The Genres Of Indian Cinema
THE GENRES OF INDIAN CINEMA
by Sanjit Narwekar
The noted Hindi film comedian, filmmaker and resident wit I.S.Johar, was once asked why India only made musicals. Never at a loss for an answer he replied, “We not only make musicals but also dancicals.” This may have been said in jest but the answer reflects the state of genre films in India. They simply don’t exist and all Hindi films can be wrapped together in a slapdash embrace-all variety which Johar chose to call “musicals and dancicals” or more formally “socials”. But more of that later!
The first feature films made in India were mythologicals. In fact, the first seven years of film production (1913-1919) saw the production of a little less than two dozen films – a majority of which were mythologicals. The exceptions were a historical The Death of Narayanrao Peshwa (1915) and a social Vichitra Gutika or The Enchanted Pills (1920), both directed by S. N. Patankar. The concept of an industry did not exist and, even if it did, it was more as an extension of the Swadeshi movement, almost a cottage industry!
Dadasaheb Phalke who made the first Indian feature film Raja Harishchandra in 1913 wrote about the moment he first dreamed of making an Indian film in the November 1917 issue of Navyug: “While the life of Christ was rolling before my physical eyes, I was mentally visualizing the Gods Shri Krishna, Shri Ramchandra, their Gokul and Ayodhya. I was gripped by a strange spell … I felt my imagination taking shape on the screen. Could this really happen? Could we, the sons of India, even be able to see Indian images on the screen?”
The mythological, therefore, became the first genre of Indian cinema and it remained so till well into the 1920s when the fledgling trade acquired the size and extent of an industry. The stupendous commercial success of Phalke’s Lanka Dahan – the monies earned by the film is said to have been carried...
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