Glamour hamesha

Aarti answers Akshaye8217;s whine with a simple affirmative nod and the young hunk saunters grudgingly to his air-conditioned van and puts razor to stubble. An hour later he emerges clean shaven, radiating a freshness and sex appeal that makes his teeny-bopper fans go weak at the knees and earns him and his producers the megabucks. As the cameras roll and the star gives a perfect take, Aarti looks pleased. She knows that her firm stand has ensured that this particular scene will help project Akshaye in a glamorouslight.

Glamour! The very word conjures up a cinematic emotion that is ethereal and illusory. It is what gives the mundane gelatinous celluloid film the magical element that week after week draws millions of people, week after week, into the darkened halls of the country8217;s dilapidated theatres.

Glamour came into Indian cinema in the closing years of the silent film era. Like most things with our indigenous cinema, this element too, came via Hollywood. In Hollywood, glamour emerged with the sophistication of the cinematic language. Film-makers like D W Griffith and Cecil B DeMille improved on the rudimentary early skills of shot taking and lighting that evolved with the birth of cinema.

In India, this industrialised style of filmmaking came into function when a visionary financier, Seth Dwarkadas Sampat, set up The Kohinoor Film Studios in Bombay. From his stable emerged the great directors and producers of the 8217;30s like Homi Masters, Chandulal Shah, Mohan Bhavnani and Nandlal Jaswant and gave birth tothe style of filmmaking distinctively called Bollywood.He brought pretty stars like Patience Cooper, Sulochana Ruby Mayers, Madhuri and Zubeida into the public fancy by investing in their clothing, their make-up and their public image. He encouraged his directors and cameramen to concentrate on the image as much as the form and in doing so add the value of glamour to his cinematic pieces.

These same directors, and others like Himanshu Rai, Ardeshir Irani and Sorab Modi, took this glamour quotient further when, with the coming of the Talkies, they set up their own studios. These bosses spent thousands of rupees on researching the latest film stock, lighting techniques and make-up products that, when combined, would make their homespun actors into sitarons with a capital S. Yet this was a studied approach.

Glancing through the files at the Wadia Movietone Archives, I have come upon several internal memos that exemplify the attention paid to creating the allure of a star. For instance, in 1941, Modhu Bose,a director of repute from Calcutta, came to Bombay to film a magnum opus in three languages called The Court Dancer. During the initial stages of shooting, Bose shot several scenes of the stars Sadhona Bose and Prithviraj Kapoor in the style he was accustomed to. On viewing the rushes, the Studio chief, J B H Wadia, sent a memo, post haste, to the director.

It read: quot;My dear Modhu8230; I am writing to request you to urgently reshoot the three close-ups of Prithvi and four close-ups of Sadhona in Scene 34. While I salute your handling of the emotions in the scene I am disturbed that scant attention has been paid to the make-up on Sadhona8217;s face8230; It looks blotchy and uneven and does injustice to her perfect cheek-bones. Prithvi8217;s wig also looks a little askew8230; I have asked Burjorji the stylist to work with Sadhona on some tests and also try the new Pan make-up that we have recently acquired. Rustom Masters chief cameraman at the same time has returned from Hollywood a week ago and has undergonetraining in the lighting requirements with this new make-up base. I8217;m sure a little more effort in highlighting our two stars will be appreciated by the audience.quot;

This was an easy task as everyone 8212; from the stars to the technicians and creative experts 8212; were on salaries to the studios and reported for work every day, irrespective of schedule. This allowed for experimentation and changes necessary to ensure that the end result looked a million dollars. The images of Madhubala, Pramilla, Begum Para, Nadira, Meena Kumari, Nargis, Suraiya, Nutan and Shyama will forever be bathed in the soft glow of glamour.

All this changed when the studio system crumbled with the economic crises brought on by World War II and the subsequent rise of the star system8217;. By the mid-60s, films once again became ad hoc productions and shooting schedules were based around the availability of the stars8217; dates. Producers, directors and technicians became subservient to the all-powerful stars, whose glamour value, so assiduouslybuilt up by the erstwhile studios, made them into avaricious and petulant tyrants.

Legendary and pathetic are stories of actors like Dilip Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Shatrughan Sinha, Sanjeev Kumar, Shashi Kapoor, and heroines like Rekha, whose greed for making hay while the sun shone, saw them taking on 30 and 40 films at the same time. Uncaring for their performances or their films8217; cinematic values, as long as the signing amount was prepaid and their palatial homes were air-conditioned. Even the Big B succumbed to this system. This ad hocism led to a decline in the technical quality of the films and one of the first victims of this was the glamour quotient8217;.

Where once, in the 8217;30s, even routine C-grade films had a magical quality about them, in the 8217;70s and 8217;80s, only A-grade films had a certain sophistication. And even these big-budget films were at best patchy in their glamour and structural value. Lighting changes between a close-up and a mid-shot vastly differed. But it seemed that audiences didn8217;tmind or notice. And the poor hapless producers and directors who had the superstars for only a few hours per shift were keen on completing the film one way or another.

Thankfully, with the coming of the much-maligned video boom, many films started flopping, forcing the film industry to go back to the drawing board. Gently eased out were the old stars and brought in were fresh faces. New actors meant that producers had the upper hand once again and directors and technicians were able to work in relative peace on schedules that allowed them to showcase their cinematic skills. And the audiences encouraged this return to magic by flocking to theatres in droves.

These new stars realised that to kick the collaborative process of filmmaking was to commit harakiri. It took the wisdom of the Shah Rukhs and Aamir Khans of the industry to bring discipline back in vogue.

Back on the sets of Love You Hamesha, I could only marvel at the way Bollywood has come a full circle. Akshaye knew that despite the fact that hedidn8217;t feel like shaving, he had to do it. He knew that Aarti8217;s contribution in ensuring that the film had a certain glamour value was not a waste of time. In the 8217;70s his father, superstar Vinod Khanna, would have refused to shave or even walked off the set! had he not felt like it8217;. Today the son knew that such a cavalier attitude would be suicidal. As Akshaye gave another fabulous take and Kailash barked quot;Cutquot;, I could not help look at Aarti and whisper, quot;glamour hamesha.quot;