Flashback

The ingenuity was rarely matched by technology. The cameras were hand-cranked,so the speed varied according to the interest level of the cameraman. Only natural light was used; all scenes had to be shot outdoors in the day. For a scene inside the house,you had a set without a roof to let light in. The third and biggest problem: no female artists,since cinema was considered the lowest of all professions. Phalke once said that even a prostitute was not ready to face the camera, says Nair. Anna Salunke,who played Taramati in Raja Harishchandra,did a double role with a difference in 1917 in Phalkes Lanka Dahan,where he played both Ram and Sita. It worked well. According to the script,Sita had already been abducted and did not need to be shown in the same frame as Ram, says Suresh Chabbria,a professor at FTII.

But even if the script had not played along,the film-makers could have found a way out. Trick photography was a hallmark of early film-makers. You had many films showing a man disappearing or turning into a bird. This was done simply by putting off the camera and asking the actor to go away. A bird then took his place and the camera was restarted. But it did mark the beginning of special effects, says Nair.

Shrirang Godbole,executive producer of Harishchandrachi Factory,talks of the optical illusion created in Shezari,a Marathi-Hindi bi-lingual film. A model of a dam was used in the foreground and humans were placed a distance away. The illusion created was of people running on the wall of the dam as it burst. Battle effects were created with the help of gun powder. Once sound technology arrived,songs were shot with musicians hidden behind trees and bushes from where they played the instruments. There were no such things as recording studios, says Godbole.

Sound heralded more change. Shoots had to be done indoors leading to the introduction of artificial lighting. A studio system emerged in the 1920s with the 30s being its golden period. You had the Prabhat Film Company,Bombay Talkies,Minerva,Maharashtra film Company and a host of others. Wrestlers,who were till then the main actors,lost their appeal as most could not deliver dialogues well. New actors like Sohrab Modi and Prithviraj Kapoor with good voices entered the scene.

Despite the gauche attempts,Nair is of the belief that the silent era was the most exciting one in Indian cinema. When Baburao Painter came on the scene in 1919,he believed in making mainly historical films. Huge spectacles and elaborate costumes as seen in Sinhagad 1923,Kalyan Khajina 1924 and Shahala Shah 1925 were the vehicles to convey grandeur, he says. Shoots used to be over in a months time and budgets were small but substantial considering the times. For example,Sant Tukaram was made on a budget of Rs 1 lakh in 1931. There were no banks or financiers,so the film-makers mainly relied on friends and family and often on the maharajas.

By the 1920s,women had started to make an appearance on screen,but they were mainly Anglo-Indians or foreigners,many of whom adopted Indian namesMarien Hill became famous as Vilochana. Romance and sex also crept in. Actually it was always there. The last scene in Harishchandra where the king comes to talk to Taramati,who is in the bath,is a highly sensuous one,despite the fact that Taramati was played by a man. The Throw of Dice directed by Franz Osten had a long kissing scene, says Nair.

When censorship began in 1919,the focus was mainly on deleting violent scenes or those that showed Englishmen in bad light. Both the authorities and public were tolerant of the bold love scenes. I guess because films were considered lowly,they were not expected to be moral and that helped them get away with a lot, says Chabbria.

Most films had titles in different languages,as English was the language of the elite and publicity needed to be done in English. For instance,Light of Asia 1925 was originally Prem Sanyas and Duniya na Mane 1937 was also called Unexpected. Publicity was mainly through newspapers and magazines,much like today. Mokashi is particularly emphatic about Phalkes advertising acumen. For the publicity of Raja Harishchandra,Phalke came up with one-liners like: What is a film? How long is one strip? How many pictures are there in a film strip? These were printed in pamphlets and distributed with the answers as also inserted in newspapers as ads. They even had a road show and a contest,with a nine-yard sari as the prize. He was way ahead of his time, says Mokashi.

Nair reveals that in the tradition of todays cinema,Phalke had made a film called How films are made that has shots of him directing and editing. Soon more film-makers emerged. While Phalkes contemporaries were SN Patankar,Baburao Painter,Jamsethji Framji Madan in Calcutta and Mudiliar and Vankaiah in the south,in the 1920s makers like Ardeshir Irani,Chandulal Shah,Bhogilal KM Dave entered the fray.

The Second World War changed the industrys fortunes totally. After the war,new money came into business,edging out the studio system. Actors and directors who were salaried employees of studios were weaned away by rich producers. Actors were offered unheard-of sums to leave the studios. The seeds of the star system were sown. By the 1950s,the studios had all but vanished.
The 1940 release Khajanchi made in Lahore a product of the new systemwas a blockbuster that first recorded 10-12 songs and then wove a script around them. That could well have been the first Yash Chopra film.