distinctive style of
the Hindi commercial cinema that is the focus of this book. Its films
are criticized for their excessive length, their complicated plots within
plots, their song and dance sequences, their colourful costumes, and
their incongruous locations. In 1948 Ray believed that a ‘truly Indian
film should steer clear of such inconsistencies and look for its material
in the most basic aspects of Indian life, where habit and speech, dress
and manners, background and foreground, blend into a harmonious
whole’.? It is precisely these inconsistencies, however, that have since
come to define the style of the Hindi cinema.
Hindi cinema’s style is unique and recognizably Indian. It is deter-
mined by the film sets, locations and costumes seen within the film (as
well as the cinematography) and is projected beyond the screens and
cinema halls through the film’s advertising and promotional material.
These components constitute the visual culture of the Hindi film.
Considered vulgar and kitsch by some and glamorous and trendsetting
by others, this ‘filmi’ style, as it is known, permeates every aspect of
Indian and Indian diasporic culture. Its ubiquitous nature is made
apparent through the music that is played in people’s homes, through
the clothes worn on the streets, at weddings, in nightclubs and social
gatherings, as well as the profusion of cinematic images visible across
the landscape, on hoardings and posters in the streets, on magazines,
on television and on the Internet. Thus, rather than reflect the ‘harmo-
nious whole’ that is an observation of everyday Indian life as envi-
sioned by Ray, Hindi commercial cinema has become part of everyday
life, part of its ‘habit and speech, dress and manners, background and
foreground’. This all-pervasive visual culture is an integral part of the
complexity that comprises Indian cinema and any study of it. It is the
aim of this book to explore that visual culture, its production and
reception, and its cultural, historic and aesthetic significance.
The Hindi Commercial Cinema: Local/Global Culture
Spoken largely in northern India, Hindi is the government’s designated
national language and as such has become the most widely understood
language across the country. The Hindi commercial cinema, although
produced in Bombay, is considered to be the national cinema of India,
in part because of the language in which it is produced. As such it is a
prominent form of mass entertainment and is therefore distinguished
from the other cinemas of India.
There are, however, many other regionally defined commercial cine-
mas, of which the most notable and largest in terms of production are
the Telugu- and Tamil-language cinemas of South India. It is here that
the cinema halls are concentrated and the largest cinema-going public
is to be found. These films are rarely shown outside of their heartlands,
except where Tamil and Telugu speakers have settled elsewhere in
India or overseas. Similarly, the ‘art-house’ cinema, which includes
avant-garde and experimental films, is also regionally defined. Here it
is the Bengali cinema that has achieved a prominentsposition, largely
because of Satyajit Ray, but this is followed closely by the Malayalam-
language cinema of Kerala, South India. While these cinemas are inter-
nationally acclaimed, primarily because they fall into a recognized
school of film making, within India their appeal is restricted to a rela-
