Brief History of Indian Cinema

In 1896, India was first exposed to motion pictures when the Lumiere Brothers'
Chinematographe showed six soundless short films on July 7 in Bombay. By 1899,
Harishchandra Bhatvadekar shot two short films, which were exhibited with Edison’s
projecting kinetoscope. Throughout the first two decades, the trend continued with
filmmakers such as Hiralal Sen and F. B. Thanawalla, J. F. Madan and Abdullah
Esoofally, and others. Dada Sahib Phalke produced India's first indigenous silent film,
Raja Harishchandra, in May of 1913, which enabled the film industry to truly arise. By
1920, the Indian Cinema was becoming part of society (“History of Indian Cinema”).
The Representation of Women on Screen
In traditional Indian Society, there are certain prescribed roles which regulate the conduct
of women. For example, the conception of the woman as Sita is prevalent in Indian
society and film. Sita is a character in the Ramayana, one of the great epics, which
embodies values and the differences between right and wrong. She is the wife of Rama,
who is representative of many virtues including honor, courage, and loyalty. Much of
Indian popular cinema is influenced by the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, another epic,
which involves the hero Lord Krishna. Sita is the ideal woman and wife that sees her
husband as an idol. Indian popular cinema represents this role of the ideal wife's
admiration and unfaltering respect.
Also, according to the Manusmriti, an ancient classical work dealing with laws, ethics,
and morality, a woman should be subject to her father in childhood, in youth to her
husband, and when her husband is dead, to her children. Within the guidelines of the
Manusmriti, women do not enjoy independence. Women are supposed to adhere to the
role of a happy figure who takes care of the household. They are supposed to be obedient
to their husbands and go to every length to honor them even after death.
Although Indian cinema continues to change and evolve, reflecting new trends in gender
relations, at least in very traditional Indian cinema women who live by these traditional
norms are portrayed as happy and ethical. Women who go against these rules of narrative
and culture in film are punished and seen as immoral.

Four Roles of Women

These roles and constructions of women are reflected in a great deal of popular Indian
Cinema. Four important roles to consider include the ideal wife, ideal mother, the vamp,
and the courtesan

(Dissanayake 77). The Ideal Wife

This character is represented by sexual purity and fidelity. She must be consistent with
traditional Indian roles by honoring the family and depending on the husband. She is
closely connected to the domestic domain.

• The Ideal Mother

Indian reference to the mother involves religious suggestion. The country is connected
with the mother goddess, Shakti, who represents great strength. The role of the mother in
Indian film is often seen as a strong force, such as in Mother India (1957).

• The Vamp
The vamp in Indian film is modern and imitates western women. Her behavior can
include smoking, drinking, and dancing. She can also be quick to fall in and out love. She
represents unacceptable behavior and is seen as unwholesome. She is almost always
punished for her behavior.

• The Courtesan
The courtesan is outside the normal realm of Indian womanhood in that she is a type of
prostitute or dancing girl. She embodies sexuality. She is a character who helps with the
physical and emotional needs of men. Often in Indian film, she gives the man comfort
and care, after which, he leaves her to desperately mourn the loss of him.
 Sexuality in Indian Cinema
Many of the roles represented here are similar to that of the roles of women in western
film. For example, the women are seen as objects of desire. This relates to the
representations of romance and the female figure in Indian popular film.
Kissing was unknown in Indian film for a long time. Public displays of affection are
associated with western life. However, there are blatant scenes involving

sexuality. Although more recent films often include scenes of overt sexual relations,
traditionally Indian film has used three techniques to convey this sexuality as categorized
by Richards as tribal dress, dream sequences/wet saris, and behind the bush.

• Tribal Dress
Because many Indian films involve music and dance, Richards explains, "tribal costumes
are used for the exposure of vast expanses of the body, in particular the pelvic region"
(qtd. in Dissanayake 79).

• Dream Sequences/Wet Sari

Dreams offer the ability to express sexual desires and explore forbidden pleasure. Wet
saris are often involved in these dreams and are caused by a downpour in which the
woman's flimsy sari allows for exposure of the female body.

• Behind the Bush

TheIndia has one of the oldest film industries in the world.
Though the first film advertisement in India appeared in the
Times of India on 7 July 1896, inviting people to witness
the Lumiere Brothers' moving pictures, "the wonder of the
world", it was not until early 1913 that an Indian film
received a public screening. Rajah Harischandra was an
extraordinary commercial success: its director, Dadasaheb
Phalke, who is now remembered through a life-time
achievement award bestowed by the film industry in his
name, went on to make a number of other films drawing
upon themes derived from the Indian epics. Phalke could
not find a woman to play the female roles, being turned
down in this endeavor not only by 'respectable' women but
by prostitutes, and had to resort to the expedient of
choosing a young man, A. Salunke, to play the female roles
in his early films. Among the middle classes, that
association of acting with the loss of virtue, female
modesty, and respectability has only recently been put into
question, whatever degree of emulation actresses might
appear to receive from an adoring public.
While a number of other film-makers, working in several
Indian languages, pioneered the growth and development of
Indian cinema, the studio system was beginning to emerge
in the early 1930s. Its most successful initial product was
the film Devdas (1935), whose director, P.C. Barua, also
appeared in the lead; the Hindi re-make of the original
Bengali film, also directed by Barua, was to establish the
legendary career of Kundanlal Saigal. The Tamil version of
this New Theatres release appeared in 1936. "To some
extent", note the authors of Indian Film, "Devdas was a
film of social protest. It carried an implied indictment of
arranged marriage and undoubtedly gave some satisfaction
on this score to those who hate this institution" (p. 81). The
Prabhat Film Company, established by V. G. Damle,
Shantaram, S. Fatehlal, and two other men in 1929, wasalso
achieving its first successes around this time. Damle and
Fatehlal's Sant Tukaram (1936), made in Marathi, was the
first Indian film to gain international recognition, winning
an award at Venice. The social films of V. Shantaram,
more than anything else, paved the way for an entire set of
directors who took it upon themselves to interrogate not
only the institutions of marriage, dowry, and widowhood,
but the grave inequities created by caste and class
distinctions. Some of these problems received perhaps their
most explicit expression in Achhut Kanya ("Untouchable
Girl", 1936), a film directed by Himanshu Rai of Bombay
Talkies. The film portrays the travails of a Harijan girl,
played by Devika Rani, and a Brahmin boy, played by
Ashok Kumar, whose love for each other cannot merely be
consummated but must have a tragic end.
The next significant phase of Hindi cinema is associated
with such figures as Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy, and Guru
Dutt. The son of Prithviraj Kapoor, Raj Kapoor created
some of the most popular and memorable films in Hindi
cinema. Awaara (The Vagabond, 1951), Shri 420 (1955),
and Jagte Raho (1957) were both commercial and critical
successes. Many of his films explore, in a rather benign
way, the class fissures in Indian society. Bimal Roy's Do
Bigha Zamin ("Two Acres of Land", 1954), which shows
the influence of Italian neo-realism, explored the difficult
life of the rural peasantry under the most oppressive
conditions; his film Devdas (1955), with Dilip Kumar
playing the title role in a re-make of Barua's film, was a
testimony to the near impossibility of the fulfillment of
'love' under Indian social conditions, while Sujata (1959)
pointed to the problems posed by marriages arranged by
parents without the consent of their children. Meanwhile,
the Hindi cinema had seen the rise of its first undisputed
genius, Guru Dutt, whose films critiqued the conventions of
society and deplored the conditions which compel artists to
forgo their inspiration. From Barua's Devdas (1935) to
Guru Dutt's Sahib, Bibi aur Gulam (with Guru Dutt and
Meena Kumari),the motif of "doomed love" looms large: to
many critics, a maudlin sentimentality characterizes even
the best of the Hindi cinema before the advent of the new
or alternative Indian cinema in the 1970s.
music and dance in films often gives characters the opportunity to run behind the bushes
quickly. Afterwards the woman wipes off her lips, insinuating what occurred.
Achhut Kanya (Untouchable Girl), with Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar, 1936

It is doubtless under the influence of the Bengali film-

makers Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, and Mrinal Sen,
however, that Indian cinema, and not only in Hindi, also
began to take a somewhat different turn in the 1970s
against the tide of commercial cinema, which was now
characterized by song-and-dance routines, trivial plots, and
family dramas. No Indian director has had a greater
international reputation than Ray, which almost every one
of his films, except in the last years of his life, did a great
deal to consolidate from the time that he produced Pather
Panchali ("Song of the Road", 1955). Ghatak has had more
of a 'cult' following: his oeuvre was quite small (six feature
films), but Ghatak went on to serve as Director of the Film
and Television School at Pune, from where the first
generation of a new breed of Indian film-makers and actors
-- Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, and Om
Puri among the latter -- was to emerge. These film-makers,
such as Shyam Benegal, Ketan Mehta, Govind Nihalani,
and Saeed Mirza, exhibited a different aesthetic and
political sensibility and were inclined to explore the caste
and class contradictions of Indian society, the nature of
oppression suffered by women, the dislocations created by
industrialism and the migration from rural to urban areas,
the problem of landlessness, the impotency of ordinary
democratic and constitutional procedures of redress, and so
on.
Mainstream commercial releases, however, continue to
dominate the market, and not only in India, but wherever
Indian cinema has a large following, whether in much of
the British Caribbean, Fiji, East and South Africa, the U.K.,
United States, Canada, or the Middle East. The popular
Hindi cinema is characterized by significant changes too
numerous to receive more than the slightest mention. The
song-and-dance routine is now more systematized, more
regular in its patterns; the 'other', whether in the shape of
the terrorist or the irredeemable villain, has a more ominous
presence; the nation-state is more obsessive in its demands
on our loyalties and obeisance; the Indian diaspora is a
larger presence in the Indian imagination (witness Dilwale
Dulhaniya Le Jayenge); and so on. These are only some
considerations: anyone wishing to explore the world of
Indian cinema should also reflect on its presence in Indian
spaces, its relation to vernacular art forms and mass art
(such as billboards), and the highly stratified and gendered
(that is, masculinized) space of the Indian cinema-hall.

here is perhaps no phenomenon as complex as

`culture'. In a manner of speaking, culture is
everything in a particular society, and one can as
easily speak of the culture of Hindustani music and
Bengali bhadralok society as one can of the culture of
the working-class, Hindi film-viewers, rickshaw-
pullers, and India's modernizing elites. Indian culture
is no easy composite of varying styles and influences.
In the matter of cuisine, for instance, the North and
the South share little, and these broad categorizations
say little about the distinctions between the peppery
hot food of Andhra and the coastal, largely coconut-
based, cuisine of Kerala. Likewise, in thinking of
architecture, one's mind traverses from the great
temple cities of the South -- Chidambaram,
Rameswaram, Kanchipuram, Madurai, and numerous
others -- to the architectural splendors of the
Vijaynagar empire and the erotic sculptures of
Khajuraho to the grand Mughal architecture of Delhi,
Agra, and Fatehpur Sikri. And what of modest
roadside shrines, the step-wells of Gujarat, or the
havelis of Jaisalmer with their impeccable lattice
work? But culture is not only a matter of music,
dance, art, and cinema, for marriage customs, death
rites, patterns of pilgrimage to holy cities, modes of
raising children, treatment of elders, and innumerable
other aspects of everyday life are stitched into the
meaning of culture.
The Lumiere Brothers in 1896 introduced soundless
movie clips to India which inspired Dadasaheb
Phalke in 1913 to be the first Indian director to
produce a soundless Indian film called Raja
Harishchandra. The film had subtitles in both Hindi
and English. The industry soon took off and the
1920s saw the rise of several film directors trying
their hand at making silent Indian movies. It was in
1931 when the first sound film Alam Ara was
produced and its success inspired directors in South
India and various other parts of India like Bengal to
also start producing films in these regions. Gradually
the rest of India joined in the bollywood race and
films started to be produced with political and social
themes of the era. The name bollywood was inspired
by Hollywood and Bombay(Mumbai)being at the
heart of Indian film production.
In 1932 Bombay hosted the first Indian film festival
and this inspired the Indian directors to produce
better films with directors like Satyajit Ray and
Mrinal Sen introducing Indian films to the world
cinematic audiences. Gradually colour films were
produced and the director K.Asif directed the classic
film Mughal-E-Azam which was based on the life of
the great Mughal Emperor Akbar and his son Salim
(Jehangir). Film actors like Raj Kapoor, Dalip
Kumar, Manoj Kumar and actresses like Nargis,
Vyjantimala and Saira Banu became household
names in the 1960s. Not only the film actors but the
playback singers who sang the songs for these films
like Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi became
popular all around the world.
Events in Indian history were reflected in Bollywood
films and the Independence of India from Britain and
the resulting partition of India and Pakistan and its
effects were shown in patriotic films like Shaheed
which was directed by Ramesh Sehgal. Subjects of
poverty of the rural Indians and the power of family
values was the subject of the film 'Mother India'
starring the actress Nargis. This film made by
Mehmoob Khan was an outright success and broke
all box office records in India. The film industry was
the ideal media not only to entertain but to educate
the masses about all sorts of issues that affected India
and its people.
The 1980s brought in films with lots of violence and
Amitabh Bachan became the 'angry young man'
fighting injustices against corrupt leaders and
politicians. Films were churned out in large numbers
with over 800 films being produced in this period.
Gradually themes changed and family issues and
social values

were brought back again into the Indian films. Films

showing the lives of Indians living abroad and how
they coped in Western societies were brougt into the
Bollywood scene. Many people recognised such
issues and the Bollywood industry gained even more
popularity in the US and Britain with Shahrukh Khan
acquiring the title of King Khan' with his ever
increasing popularity.
Recent Indian film directors like Deepa Mehta have
approached subjects which are considered taboo like
female sexuality, racism and class divisions in India
with films like Fire, Water and Earth. It has inspired
Indians living in Western countries to direct films
with a different take on life and the result has been
Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding and Gurinder Chada's
Bride and Prejudice and Bend it like Beckam.
Today the Bollywood film industry is the largest film
industry in the world. In June 2007 Yorkshire hosted
the International Indian Film Academy Awards
(Bollywood Oscars) an event watched by 500 million
people in 110 countries around th globe. The latest
Indian films have become a lot slicker and are
technically better than their previous counterparts.
The film 'Krish' and the remake of 'Don' have used
this technology very effectively and gradually
Bollywood is improving itself to be able to compete
on the world stage. Story lines could be improved a
lot more and unnecessary drama reduced to make the
films appear credible but meanwhile the songs, the
elaborate costumes and sets, the dances, the emotions
and drama give Bollywood the entertainment value
that make its audiences come back for more and
more.
The first movie was released in India around 103 years ago, i.e. on 7th July 1897
at Watson Hotel, Mumbai. This film was produced by Leiumour Bros., it had only
6 scenes! All it had was an arrival of a train, a sea bath, demolition of a building,
workers leaving the mill and ladies and soldiers on wheels. It was a silent movie
for 10 minutes.
The first Indian to produce a film was H.S. Bhatwdekar. All he had with him was a
projector, but he didn't have a camera, so he got one from London and shot only
2 scenes of 3 minutes each, which were titled Do Pahalwanon Ki Kushti and
Bandar Ko Nachata Hua Madaari. It was released in December 1889, more than
a century ago!
On the first day of the last century, i.e. on 1st January 1900, another silent movie
was released at Novelty Cinema, Mumbai. It had Faatima, an Indian Dancer, a
Britisher, Mr. Taivello, had imported some raw material of film reels from U.K.
and by adding and editing them he managed to convert these pieces into a short
film.
The first ever mythological film produced in India was Pundalik, based on the
actual life of a saint from Maharashtra. Mr. N.G. Chitre, of Bombay & a
cinematographer Mr. Stevenson had jointly produced this film, which was
released on 18th May 1912 at Coronation Theatre, Sandhurst Road.
The trend of silent era continued from 1897 to 1930 and during this period of 34
years, around 1200 films were released, of which very few films print are
available now. It's a shame that even Govt. Departments like National Archives
or Film and Television Institute don't posses these silent films.
The second talkie film released in India was Shirin Farhaad, on 30th May 1931. It
was produced by Madan Theatres, Calcutta and directed by its owner Mr. J.J.
Madan. It had 18 songs. Indra Sabha which was released in 1932 had as much
as 69 songs in it. Can you believe it! It was produced by Madan Theatre, Calcutta
and directed by J.J. Madan. The film starred Master Nissar, Jahan Aara,
Kazzam, Miss Silvasia and others.
At the beginning of the 4th decade, the film viewers were bestowed with a
surprising gift, the silent era had ended, films now had sound, so we could hear
actors and actresses talking. The first film, which had both these qualities, was
Alam Ara, produced by Imperial Movie tone, Bombay. The film was released on
14th March 1931 at Majestic Cinema, Girgaon, Bombay. The film starred
Prithviraj Kapoor (father of late Raj Kapoor), Zubeida, Master Vithal, Zillo and
Wazir Mohd. Khan. The film had 7 songs and the music director was Firozeshah
M. Mistri.
The dialogues for the first Hindustani film was written by Joseph David. The first
ever color film made in India was Kissan Kanhaiya produced by Imperial Film Co.
This film was released in 1937. Moti B. Gidwani directed it, and its music was
composed by Ram Gopal Pandey. The film had 10 songs, which were released
by Gramophone Records.
The first ever female role depicted by a male artiste was played by Salunke for
the film Raja Harishchandra released in 1913. D.D. Dhabke played the title role.

The longest kissing scene till date has been picturised for the film Karma
(released in 1926), a silent film. It was between Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani
for about 4 minutes on the screen, almost 4 times lengthier than the kissing
scene of Dayavaan (released in 1989) between Vinod Khanna and Madhuri Dixit