5 QUESTIONS
BILLBOARD
BOX OFFICE
MAKING WAVES
MEMORIES
MOVIES CHAT
QUOTE MARTIAL
REVIEWS
ROUGH CUTS
SHORT TAKES
SOUTHERN SPICE
THE LIST
WISH THE STARS
ARCHIVES

As long as the songs keep us tapping our feet, we'll all be watching

Ashok Banker on 100 years of Bollywood

Sau saal pehle...

When Bombay Talkies raised the monthly salary of star Ashok Kumar (he dropped the Ganguly to blend in with the North Indian mainstream in Bombay) from a few hundreds to over a thousand rupees a month, it caused an uproar. Imagine Shah Rukh Khan, today's No 1 box office star, asking and getting an alleged Rs 5 crore of rupees for a single film!

But while the number of zeroes may have changed, other things have not. Bollywood's wild parties, and love for winning, womanising and boozing, were a way of life even back then. The male stars were known for sowing their wild oats, but the female stars didn't exactly rein in their libidos either. It's only recently that those hedonistic days have fallen out of fashion. Today's young, college-educated, mostly married stars are more aroused by the sight of a shapely cheque than a shapely body!

Unlike European or even pan-Asian cinema, where an urge to experiment with the exotic, bizarre and even surreal elements marked the rise of the medium, Hindi cinema's first 50-odd years was marked by understatement and relative plainness. The KISS formula -- 'Keep It Simple, Stupid' -- that would someday provide the benchmark of all Bollywood product, was always the norm.

The desire to appeal to a mass audience was always the driving force: Raj Kapoor built his entire success on his portrayal of the Indian simpleton awed by the sophistication of urban life, a dilemma that all rural migrants could identify with. Even as far away as the USSR, audiences applauded the antics of the deliberately dumb 'Raju,' finding in his bewilderment a reflection of their own confusion in those post-World War II years.

This rural simplicity lingered for decades, until urbanisation changed the character of Hindi film audiences. Today, of course, Hindi films like Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge take you back to a village only to show you how far we've come from our roots. In fact, to the largely Punjabi-dominated Bollywood, these themes reflect their own community's growth and changes. But with most of the country's population migrating to urban centres, the message struck a national chord.

Two interesting historical developments changed the course of Bollywood dramatically. The first was the Wall Street Crash of 1929, followed by the Great Depression in America. At the time of the stock crash, a number of Hollywood studios were in the process of entering India in a very big way. Far superior in technology, expertise, talent and financial means, there's no doubt that they would have dominated Indian film-making completely.

This was well before our own industry was robust or prolific enough to stand its own ground. Bollywood as we know it today might never have risen to its present heights. Instead of names like Chopra, Kapoor, Khan, we might have been singing the praises of Lucas, Spielberg, Cruise! Thankfully, the great Crash derailed those ambitions. It took the Studios 70 years to gird up their lions for another assault. But this time, our local dadas are well-oiled and ready to face them in the akhaada.

In fact, today, we're the ones who are conquering the world. Bollywood has come a long way since Amar Jyoti was screened in Venice in 1936. In those days, Hindi films (and Indian films in general) were allowed to be screened only at private venues to select audiences. No Western (read White-skinned) distributor would touch an Indian film.

The whopping success of Pather Panchali's record-making 226-day continuous run at the Fifth Street Playhouse in New York (1958-59) did make the West sit up, but the resistance to the 'brown bunch' would continue for another half century. It was only after sizeable numbers of Indian and sub-continental migrants took up residence in the US, UK, Europe and the Middle-East that things really changed.

Today, of course, Hindi films find not only audiences, but major financial returns in their foreign runs. One of the reasons for the subjects and success of Bollywood in the '90s is certainly the NRI audience. To us, all those endless marriages and dancing in corn fields might seem old hat. To our bhadralok abroad, it's three-handkerchief-nostalgia! It doesn't matter whether films like Hum Aapke Hain Koun reflect Indian reality or not -- this is the way the urban audiences here and the NRIs abroad would like it presented.

The other major change in Bollywood audiences in this century has been age. Because the demographics of India itself have changed so dramatically. Our population growth rate in this century has been unmatched by any other country, including China. As the century and millennium draw to a close, we have the dubious distinction of being perhaps the youngest population in the world. The largest number of people under the age of 15 reside in apna desh. Naturally, this youthful group forms the most avid film audience.

The result of this 'younging down' (to rhyme with 'dumbing down!') of audiences is evident. While the biggest Hindi films once aspired to portray great moments in Indian history (Alam Ara, Kismet, Mughal-e-Azam, Mother India), today's films portray great moments in adolescent history (Dil To Pagal Hai, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai). Gone are the aspirations of presenting larger-than-life characters and sweeping, epic tales of adventure, romance and heroism. It's enough today to present glossier-than-life characters, and tales that sweep the box office!

Money is, of course, the great-leveller. The only link between Bollywood then and now. Not only in the earnings but in the investments too. While India's first talkie, Alam Ara, was made at a cost of Rs 40,000, the hottest Y2K release, Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, was apparently made at a mind-wrenching Rs 22 crore.

The difference is not in production costs. Those have remained much the same, accounting for inflation and obvious technical developments, of course. It's the talent that's expensive. The pay-out for the total talent of a film -- stars, supporting veterans, director, producer, music director, choreographer etc -- accounts for more than half the budget now. Compare that with the paltry thousands that the cast of earlier blockbusters received, and you’ll agree that greed is truly the legitimate heir of Mother India!

But those figures can easily be under-written by the new rights-purchasers -- television, including terrestrial, satellite and cable, video, VCD, DVD, music rights, foreign rights and even Webcast rights forthcoming. For instance, Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani is said to have recovered its investment and turned the producers a neat profit on the day it was launched!

The number of films has also dropped substantially as the figures show. Far from being the world's largest film industry, Bollywood is no longer even India's most prolific producer. It ranks third today behind Tamil and Telugu features. The rising cost of stars and production, the virtual crash of the movie market in the late '80s and early '90s, and the changing complexion of audience expectations has made Hindi films a business only for the strong at heart -- and wallet.

Film financiers like Bharatbhai Shah, music company heads like the Tauranis of Tips, satellite television channel heads like Subhash Chandra of Zee are the new czars of the field, exercising powerful control over the content and course of projects.

In the process, what seems to have been lost is the relationship between commerce and social relevance. Today's Bollywood is a mishmash of Western trends (music, fashion, appearances) and Indian teenage concerns (romance, money and fun). As directors grow younger -- with Karan Johar, Sooraj Barjatya and Aditya Chopra, the formidable threesome, all 20 or 30-somethings -- even veteran directors like Ghai admit that they're aiming at the urban teenage viewer. That's where the numbers are, after all, with more than 35 per cent of our population under 15, and the money.

In the process, a 100-year old industry has regressed to the mental and emotional level of a 13-year-old. But as long as the popcorn keeps flowing and the songs keep us tapping our feet, we'll all be watching.

More Stars than there are in Heaven