INDIA AT THE PICTURES
By BHA BANI BHATTACHARYA
THE imported foreign film in all its glitter does not let the average Indian audience readily enter the shells of new lives, the lives of the screen figures. Seldom are they gripped by the drama so fervently that, forgetting themselves, they jostle into the romantic new world built by word and picture. Language is a bar. English as spoken by foreigners is hard enough to understand. English as spoken from the screen is far harder ; many do not understand it at all. The illusion of reality is more often produced on impressionable minds by the Indian picture, however backward in technique, artistically ineffectual, and entertaining on a low level.
I sit in a cinema house with my mind half fixed on the screen, the other half intent on a neighbour squatting on the narrow width of a chair. I note in the semi-dark the man's fat round face, his sagging chin and cropped hair shiny with coconut oil, his none too tidy dhoti so short that it leaves some length of his legs bare. A bania, I place him, a member of the trading caste. Rich but miserly. Determined to squeeze out every ounce of comfort and amusement from his nine-anna ticket. His keen eyes do not miss a single shot. His ears, brownly protuberant, absorb every note of the music. He heaves a sigh when he sees the celluloid heroine being kid- napped by the villain, but is enlivened by the sight of the hero riding to the rescue and galloping like fury. " Go on— faster, faster, faster ! " he shouts (other eager voices mingle with his), and waves his plump hands and jerks his bulky body up and down as though he is astraddle on a galloping charger. The hero reaches the scene of trouble just in time to rescue a tearful, tortured beauty. The bania shakes with joy, mutters " All's well that ends well," and slowly sinks into the pleasurable languor that invades the body after an emotional tension.
But I still continue to watch my neighbour, and it is not long before my vigilance is rewarded. The celluloid heroine is singing, to vent her joy at escape. When she stops, the bania shouts : " Encore, encore ! " but the picture, which can only speak and not hear, rolls on ; the man realises his mistake and laughs good-naturedly. The heroine however starts singing again ; smiling gaily and lilting delicious words she fixes bold, bright, ravishing eyes on the bania himself (or so it seems to him). Quickly the man sits up, twirls his drooping moustache and turns proudly to another one of his caste squatting by his side : " Did you see that ?" Half an hour later, when a pretty dancer with a little gold button on her left nostril breaks into a whirlwind of rhythm and then stops, her bosom heaving, the forgetful bania shouts again : " Shabash ! Shabash ! "
Developing at the expense of the theatre, the " home-made " film has become India's main entertainment fare. The cinema habit has rooted. The taste for new forms of enter- tainment like that for smokes and drinks and caviare is an acquired taste. Once it is acquired, it dings with tenacity and grows like thirst. That is good for the trade. The masses of India's cinema-goers were once the zealous patrons of the snake-charmer and the monkey-man. But their recreative needs now move on a higher plane. Hence there are fewer Make-charmers. And the monkey-man's four-footed com- panion is a sorry creature, thin as a scarecrow under his coat of grey, screechingly perforining feats on street corners, unnoticed .by all but a few ragged children The Indian screen-show breathes painfully under the dead hand of tradition, from which the stage also has suffered. It is the tradition of exalting a mist-laden past, mythological rather than historical, and the idealisation of values which might once have inspired nobleness, but are today of no consequence. The old scale that used to measure womanly virtues, for example, has been resciied from the dust-bin of Time and enthusiastically exhibited. This conservatism on the screen seems to have arisen out of two sources.. First, it is a bait for orthodox Hindus, whose support is not only good for the box-office, but is designed to invest the industry with an asset it has lacked, respectability. Secondly, this is a picturesque spray flung by the tide of Nationalism, which has sought in one way or the other to paint India's dim past in colours of gold. It is nice to see a pictorial version of Glory. Even if Glory becomes translated into puritanism and austerity (a quality that India adores), what does it matter ?
Then there is the tendency to over-simplification. The curves of human conduct are resolved into straight lines. The villain of the piece is nothing but a villain. The good man is pure as snow. As if this travesty of human nature was not enough, sin is always punished in the end. The plums of happiness are in the long run certain to be delivered over to the man of virtue. Never does the imp of destiny play his wicked pranks It is not life as we know it, dusty, illogical, crossed by undeserved tragedy. It is Utopia.
The dullest spot on the Indian film, however, is created by the preponderance of songs. The actors and actresses break into song at the slightest provocation. What if these are out of place ? It is once again the tradition of the stage on which, irrespective of the play's requirements, there is likely to be some dance and songs in between the scenes. Seldom do these songs serve an aesthetic purpose. They do not help the story on, or form a background to action, or even rouse emotion. They provide just musical inter- ludes. Often they destroy the dramatic value of a situation and even produce flippancy and give an impression of vocal exhibitionism, but what does that matter ? The audience loves to hear them. It is a standing joke that villains in Indian films start singing when about to commit murder. They sing with zest, daggers uplifted, while the victims show every sign of enjoyment.
Yet, with all its glaring defects the Indian film is of much interest as a record of new social thought. Once in a while it touches real life with sympathy and intelligence (one or two enlightened directors are striving for self-expression in spite of the commercial ties), and reflects the struggle against time-honoured evils such as caste, the Hindu woman's inferior status, untouchability. This new tendency, still weak but unmistakable, gives the Indian film an importance which it does not otherwise deserve. The signs tell that the film will increasingly level its spears against social evils. Of all art forms it is the best fitted to carry out this purpose by virtue of its wide range, its communicating force, and its power of attacking the emotions.
The cross-currents that are fast swirling over the face of the Indian cinema—conservatism eddied up by impact with anti-orthodoxy, old values at grips with new--mntint but sink a deep impression into the country's national life. The social history that is in the making will derive a good many pages of print from the circumstance that India goes to the pictures.
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