Hindi Action Cinema: Industries, Narratives, Bodies (South Asian Cinemas)

151 Pages·2010·28.67 MB·English

by  Valentina Vitali

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YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road. New Delhi 110 001 Contents
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With off~cesin
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Photographs vii
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Viemam Note on the Transliteration of Film Titles and Names ix
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press Acknowledgements xi
in the UK and in certain other countries. ...
Introduction xlll
Published in lndia
by Oxford University Press, New Delhi
O Oxford University Press 2008
The 1910s
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted The 1920s
Database right Oxford University Press (maker) The Action Ingredient
First published 2008 Sharda Film Company and Master Vithal
Conclusion
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical.
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and 2. WOMEINN A CTIONF ILMSIN THE 1920s AND 1930s
retrieval system, without permission in writing from Oxford University Press. The 1930s
Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be From Artistic Pictures Corporation to Wadia Movietone
sent to the Rights Department. Oxford University Press, at the address above
Fearless Nadia's Stunt Films
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer 3. INTERLUDET: HE1 950s
The Bombay Film Industry during Nehru's Administration
Post-Independence Euphoria and the Marginalization of Action
4. THE1 960s
Typeset in Dante MT 10.5 / 12 The Bombay Film Industry in the 1960s
by Eleven Arts, Keshav Puram, Delhi 110 035 The Economy in 1960s India
Printed in lndia at De-Unique, New Delhi 110 018
Dara Singh and the Hindi Small-budget Film
Published by Oxford University Press
YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001 Dara Singh's Wrestling Films
vi Contents
5. THE1 970s
The Literature on the 'Angry Young Man'
Prelude
Photographs
lndira Gandhi's U-Turn
The Bombay Film Industry in the 1970s
The Action Films of Arnitabh Bachchan
While considerable effort has been made to correctly identify the
~i bliography holders, this has not been possible in all cases. We apologize
for any apparent negligence, and any omission or correction brought to
Index
our attention will be remedied in future editions.
French athlete Louis Seidinger lifting 2400 pounds
of flour (Modern Review).
B.S. Nayampally, founder of Bombay's National
Athletic League (Bombay Chronicle).
Wrestler Babu J.C. Goho swinging clubs weighing
100 pounds each (Modern Review).
Master Vithal in Burkhewala/ White Devil (Mauj Majah).
Master Vithal in Bhedi Rajkumar/Mysteriow Prince
(Filmland Pictorial News).
Ganpatrao Bakre (Cinema Vision).
Still from Love Immortal/Rani Rupmati
(courtesy of NFAI).
Still from Maharathi Karna (Cinema Rsion).
Durga Khote in Maya Macchindra (Filmland).
Advertisement of Sharda Fim's Rahadur Beti/She,
starring Zebunissa (Bombay Chronicle).
Advertisement of Azad Abla/Daring Damsel (Mauj Majah).
Miss Padma in The Amazon/Dilruba Daku
(courtesy of Vinci Wadia).
Miss Padma in a late action role in
Chalak Chor/Black Bandit (Ranjit Bulletin).
Advertisement for Toofan Mail (courtesy of
Vinci Wadia).
Advertisement for Dilru ba Daku /The Amazon
(Mauj Majah).
viii Photographs
Poster of Toofan Mail (courtesy of Vinci Wadia).
Poster of Sinh GarjandLion Man (Cinema Vision).
John Cawas (courtesy of Vinci Wadia).
Note on the Transliteration of
Still from Miss Frontier Mail: Shyamlal's futuristic
communication technology (courtesy of Vinci Wadia).
Film Titles and Names
Industrialization as desirable horizon for the future:
Still from Miss Frontier Mail (courtesy of Vinci Vadia).
Gym sequence: Stills from Miss Frontier Mail
(courtesy of Vinci Wadia).
Booklet of FauLui (courtesy of NFAI). For the transliteration of Indian film titles and names, I have adopted
Stills from King Kong: Dance sequence. the spelling as it appears in the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema
(Rajadhyaksha and Willemen 1999).F or all films, I have used the official
English title whenever the film has been given one, either on release or
in existing filmographies. For films which do not have an English title, I
have given a literal translation of the original title, unless the title is the
name of a character.
Acknowledgements
This book was written in conversation with Paul Willemen, who also
helped with the research for Chapters 1 and 2. I thank him for hls patient
support, intellectual integrity, and invaluable practical help.
Of the many people to whom this book owes much, special thanks
go to Ashish Rajadhyaksha. Without his friendship and work, and the
friendship and writings of Madhava Prasad, whom I also met at the
Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (Bangalore), my interest in
Hindi cinema would long have waned. My friend Francesca Orsini, who
encouraged my research on Hindi cinema from the beginning, also read
early versions of the manuscript and offered much-needed advice on
how to make my writing more accessible.
I also wish to thank Virchand Dharamsey for sharing his boundless
knowledge of Indan silent cinema during long afternoons in the dusty
corridors of the Asiatic Society Library, Mumbai. Vinci Wadia generously
granted me access to material that enabled me to write Chapter 2. I
would like to thank him here for preserving that precious material in
the first place and for the time he devoted to my questions about the
work and outstanding writings of his father, J.B.H. Wadia. Chapter 4
owes much to the professionalism and kind assistance of Urmila Joshi,
Lakshmi Iyer, and Arti Karkhanis at the National Film Archives of India.
Many thanks also go to Rachel Dwyer, who encouraged my first foray
into Hind action cinema and enabled the publication of years of research
on the subject. Much of the funding for the research came from the Society
for South Asian Studes, which supported the project fiom its inception.
Finally, I am for ever grateful to Flavia and Aleardo Vitali for the
confidence they have shown in me ever since I can remember. To them
and to Paul Wdlemen, with whom it started, I dedicate this book.
Introduction
not a quel works in correlation
with their time,
but, rather, in t he time ir I which th, ey are bon~, of presenting thc
tinl e that knows them.
-Walter Benjamin,
'Liter;x ry History and the Study of Literature'
RAJKUMAR SANl iLLS THE S TORY OF KA SH1 NATH
- -
(Sunny Deol), LLCJ ull ul a llauull&t hero who sets out to free the residents
of a small tow :t errorizu1 gr egime: of arch-va ain Kaq fa (Dannyr
Denzongpa). I atures seb reral fights and ne2 lrly all of them are
witnessed by a kaegenc)\ crowa. Ihe final conrronration betwe- e- n.. n,r a.s-1 n. i
and Katya inscribes the spectator in the viewing position of the crowd,
standing by and cheeriri g as the Ih ero kills the other man. This type of
rnise en scPne is very c ommon i n action cinema and there is nothing
particular about this film that one cannot fmd in many other action movies.
Except, that is, the time 1A at knew Ghatak as a film. I first saw it as a newly
released film in 1996. I Tv- a-s then 1i ving in Allahabad, in the north Indian
state of Uttar Pradesh, a~ L----.w hen the popularity and influence of the
UI~C
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was fast rising in the Hindi belt. Watching
the film's dosing scene from my balcony seat, I remember thinking then
that I was seeing a film that was part of a swelling cultural-ideological
wave which would be flooding large parts of the country for a long time
to come. In many ways, tlus book emerges from, and is an elaboration of,
that impression of seein-g a film, not simply as a story or as a cultural
objec: t that ma .y or may not be a \ work of art, but as an integral moment
of ar 1 unfolding historic;3 1 process
Cl onvention ally spe:w. I.:-n- lg, ullr might say that this book is about the
relationship between history and cinema. The problem with such a
lntroduction xv
xiv Introduction
and Pierre Sorlin (1980), involves measuring the film retrospectively
formulation is that it risks suggesting that cinema is one thing and history
against other historiographic accounts that, although not necessarily
another, the relationship between the two being a matter for historians
taken to be 'truthful', are nevertheless understood to be offering a fuller
and film theorists to discuss in an interdisciplinary exchange. Historians
and more objective picture than the one presented by the analysed film.
have many useful observations to make about films and about cinema
The film's emphases, omissions, or simply 'distortions' are examined
as a cultural form, while film scholars have written insightful things
by resorting to certain techniques of psychoanalysis-and especially to
about the history of their object of study, but juxtaposing cinema and
Freud's account of the four processes of distortion at work in dreams3
history as distinct, though related, fields of enquiry obscures the fact that
The information disclosed by such an approach can provide useful
cultural forms emerge from within history. The question is thus less
clues to the way a film functions as a text-in-history, bearing the marks
about how a film's relation to history should be understood, than the
of the geo-temporal location, of the conditions of its production and/
reading and understanding of films as technologically and industrially
or circulation, and of the institutions that regulated both. But h sa pproach
bundled discursive constellations animated by the very substances and
has also tended to put more emphasis on what is not in the film, rather
rhythms that we refer to as history. Films are primary sources every bit
than on assessing what is. For instance, in his analysis of Lev Kuleshov's
as much as statesmen's diaries, minutes of governmental meetings, or
Po zakonu/Dura Lex/By the Law (19 26), Ferro maintained that 'the historical
the objects and detritus that can be found on the sites of ruined cities.
and social reading' of this and other films enabled historians 'to reach
Just as historians have to pay serious attention to the specificities of the
invisible zones in the past of societies--to reveal self-censorship or lapses
media in which source material is encountered, so the specificities of
(which remain in the unconscious of participants and witnesses) at work
cinematic discourses considered by film theorists are not separate from,
within a society (1977: 20). Along the same Lines, Sorlin argued that cinema
but are an integral part of historiography.
When films have been examined as primary sources, attention has underscores a way of looking; it allows the distinguishing of the visible from the
tended to focus on two particular aspects of the indexical dimension of invisible and thus the ideological limits of perception in a certain age. [Ulnder
films.' The most widely practised approach has been to examine what the cover of an analogy with the sensible world, which often allows it to pass as
the films' stories have to say about events or periods already defined and a faithful witness, cinema creates a fictional universe by reverting to comparison,
labelled by historians. Plots, dialogues, and their settings are scrutinized matching, development,r epetition, ellipsis (1977: 242; English translation from
to identify historically pertinent information in what film scholars call Casetti 1999).
the pro-filmic event, that is to say, in the 'reality' recorded by the camera
Psychoanalysis can have a simcant role to play if we are to understand
and the microphone. Although documentaries and newsreels are the
how thoughts and intuitions are transformed as they are made to migrate
types of cinema privileged by this approach, it is generally conceded
from one level of consciousness to another, or from one medium into
that documentary aspects may also be discerned in fiction films. For
another. But, as Freud once said, there are times when a cigar is just a
instance, in the 1950s some French critics2r egarded feature films as quasi-
cigar. Notions of condensation, displacement, or secondary elaboration
documentaries about actors: a film starring Ava Gardner was seen as,
are to be kept in mind as a useful way of tracking when the image of a
among other things, a film about the actress Ava Gardner. There are
cigar is not just a cigar, that is to say when it stands in as a symbol of some
merits to this proto-modernist way of reading films as being also about
other preoccupation. However, it is equally important to be able to tell
the materials with which they are made, but, in practice, because of the
when a cigar is just that, what brand it is, what economic circuits must
reductive understanding of a film's 'materials', this remains a rather
be operating for that cigar to get to that smoker in that film at that place
limited approach to cinema as history.
and time, and why someone such as that smoker may want to purchase
A second, more sophisticated, way of dealing with cinema as history
and smoke it. By attaching importance exclusively to a film's distortions,
has been to examine a film as a historical account marked by emphases
that is to the relations between the visible and the invisible (or repressed),
and omissions that are due to state- or self-censorship, lack of money, or
the approach pioneered by Ferro and Sorlin overlooks many of the
psychic repression. This approach, pioneered by Marc Ferro 1988 [I9771
xvi Introduction Introduction xvii
complexities that the visible (and the audible) itself involves: its direct
exclusively on films (at the expense of the cinema's technological,
and immedlate (or unmediated) implications, rather than its more or
economic, and social dlmensions), for having relied on inadequate research
less hdden associations.
tools (such as personal memories of stars or of the researcher) and
Questions about the relationship between films and history and the
analytical categories (such as notions of 'schools', 'movements', or 'periods'),
reading of films as historical documents imply that a film is inserted
and for having adopted a linear model of historical 'development', when,
into a social context and that its functioning as a text, its capacity to produce
in reality, cultural-historical change follows far more contradictory
meaning, is informed and limited by that context. The story of the study
patterns. One factor in this resurgence of interest in questions of film
of cinema has been marked by many attempts at grappling with the
and of hstory was growing awareness of the problems of 'doing history'
question of how material socio-economic arrangements shape cultural
in general. As historians began to regard cinema as a historical source,
production and, through culture, modes of thmking. Conceptualizations
film scholars began to open their object of study to political, economic,
of that interaction have informed, for instance, debates on notions of
and social history (Casetti 1999: 289-91). In this context, as Kracauer's
national cinema, that is to say of a cinema's connectedness with the
~ o rbkec ame the object of renewed interest, the historiographic model
historical constellation that generates it and which, by addressing that
pioneered by Jacobs and Kalbus came to be regarded as unproductive
constellation cinematically, cinema in turn helps to shape. As Siegfried
because, with its evolutionary, historicist underpinning, it forestalled
Kracauer argued in 1946: 'Through an analysis of the German films,
the possibility of understanding how specific economic arrangements
deep psychological dlspositions predominant in Germany from 1918 to
may shape cultural issues.
1933 can be exposed4spositions whch influenced the course of events
In Europe, the study of cinema acquired special status in the
during that time and which will have to be reckoned with in the post-
aftermath of 1968, when, engagingdlrectly with the practices and politics
Hitler era' (1974: v).
of cultural activists, intellectuals used cinema as a platform to find better
Setting out to demonstrate that there was more to cinema than a
ways than were available in the study of literature for understanding
machine bound to new production, models, markets, professions, and
the functioning of industrial cultural practices as processes that help to
economic values, Kracauer produced an account that successfully fused
sustain or to disrupt the given economic dynamics governing social
the industrial and national dimensions of cinema, better to understand
relations. The disciplinary split that followed those debates on cinema
how German films' cinematic characteristics sustained 'chspositions'
led to the opening of the first film studies departments (as separate
enacted in history. Over the years, however, it was the historiographic
from literary studies) in universities. At the time in which 1 write, the
model pioneered by, among others, Lewis Jacobs, in his The Rise of the opposite movement is taking place: medla studies, in which film is firmly
American Film: A Critical History (1939), and Oskar Kalbus, in Vom Werdm
suborhated to television, electronic media, andjournalism, has emerged
Deutscher Filmkunst (1936), that became the norm. Jacobs's book, in
and achieved institutional recognition as a ground for the formation of
particular, has come to be regarded as a template for the writing of national a reserve army of labour for a limited range of (mostly) national cultural
film histories. Divided into six parts, entitled 'Fade In', 'Foundations',
industries.T he smdy of cinema, on the other hand, is increasingly confined
'Development', 'Transition', 'Intensification', and 'Maturity', Jacobs's
to language and literature departments, where it is once again brought
book chronicled both the cultural and the industrial dimensions of
into line with what used to be called the 'literary sciences', that is to say
cinema by relying on a linear notion of history that understood both
into the realm of the 'high arts' and aesthetics. Within this disciplinary
cinema and the nation to be the organic result of an evolutionary-
reshuffling,t he understanding of cinema and of other media as functions
indeed a maturational-trajectory.
of the public sphere is made seemingly irrelevant. Indeed, film students
While debates about film history date back to the 1920s, interest in
are ever more insistently being urged to devote attention to the marketing
the relationship between films and history underwent a significant
of films, while research on cinema is fine-tuned more and more closely to
resurgence in the 1970s and 1980s. To begin with, scholars began to
the study of 'consumption habits'. In thls context, film authors or directors
distance themselves from traditional approaches to the hstory of cinema
are being 'studied' as if the concept of auteur had never been unpacked
such as Jacobs's. This historiography was criticized for having focused
from the humanist underpinnings that Cahiers du Cinema originally gave
xviii Introduction lntroduction xix
to it, while national cinemas are 'learned' by way of lists of exemplary somethng 'halfway between a textbook of aesthetics and a bookseller's
directors and their most 'representative' films or, worse, their box-office catalogue' (1999a: 459). Four years later, he completed what he later
hits. What such canons represent, however, is rarely asked. Vague notions described as an attempt to formulate a theory of cultural production
of context are invoked, but the conceptualization of either that context that would be 'completely useless for the purposes of fascism'.
or of the films' relation to it is postponed ad infinitum. National histories ~ ~mocre mhodest ly, but equally urgently, this book re-proposes a
tend to be presented like series of bookmarks arranged one after the line of hstoriographc inquiry that seeks to open up the connections
other, linear trajectories from birth into maturity to whch films are made between the ways in which a film is made and circulated within a given
to fit, retrospectively, as the natural and necessary mirrors ('reflections') socio-economic juncture, and the film's strategies of address (film as
of their time. The biggerthe box-ofice earnings, the more the film reflects discourse) as functions of that constellation. By way of an examination of
the Zeitgeist, conceived as 'what people want'. the action cinema made in Bombay, I try to demonstrate the productivity
This way of proceeding blocks the understanding of the relation ofa framework that may enable US better to analyse how specific interests,
between a film's strategies of narration and the socio-economic context more or less consciously by hstorical agents (whether individuals
that shaped, and which was in turn shaped by, the film because it fails to or as social categories) work themselves into film texts that help shape
reflect, directly and critically, on the hstorian's operation-the time in our future through the filters and institutions of cultural production.
which she speaks, the interests that direct hislher reading of the films, A cinema, perhaps even more directly than other industries, constitutes
and the tools used for analysis. A framework is assumed for our reading its audiences while constituting itself as an industry (Hozic 2001: xv).
of the films that prompts us to suppose that similar formal devices had Of the few analytical tools available within film theory, the concept of
the same narrative function 'then' as they have 'now'. Fundamental genre is the most open to industrial-commercial considerations, and, to
differences are overlooked in the operation of cultural forms as they are that extent, dlscussions of individual film genres can be, and often are,
mobilized 'here' and 'elsewhere'. At worst, a historiographic-analytical the most exposed to the kind of instrumentalization sketched above.
model patterned on the uniquely specific development of the most At worst, dlscussions about particular bundles of films are caught in a
powerful film industry today, located mainly in Los Angeles, is projected contradictory tension between, on the one hand, genre as an empirically
onto films that are produced and which circulate under differently given, hstorically specific set of narrative traits and, on the other, genre
specific cultural-historical contingencies. In this way, the coalition of as an abstract, theoretical category. To put it another way, to identify
interests sustaining that dominant, North American industrial-financial a film as belonging to a particular genre, the critic has to know what
constellation is allowed to dictate the terms by which we relate to films the features of that genre are, but, equally, the critic only knows those
that, while also made in the context of globally incubating (American- features by reference to films identified as constituting the genre (Tudor
controlled) capital, are differently positioned within its expanding 1974: 135). Failing to resolve this conundrum, critics tend to define a
operation, sometimes also critically so. Past cultural series are reduced genre retrospectively: having identified a set of narrative ingredients or
to fetishes, obsolete clusters of commodities seemingly immaterial to sales points in films that are marketed under a label dictated by some
the understanding of the becoming of the present that we inhabit. Their sectors of the film industry, the critic undertakes a search for similar
study is instrumentalized, made conducive to the reproduction of the hgredlents in other (older or newer) films--only finally to reproduce
very industrial-cultural forces whose operation we originally intended in the definition of the genre the marketing strategy that the industry
to historicize. developed to promote a particular group of films at a particular time.
Like the many histories of national cinemas that followed his book, There is a difference between talking about a film and talking about
Jacobs inherited his linear conceptualizations of history and of cultural the ways in whch the film is sold. Much writing on individual genres
series from the type of literary historiography that Walter Benjamin had tries to find coherence in the marketing categories by which bundles of
attacked only a few years before in hs' Literary History and the Study of films are sold and, ultimately, projects onto the films those marketing
Literature'. In 193 1,w hen he first published that essay, Benjamin described categories. But genre history can provide the conceptual space where
contemporary literary history as 'a kind of applied taxonomy of taste', questions can be asked about the ways in which a cinema constitutes its
xx lntroduction lntroduction xxi
audiences or subjects and, through them, its conditions of existence as
[genres]i ntervene between the instances of the process of subject regulation:
an industry. As Christine Gledhill has written, 'in this space issues of
hato f mainstream narrative and that of the individual text. Genres [elstablish
texts and aesthetics--the traditional concern of film theory-intersect
a regulation of the variety of mainstream narrative across a series of individual
with those of industry and institution, history and society, culture and texts, organising and systematising the difference that each text represents, filling
audiences-the central concerns of political economy, sociology and inhe g ap between text and system. [Glenres function to move the subject from
cultural studies' (2000: 221). In and of themselves, marketing strategies, text to text and from text to narrative system, binding instances together into a
of which genre is one, do speak of an economic fantasy, a preferred or constant coherence, the coherence of the cinematic institution. (1980: 49)
desired horizon. A film also speaks of the specific economic constellation
While Neale's seminal conceptualization of genre had the merit of
of which it is a part. It is worth avoiding the practice of projecting
finally opening up for film theory the possibility of tracing connections
markering categories onto f h sd irectly and, in so doing, reducing a film
between empirical genres and the socio-economic pressures that lend
to a sales strategy while instructing spectators to read the film as 'just
bundles of films their shared traits, he stopped short of specifying the
that'. Instead, this book examines action cinema as a structural category
nature of the regulation imposed, presenting instead generic regulation
marking the site where specific social-economic factors generate cultural
as one more instance of narrative regulation in general, and plugging
objects configured in particular ways and featuring determinate (and
the gap with vague references to 'the cinematic institution'. But a cinema,
determined) modes of address. It is in such configurations that this book
whether as an industry or as a series of texts, is always situated in a hstorical
seeks to find the reasons why some filmmakers in certain sectors of the
context. Marketing is one of many important dimensions of that context
industry were moved to prioritize one selected narrative ingredient
and of the institution of cinema, but it is not always a determining one.
(action), as well as for the diverse ways this ingredient was mobilized at
What I am concerned about here are not just the processes of industrial
different times in India.
transformation that led Indian filmmakers to make and market films
Genres are systems for the regulation and circulation of meaning. They
on the basis of the action ingredient. Rather, I am interested in the manner
have a public, hstorically specific existence. The ancient Greeks devised -
in which one may, as it were, reverse-engineer the historical dynamics
theoretical systems whereby fictional works were divided into genres
underpinning the ways in which action became (or not) a defining
on the basis of mode of delivery: the lyric was a workin which only the
ingredient of cinema in India at any given time. In this way, the study of
author or narrator spoke; in drama only the characters spoke; while in
cinema may help us to illuminate the nature of the relationship between
the epic both narrator and characters could speak (Ducrot and Todorov
economic and cultural priorities at specific historical junctures. How
1972: 198).A hierarchy obtained within tlus system and within the genres
does a cinema produce the conditions for its own existence and growth?
themselves. This is to say, genres are first and foremost modes of address
What can the changes in a cinema's economic and narrative structures
or delivery designed to regulate the circulation of meaning on the basis of
tell us about the conditions for the sustenance of other economic sectors,
given (hierarchical) social relations. Existing social relations determine
and about changes in those conditions? If one dimension of hegemony
who speaks to whom, about what, and in whlch way. Steve Neale was among
is the ability to organize fantasies, how do films produce new social spaces
the first scholars to discuss film genres as processes of systematization.
and, over a period of time, participate in the causation of hstorical change?
He argued that, on the one hand, genres are crucial to the film industry
If, at one level, the problem lies with the ways in which the notion
because 'they provide, simultaneously,m aximum regularity and economy
of film genre has been theorized and used in film studies, at a more
in the utilisation of plant and personnel, and the minimum degree of
fundamental level, it is the models of history and of culture that have
difference necessary for each individual product' to be sold (Neale 1980:
tended to be deployed for the study of film genres (as also of film authors,
51-3). On the other hand, film texts consist of a weaving together of a
national cinemas, and so forth) that have left important dimensions of
multitude of discursive currents, each with their own semantic fields and
cinema out of sight. In 'Theses on the Philosophy of History' Walter
implied subject positions. According to Neale,
Benjamin famously imagined history as an angel with his face turned