Análisis comparativo de los modelos, selección

Pre-cinema efforts and the Maharashtrian ethos

The Magic Lantern commonly known to Westerners from the seventeenth century onwards was imaginatively used by Madanrao Madhavrao Pitale, a Bombay-based engineer. He put up a private cinema-like show in Bombay, depicting some incidents from the life of Lord Krishna. In one such private screening, Mahadeorao Gopal Patwardhan of Kalyan (in downtown Bombay/

Mumbai) was inspired to convert this art into a commercial venture, for which he used the Magic Lantern. Patwardhan’s commercial venture became popular as Shambarik Kharolika, a Sanskrit word meaning the magic lantern.

The show would start with the entry of Sutradhar (a principal actor who arranges the cast of characters and instructs them, and takes a prominent part in the prelude) and two singers, according to old dramatic tradition, followed by the main feature. The stories were either mythological or adventures. When they were fully satisfied with their enterprise of simulta-neously putting three magic lanterns into use, Mahadeorao Patwardhan went on tour in Maharashtra and Gujarat during 1894–95 with his two sons. They terminated their tour at the Eleventh National Congress held in Poona on 27 December 1895 in the presence of the national leaders including Lokmanya Tilak, Surendranath Bannerjee and others.¹ What is interesting is the kind of atmosphere and ambience that the colorful images painted on the glass slides exuded.²The Patwardhans successfully exhibited their programs between 1909 and 1918 in all parts of Bombay Presidency and even won a gold medal at an exhibition held in Jalgaon in Maharashtra in 1910, and another held in Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh. However, as the popularity of motion pictures increased, the Shambarik Kharolika shows faded into obscurity.

The pre-Phalke era: the arrival of cinema 1896–1912

When the Lumière cameraman Maurice Sestier held thefirst public shows at Bombay’s Watson’s Hotel on 7 July 1896, it was largely the local elite from Bombay (who could afford the one rupee ticket for the show) who attended the show to see the‘marvel of the century.’ The local photographer H.S. Bhatwadekar (Sawe Dada) was present at this show. He was keen on getting hold of the Lumière Cinematographe, which was a three-in-one apparatus combining camera, projector and processing machine. Bhatwadekar was thefirst Indian to create moving images in India.

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Unable to afford the Lumière machine, Bhatwadekar imported the next best thing: a camera man-ufactured by the Riley Brothers in London, costing the princely sum of 21 guineas. Having acquired the device by late 1898, Bhatwadekar set about making his ownfilms. He got together two well-known wrestlers, Pundalik Dada and Krishna Nhavi, and staged a mock bout at Bombay’s Hanging Gardens. He then exposed another reel on some monkeys being trained by their master.

The results were thefirst two fully indigenous all-Indian short films: The Wrestlers and The Man and his Monkeys. Since thefilms had to be sent to London for developing and processing, Bhatwadekar lost almost a year and by the time thefilms were ready for exhibition it was November 1899. Yet, he had unwittingly beaten anotherfilm pioneer, Hiralal Sen in Calcutta, by exactly one month.

The Phalke saga

What is interesting to me, however, is the Maharashtrian ethos that the above-mentioned painted glass slide images depicted, largely through their costumes and characterization, as did the silent films produced and directed by Dhundiraj Govind (D.G.) Phalke, popularly known as Dadasaheb Phalke. While giving specific examples of Phalke’s silent films, Prof. Satish Bahadur offered an interesting argument in this context. He said:

Though the title cards in Raja Harishchandra (1913) were in English and Hindi, there was something unmistakably Maharashtrian in Phalke’s films. His men, women and children, their dress and make-up, the landscape and the interiors against which they move are Maharashtrian. In Kaliya Mardan, Phalke transposes the village of Gokul from the sandy banks of the Yamuna to the rocky terrain of the Godavari; Yashoda is not a woman of the Braja region but a winsome Maharashtrian mother in a traditional nine yard sari and corresponding regional decoration. The interior architecture and dresses of countries in Raja Harishchandra are in no sense North Indian, but quite frankly modeled on the Deccan Peshwai style. As a Maharashtrian, Phalke simply had to use the regional visual idioms and motifs in his films.³

Between 1912 and 1937, Phalke either produced or directed one hundred features and shortfilms.⁴ To raise the necessary funds for making Raja Harishchandra, Phalkefirst made a trick film entitled Ankurachi Wadh (Growth of a Pea Plant). This helped him go to England in 1912, where he bought a Williamson camera, Kodak stock and a perforator. He met Cecil Hepworth who invited him to visit the Walton Studios and see for himself the results of his newly purchased equipment. On his return to Bombay he launched his own production company, Phalke’s Films, and made Raja Harishchandra. It was released at the Coronation Cinematograph on 3 May 1913, which was a tremendous success.

With the commercial release of thisfilm, the Indian film industry is said to have taken off. After Raja Harishchandra Phalke shifted to Nashik (150 miles from Bombay), a better location forfilmmaking.

Of the feature films that Phalke made between 1913 (Raja Harishchandra) and 1937 (Gang-avartan), most were mythological and among them were santfilms. Setu Bandhan (Bridging of Ocean, 1932), which was originally a silentfilm but was synchronized and released as a talkie in 1934. His swan song Gangavartan (1937) was a talkie in Hindi and Marathi. Produced by Kol-hapur Cinetone, Phalke looked after its direction, story and dialogue.

Sanyas, the exile: a stormy journey

Phalke’s creative journey was quite stormy. In need of capital and deeply in debt, he was on the verge of bankruptcy. His partners were shouting, ‘Close the factory [studio], discharge the

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workers.’⁵For some reason, there was dissent within his Hindustan Film Company and given the unstable conditions, Phalke decided to leave for a distant place for a long break and departed with his family for Kashi (Benaras). In an article in Navyug, he wrote agonizingly:

Who am I? A father adding to the thirty crore slave population of India? The husband of my wife? A servant of the nation who has not yet repaid the debt of Mother India?

A victim of the expressive thirst of moneylenders? An impractical man who has ruined his family, running after a chimera with body, soul and lucre? I must explain in detail the agreement, which destroyed a man’s hopes and aspirations. I have got to tell my brother artists, for their own good, how we poor, needy craftsmen chain ourselves and then land ourselves in difficulty in the pursuit of our goals, due to lack of foresight or ignorance.⁶

Eventually, Phalke was invited to return to the company as production chief and technical advisor. Phalke grabbed the opportunity as he wished to return to his vocation. However, to his dismay he had to accept the job on a salary of Rs 1,000 per month as an employee of the company! Thefirst silent feature that he directed after rejoining the Hindustan Film Company was Sant Namdeo, which was screened on 28 October 1922. The story of Phalke’s brief ‘exile’ and its end provides an interesting chapter in the history of Indian cinema. Phalke died penniless and embittered. In an interview to the Madras-based journal Film News towards the end of his life he said:‘I am very much disappointed about the creations of Indian Film Industry. With what ideals and with what long-drawn-out suffering I built up this indigenous industry and what it is my misfortune to see today! Cinema is a kamdhenu [a cow that grants one’s wishes]. But now this cow does not get to feed on science, art, morality and patriotism, but wallows in the slush of wining, whoring and wagering.’⁷

Baburao Painter and the Maharashtra Film Company

Yet another name that is etched in Indianfilm history is that of Baburao Painter. With the help of the local nobility headed by Shahu Maharaj, Painter established the Maharashtra Film Company in Kolhapur in 1917. Born Baburao Krishnarao Mestri, he was a painter by profession and like his contemporary, Phalke, he was a consummate craftsman and a technical genius. He redesigned old cameras, used artificial lights, painted the sets to get a particular shade of gray on film, devised and usedfilters with tinted glass for the first time—the stories about him are legion. The screenings of Baburao Painter’s films began in 1920, and as they were more realistic, artistic, spectacular and technically better, Painter’s influence grew throughout India. Moreover, those who later formed the Prabhat Film Company and earned worldwide fame, such as V. Damle, S. Fattelal and V.

Shantaram, were Painter’s best students. ‘They had the co-operation of writers such as Nanasaheb Sarpotdar, Narayan Hari Apte, Shivram Washikar, Vishnupant Aundhkar, N.S. Phadke and Bhalji Pendharkar. Phalke, on the other hand, managed all departments of film production himself, single-handed.’⁸

Among Painter’s most famous early films were Sairandhri (1920), Sinhagad (1923), Kalyan Khajina (The Treasures of Kalyan, 1924) and Sati Padmini (Beauty of Rajasthan or the Siege of Chittor, 1924). The subjects of thesefilms were drawn from mythology and Maratha history;

however, his most celebratedfilm is the lost Savkari Pash (Indian Shylock, 1925), a realist social film which the film academic Prof. Suresh Chabria says was a status akin to that of Greed in the history of Indian cinema.⁹A contemporary of Phalke’s Films, the Maharashtra Film Co. made a greater impact on the Marathi cinema with thefirst films of V. Shantaram (Netaji Palkar, 1927), Damle-Fattelal

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(Maharathi Karna, 1928), and Bhalji Pendharkar (Rani Rupmati, 1931). After twenty-six years, the studio lost Shantaram, Damle, Fattelal and Baburao Pendharkar, who set up the Prabhat Film Company in 1929. Painter left in 1930 and joined Shalini Cinetone, set up for him by the Kolhapur royal family. The company closed down in 1932 after some expensive disasters.

Unlike Phalke’s simple mythological films, Painter’s were more complex. For example, his first completed feature, Sairandhri (1920), though obviously a mythological, alluded to contemporary politics and narrated the story of the Mahabharata, about the villainous Keechak lusting after Sairandhri, the persona adopted by Dhraupadi in her thirteenth year of exile. V. Shantaram remade it as a sound film with the same name in 1933. Following Sairandhri, Painter made Sinhagad (1923), based on Hari Narayan Apte’s novel Gad Ala Pan Simha Gela. Apte was the best-known Marathi novelist during the early twentieth century. Thefilm, narrating a famous episode in the military career of the seventeenth-century Maratha emperor Shivaji and his lieutenant, the folk hero Tanaji Malusare, was India’s full-scale historical and the Maharashtra Studio’s most expensive film up until then.¹⁰Sinhagad, shot by S. Fattelal, was a major influence on subsequent Marathi cinema in general and on thefilms produced by the Prabhat Film Co. in particular. Both Baburao Painter and V. Shantaram played roles in this film. V. Shantaram remade Sinhagad in 1933.

Kalyan Khajina (1924) was a quasi-historical that narrated the story of the Emperor Shivaji’s adventures. A large part of the film was shot in a cave where Shivaji meets the Subedar of Kalyan. The design of the cave is often hailed as an art directorial triumph for the studio. The film was the debut of Marathi and Hindi stunt superstar Master Vithal. In Kalyan Khajina he is said to have played the role of a dancing girl. For Sati Padmini, Painter moved outside his favorite Maratha history and wove the story of the legendary Rajput Queen Padmini of Chit-tor. ‘The film capitalized on its screening at the British Empire exhibition at Wembley and received some favorable reviews in the British press.’¹¹

The growing years: from talkie to India’s independence

It is generally believed that the Prabhat Film Company’s Ayodhyecha Raja (King of Ayodhya, 1932) was the first Marathi talkie, but according to the Pune-based film historian Shashikant Kinikar, it was Sant Tukaram (not to be confused with the Prabhat Film Company’s film of the same title), which had preceded Ayodhyecha Raja. Sant Tukaram was released on 26 January 1932 at the Aryan Cinema in Pune, while Ayodhyecha Raja was released on 6 February 1932 at the Majestic Cinema in Bombay. Sant Tukaram was written and directed by Mahadev Babajirao Rane of the Rajapurkar Natak Mandali, on the advice of none other than Dadasaheb Phalke.¹²Sant Tukaram was based on one of the popular plays in the theater company’s repertoire and was filmed in Pune. No print of the film survives but, as Kinikar says, there is enough ancillary material (still photos, news items, published advertisements, and so on) to support the claim.

Ayodhyecha Raja was a Marathi/Hindi bilingualfilm and starred leading artists such as Govindrao Tembe, Durga Khote and Baburao Pendharkar, and hence it remained in the collective memory much longer. Kinikar’s research also shows yet another film with the title Sant Tukaram, which was made in the same year by the Sharada Film Company, and with the same actor, Purushottam Waman Shukla, playing the role of Tukaram. This was a laterfilm, censored on 7 July 1932. As Kinikar surmises, in later years the two Sant Tukaram films must have been confused and Ayodhyecha Raja being the better-knownfilm, the claim that it was the first Marathi film must have gained currency.

The period between 1931 and 1947, encompassing the onset of the talkie era to Indian independence, was quite significant for Marathi cinema. As many as eight films were made and

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released during the very first year (1932) of Marathi cinema, notably the bilingual Marathi/

Hindi Marathyanchi Duhi/Amar Shaheed, marking the directorial debut of the noted actor Bala-saheb Yadav, and Shyamsundar, directed by Bhalji Pendharkar for Saraswati Cinetone. Shyam-sundar, for which Pendharkar also wrote the story and lyrics, was a mythological for children, the story for which was drawn from the Vishnu Purana. Thefirst Marathi talkie made in Pune, Shyamsundar was apparently thefirst Indian film with a continuous run of more than twenty-five weeks at the West End (the present Naaz Talkies on Mumbai’s Lamington Road). As Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen inform us, it was thefirst Indian film to introduce the marketing technique of adding a new sequence after the release to attract a repeat audience (the sequence in which the evil Kans is killed).¹³ Shyamsundar was also the screen debut of Shahu Modak and Shanta Apte as child actors. Both Modak and Apte became leading stars of the Prabhat Film Company later.¹⁴

The rise of the Prabhat Film Company

Of the eightfilms released during the year, three bilingual Marathi/Hindi films, Ayodhyecha Raja/

Ayodhya ka Raja, Agni Kankan/Jalti Nishani, and Maya Machchindra/Illusion or Triya Rajya, were from the Prabhat Film Company alone. Established in 1929 in Kolhapur as a partnership enterprise by V. Shantaram (1901–90), Vishnupant Damle (1892–1945), Fattelal Sheikh (1897–

1964), Keshavrao Dhaibar (1890–1978) and Sitarampant Kulkarni, the Prabhat Film Company was to dominate the Marathifilm scene for the next decade and a half with a contribution of as many as eighteenfilms—the highest by any company in the pre-independence period. Baburao Pendharkar (1896–1967) joined it as manager. The company moved to Pune in 1933, where it became India’s premier studio comparable only to Calcutta’s New Theatres. It had the largest stagefloor in India and an art department under Fattelal regarded as the country’s finest. Prabhat had many stars on its payroll, well-equipped sound and editing departments and its own laboratory. Itsfirst major hit was V. Shantaram’s Amritmanthan (The Churning of the Oceans, 1934). Based on the well-known writer Narayan Hari Apte’s novel Bhagyashree, the Marathi/

Hindi Amritmanthan is considered to be a classicfilm, starring Chandramohan in its Hindi version and Keshavrao Date in Marathi. With it were associated stalwarts such as Shantaram Athavale (lyrics), Keshavrao Dhaibar (camera) and Keshavrao Bhole (music).

However, as the historian Sanjit Narwekar maintains, this domination was not in terms of quantity alone; Prabhat’s films also had a lasting social impact and came to be considered as milestones in the history of Indian cinema. In 1933 Prabhat embarked on an ambitious venture of making Sairandhri, thefirst film in color, based on an episode from the Mahabharata.¹⁵ The film was processed at the UFA Studios in Germany but the color prints were not found satis-factory for projection. Luckily, thefinancial losses suffered by the company were to some extent compensated by the relative success of an earlier film, Sinhagad, produced in the same year.

Besides Amritmanthan, the Prabhat Film Company, now based in Pune, produced several aes-thetically as well as commercially successfulfilms, including a trilingual (Marathi, Hindi, Tamil) Chandrasena (1935), Dharmatma (1935), which remarkably starred the Marathi stage legend Bal Gandharva in a male role (the only one in his career); it was also Gandharva’s film debut.¹⁶The film was originally titled Mahatma but it was changed to Dharmatma after the censors objected.

The Prabhat Film Company shifs to Pune

After the Prabhat Film Company moved to Pune, hardly any film production continued in Kolhapur. This prompted the Maharaja (Shahu Maharaj) of Kolhapur to step in and help to

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found Kolhapur Cinetone, with Baburao Pendharkar, Bhalji Pendharkar and Master Winayak at the helm. This was a rare instance of afilm studio funded directly by a feudal royalty. Shahu Maharaj, in a way, continued the tradition that had earned Kolhapur the title of the‘Hollywood of Marathifilm.’ Apart from Bhalji Pendharkar’s mythological Akashwani (1934) and Winayak’s debut feature Vilashi Ishwar (1935), the other notable production before the studio folded was Dadasaheb Phalke’s only sound film, Gangavataran (1937). It was a grand mythological spectacle full of miracles and fantasy scenes with special effects. The film failed at the box office and took the studio down with it.¹⁷

Other developments

In many ways the years 1935 and 1936 were crucial to the Marathifilm industry, as during this time two promising directors, Master Winayak (1906–47) and Vishram Bedekar (1906–98), made their debuts, thus bringing a breath of fresh air. The two years saw the emergence of three significant films which, as Narwekar mentions, would influence filmmaking in the following five years.¹⁸ Thefilms were Winayak’s Vilashi Ishwar (Nigah-E-Nafrat, 1935), Chhaya (1936) and Baburao Painter’s remake of his silent film Savkari Pash in 1936. Winayak’s directorial debut, the bilingual Hindi/Marathifilm Vilashi Ishwar, was scripted by Mama Warerkar, a noted Marathi playwright andfilmmaker. The film, which was also actress Shobhana Samarth’s debut, included an English song, Puff Puff the Engine Said, and apparently it was the Marathi cinema’s first full-length social, made two years ahead of Prabhat Film Company’s Marathi/Hindi bilingual Kunku/

Duniya Na Mane (1937). Vilashi Ishwar was produced by Kolhapur Cinetone, while Chhaya had launched Winayak’s own company, Huns Pictures. Winayak’s second film, Chhaya, was scripted by his regular scenarist V.S. Khandekar, who became a well-known novelist.

Multifaceted Bedekar attracted attention with his film Thakeeche Lagna (1935), for which another stalwart P.K. (Acharya) Atre had written the dialogue based on a play by Ram Ganesh Gadkari.¹⁹Thefilm featured Marathi comedian Damuanna Malvankar in his first major screen

Multifaceted Bedekar attracted attention with his film Thakeeche Lagna (1935), for which another stalwart P.K. (Acharya) Atre had written the dialogue based on a play by Ram Ganesh Gadkari.¹⁹Thefilm featured Marathi comedian Damuanna Malvankar in his first major screen