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Hindi cinema

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Typical Bollywood movie poster—Devdas (2002)

Bollywood is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry in India.

The name is a conflation of Bombay, the old name of Mumbai, and Hollywood, the center of the United States film industry. Though some purists deplore the name (arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood), it seems likely to persist and now has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Bollywood and the other major cinematic hubs (Tamil - Kollywood, Telugu - Tollywood, Bengali - also called Tollywood, Kannada, and Malayalam) constitute the broader Indian film industry, whose output is the largest in the world in terms of number of films produced and in number of tickets sold. Bollywood is a strong part of popular culture of not only India and the rest of the Indian subcontinent, but also of the Middle East, parts of Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, and among the South Asian diaspora worldwide.

Bollywood is also commonly referred to as "Hindi cinema", even though use of poetic Urdu words is fairly common. (Linguists would call both Hindi and Urdu variants of Hindustani. This is a political debate; see the articles on the various languages/dialects.) There has been a growing presence of English in dialogues and songs as well. It is not uncommon to see movies which feature dialogues with English words and phrases, even whole sentences. A few movies are also made in two or even three languages (either using subtitles, or several soundtracks).

Genre conventions

Most Bollywood films would be classified as musicals. Few movies are made without at least one song-and-dance number. However, they do not fit easily in the "musical" category as defined by Hollywood movies; they usually contain a great deal more in the way of plot and action than is found in the typical Hollywood musical.

Indian audiences expect full value for their money, with a good entertainer generally referred to as paisa vasool, (literally, "money's worth"). Songs and dances, love triangles, comedy and dare-devil thrills—all are mixed up in a three-hour-long extravaganza with an intermission. Such movies are called masala movies, after the Hindi word for a spice mixture, masala. Like masalas, these movies are a mixture of many things.

Up until recently plots tended to be melodramatic and Bollywood films were widely regarded as camp in the Western world. They frequently employed formulaic ingredients such as star-crossed lovers and angry parents, love triangles, corrupt politicians, kidnappers, conniving villains, courtesans with hearts of gold, long-lost relatives and siblings separated by fate, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient coincidences. Since around early 2005 however, most mainstream Bollywood films have borne more resemblence to contemprary western productions than traditional Indian cinema. The near-total adoption and depiction of western influences in Indian cinema has led to criticism that the films are not representative of true Indian mainstream culture.

There have always been Indian films with more "artistic" aims and more sophisticated stories, both inside and outside the Bollywood tradition (see Indian art cinema). They often lost out at the box office to movies with more mass appeal. However, Bollywood is changing. Current films are increasingly likely either to break the mold or to ironically subvert it. There is now a significant audience of young, educated, urban Indians who want to watch Indian films, but demand a different presentation.

It should also be said that a fair number of films with mass-appeal are either estimable simply as well-crafted amusements or even artistic achievements in their own way. Any fan of Bollywood movies will be able to list films that he/she regards as transcending the run-of-the-mill masala movie.

Bollywood song and dance

File:Mukesh.jpg
Songs in Bollywood are sung by professional playback singers, rather than actors, who lip-sync the lyrics. Pictured here is Mukesh Chand Mathur (commonly known as Mukesh), a famed playback singer.

Bollywood film music is called filmi music (from Hindi, meaning "of films").

Songs from Bollywood movies are generally pre-recorded by professional playback singers, with the actors then lip synching the words to the song on-screen, often while dancing. While most actors, especially today, are excellent dancers, few are also singers. One notable exception was Kishore Kumar, who starred in several major films in the 1950s while also having a stellar career as a playback singer. K. L. Saigal, Suraiyya and Noor Jehan were also known as both singers and actors.

Of late, a few actors have again tried singing for themselves:

  • Amitabh Bachchan, sang "Mere Angane Mein" in "Lawaaris" in the mid-80's, and has also sung in "Silsila", "Mahaan" "Toofan", Baghban, and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, as well as doing a duet with Adnan Sami in the song Kabhi Nahin (Never).
  • Aamir Khan took a turn singing "Kya Bolti Tu" in Ghulam but only because "the character had attitude that only Aamir could do justice to", according to director Vikram Bhatt.

These forays, while well-received at the time, have not led to real singing careers for either actor.

Playback singers are prominently featured in the opening credits and have their own fans who will go to an otherwise lackluster movie just to hear their favourites. One of the most recorded of these playback singers is Lata Mangeshkar who, through the course of a career spanning over six decades, has recorded thousands of songs for Indian movies. Most of the female songs in films from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were sung by Lata. The composers of film music, known as music directors, are also well-known. Their songs can make or break a film and usually do.

The dancing in Bollywood films, especially older ones, is primarily modeled on Indian dance: classical dance styles, dances of historic northern Indian courtesans (tawaif), or folk dances. In modern films, Indian dance elements often blend with Western dance styles (as seen on MTV or in Broadway musicals), though it is not unusual to see Western pop and pure classical dance numbers side by side in the same film. The hero or heroine will often perform with a troupe of supporting dancers, usually of the same sex. If the hero and heroine dance and sing a pas-de-deux (a dance and ballet term, meaning "dance of two"), it is often staged in beautiful natural surroundings or architecturally grand settings. This staging is referred to as a picturisation. Switzerland has become a popular setting for these picturisations, largely because its Alpine valleys are reminiscent of Kashmir. Though considered by many to be one of India's most beautiful regions, Kashmir has been generally off-limits for quite some time due to violence.

Songs typically comment on the action taking place in the movie, in several ways. Sometimes, a song is worked into the plot, so that a character has a reason to sing; other times, a song is an externalization of a character's thoughts, or presages an event that has not occurred yet in the plot of the movie. In this case, the event is almost always two characters' falling in love.

Dialogues and lyrics

The film script (frequently credited as "dialogues") and the song lyrics are often written by different people. The dialogues are mostly written in Hindi, with use of Urdu in situations which require poetic dialogues. Contemporary mainstream movies also make great use of English. Dialogues are often melodramatic and invoke God, family, mother, duty, and self-sacrifice liberally.

As an example, below is a dialogue from the 1975 film Deewar, between the gangster brother Vijay and his policeman brother Ravi:

Vijay: Hum dono ne ek hi jagah se apni zindagi ki shuruwat ki thi—aaj main kaha hoon aur tum kahan ho. Mere paas gaadi hai, bungalow hai, daulat hai—kya hai tumhaarey paas?
We both started our lives from the same place—look where I am today and look where you are. I have cars, bungalows, wealth—what do you have?
<short pause>
Ravi: Bhai, mere paas maa hai.
Brother, I have Mom.

Music directors often prefer working with certain lyricists, to the point that the lyricist and composer are seen as a team. This phenomenon is not unlike the pairings of American composers and songwriters that created old-time Broadway musicals (e.g., Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, or Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe). Song lyrics are usually about love. Bollywood song lyrics, especially in the old movies, frequently use Urdu or Hindustani vocabulary which has many elegant and poetic Arabic and Persian loan-words. Here's a sample from the 1983 film Hero, written by the lyricist Anand Bakshi:

Bichhdey abhi to hum, bas kal parso,
jiyoongi main kaisey, is haal mein barson?
Maut na aayi, teri yaad kyon aayi,
Haaye, lambi judaayi!
We have been separated just a day or two,
How am I going to go on this way for years?
Death doesn't come; why, instead, do these memories of you?
Oh, this long separation!

Another source for love lyrics is the long Hindu tradition of poetry about the mythological amours of Krishna, Radha, and the gopis. Many lyrics compare the singer to a devotee and the object of his or her passion to Krishna or Radha.

Cast and crew

Bollywood employs people from all parts of India. It attracts thousands of aspiring actors and actresses, all hoping for a break in the industry. Models and beauty contestants, television actors, theatre actors and even common people come to Mumbai with the hope and dream of becoming a star. Just as in Hollywood, very few succeed.

Stardom in the entertainment industry is very fickle, and Bollywood is no exception. The popularity of the stars can rise and fall rapidly, based on single movies. Very few people become national icons, who are unaffected by success or failure of their movies, like Amitabh Bachchan. Directors compete to hire the most popular stars of the day, who are believed to guarantee the success of a movie (though this belief is not always supported by box-office results). Hence many stars make the most of their fame, once they become popular, by making several movies simultaneously.

Bollywood can be clannish, and the relatives of film-industry insiders have an edge in getting coveted roles. However, industry connections are no guarantee of a long career: competition is brutal and if film industry scions don't succeed at the box office, their careers will falter. Some of the biggest stars, such as Dev Anand, Amitabh Bachchan, and Shah Rukh Khan, have succeeded despite total lack of show biz connections.

Notable film clans:

Finances

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Bollywood movies are released commercially in the United Kingdom.

Bollywood budgets are usually modest by Hollywood standards. Sets, costumes, special effects, and cinematography were less than world-class up until the mid-to-late 1990s. But as Western films and television gain wider distribution in India itself, there is increasing pressure for Bollywood films to attain the same production levels. Sequences shot overseas have proved a real box office draw, so Mumbai film crews are increasingly filming in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, continental Europe and elsewhere. Nowadays, Indian producers are drawing in more and more funding for big-budget films shot within India as well, such as Lagaan, Devdas, and the recent production The Rising.

Funding for Bollywood films often comes from private distributors and a few large studios. Indian banks and financial institutions were forbidden from lending money to movie studios. However, this ban has now been lifted [1]. As finances are not regulated, some funding also comes from illegitimate sources, such as the Mumbai underworld. The Mumbai underworld has been known to be involved in the production of several films, and are notorious for their patronization of several prominent film personalities; On occasion, they have known to use money and muscle power to get their way in cinematic deals. In January, 2000, Mumbai mafia hitmen shot Rakesh Roshan, film director and father of star Hrithik Roshan; It had been reported that he had rebuffed mob attempts to meddle with his film distribution. In 2001, the Central Bureau of Investigation seized all prints of the movie Chori Chori Chupke Chupke after the movie was found to be funded by members of the Mumbai underworld.

Another problem facing Bollywood is widespread copyright infringement of its films. Often, bootleg DVD copies of movies are available before the prints are official released in movie theaters. Manufacturing of bootleg DVD, VCD, and VHS copies of the latest movie titles is a well established 'small scale industry' in parts of the Indian Subcontinent and South East Asia. Besides catering to the homegrown market, demand for these copies is large amongst some sections of the Indian diaspora, too. (In fact, bootleg copies are the only way people in Pakistan can watch Bollywood movies, since the Government of Pakistan has banned their sale, distribution and telecast). Films are frequently broadcast without compensation by countless small cable TV companies in India and other parts of South Asia. Small convenience stores run by members of the Indian diaspora in the U.S. and the U.K. regularly stock tapes and DVDs of dubious provenance, while consumer copying adds to the problem. The availability of illegal copies of movies on the Internet also contributes to the piracy problem.

Satellite TV, television and imported foreign films are making huge inroads into the domestic Indian entertainment market. In the past, most Bollywood films could make money; now fewer tend to do so. Balanced against this are the increasing returns from theatres in Western countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, where Bollywood is slowly getting noticed. As more Indians migrate to these countries, they form a growing market for upscale Indian films. 'Foreign' audiences—in Asian and Western countries—are also growing, if more slowly.

For an interesting comparison of Hollywood and Bollywood financial figures, see this chart: [2]. It shows tickets sold in 2002 and total revenue estimates. Bollywood sold 3.6 billion tickets and had total revenues (theater tickets, DVDs, television etc) of US$1.3 billion (USD), whereas Hollywood films sold 2.6 billion tickets and generated total revenues (again from all formats) of US$51 billion.

Advertising

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A cinema hall in Delhi.

Many Indian artists used to make a living hand-painting movie billboards and posters. Human labor was cheaper than printing and distributing publicity material. Now, the majority of the huge and ubiquitous billboards in India's major cities are created with computer-printed vinyl. The old hand-painted posters, once regarded as ephemera, are becoming increasingly collectible as folk art.

Controversies

Accusations of plagiarism

Constrained by rushed production schedules and small budgets, some Bollywood writers and musicians have been known to resort to plagiarism. They copy ideas, plot lines, tunes or riffs from sources close at hand ([3]Tamil films and songs) or far away (Hollywood and other Western movies, Western pop hits).

In past times, this could be done with impunity. Copyright enforcement was lax in South Asia. As for the Western sources, the Bollywood film industry was largely unknown to Westerners, who would not even be aware that their material was being copied. Audiences also may not have been aware of the plagiarism, since many in the Indian audience were unfamiliar with Western films and tunes.

While copyright enforcement in South Asia is still hit or miss, Bollywood and Hollywood are much more aware of each other now, and Indian audiences are more familiar with foreign movies and music. Blatant plagiarism may have diminished -- however, there is no general agreement that it has.

Sex scandals

In 2005, the India's Most Wanted show on India TV ran an exposé that accused several Bollywood figures (including Shakti Kapoor and Aman Verma) of seeking sexual favors from young actresses. This ploy would not be, of course, unique to Bollywood moguls; film industry figures worldwide have long been rumored to subject actresses to the casting couch. Those accused by the show vehemently denied these accusations, and most of the Bollywood establishment have supported them. Surprisingly, the exposé resulted in insignificant public outrage.

Bollywood awards

The Indian screen magazine Filmfare started the first Filmfare Awards in 1953. Modeled after the poll-based merit format of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, individuals may submit their votes in seperate categories; The awards are presented at a glamorous, star-studded ceremony. However, unlike the Oscars, voting is not restricted to members of a specific club or academy, but is open to all people. Like the Oscars, they are frequently accused of bias towards commercial success, rather than artistic merit.

Lately, other companies, such as Stardust Magazine, Zee TV, etc have joined the movie award bandwagon. Some of the other popular awards are:

Most of these award ceremonies are lavishly staged spectacles, featuring singing, dancing, and lots of stars and starlets.

Since 1973, the Indian government has sponsored the National Film Awards, awarded by the government run Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF). The DFF screens not only Bollywood films, but films from all the other regional movie industries and independent/art films. These awards are handed out at an annual ceremony presided over by the President of India.

History

Main article: History of Indian cinema

Cinema first came to India in 1896, when the Lumière Brothers’ Cinematographe showed six short films in the Watson Hotel. Three years later, Harishchandra Bhatvadekar shot and exhibited two short films. Following this, there were several attempts to film staged plays and imported films were shown in the first decade of the 20th century. The first indigenous silent feature film was Raja Harishchandra, released in 1913 and directed by Dadasaheb Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, who is considered the father of Indian cinema. The movie industry was well established by 1920, producing an average of 27 films every year.

By the 1930s, the industry was producing over 200 films per annum. The first Indian sound film, Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara (1931), was a super hit. There was clearly a huge market for talkies and musicals; Bollywood and all the regional film industries quickly switched to sound filming.

The 1930s and 1940s were tumultuous times: India was buffeted by the Great Depression, World War II, the Indian independence movement, and the violence of the Partition. Most Bollywood films were unabashedly escapist, but there were also a number of filmmakers who tackled tough social issues, or used the struggle for Indian independence as a backdrop for their plots.

In the late 1950s, Bollywood films moved from black-and-white to color. Lavish romantic musicals and melodramas were the staple fare at the cinema. In the 1970s and 1980s, romantic confections made way for gritty, violent, films about gangsters and bandits. Amitabh Bachchan, the star known for his "angry young man" roles, rode the crest of this trend. In the early 1990s, the pendulum swung back towards family-centric romantic musicals with the success of such films as Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994) and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995).

The Indian film industry has preferred films that appeal to all segments of the audience (see below), and has resisted making films that target narrow audiences. It was believed that aiming for a broad spectrum would maximize box office receipts. However, filmmakers may be moving towards accepting some box-office segmentation, between films that appeal to rural Indians, and films that appeal to urban and overseas audiences.

In recent time

As the new millenium approached, there has been a slow but steady change in the type of films produced by Bollywood. This change is largely attributed to the twin successes of Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai. These films were extremely original and provided a bold new vision, the likes of which audiences rarely see. Lagaan in particular recieved international recognition and became the third film from India to be nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category while Dil Chahta Hai provided a fresh soulful look into modern India. Since then Bollywood producers have experimented with different kinds of films to varying degress of successes. The successes of Murder also allowed producers to break taboos regarding potrayal of sex in Indian cinema, a highly controversial subject in and off itself.

However, some critics allege that these so-called changes are merely cosmetic in nature and further point out that many of these so-called 'different' films are merely rip-offs from Hollywood films or films from other countries.

Foreigners interested in sampling Indian cinema may wish to consult this List of popular Bollywood films. These are not necessarily the best films produced by Bollywood; even attempting to make a list of the 'best' would be controversial. Popularity is less open to debate. For lists of the best, consult the various web sites devoted to Bollywood, where critics list their choices or readers vote for their favorites.

See also

References

  • Ganti, Tejaswini. Bollywood, Routledge, New York and London, 2004.
  • Kabir, Nasreen Munni. Bollywood, Channel 4 Books, 2001.
  • Rajadhyaksha, Ashish and Willemen, Paul. Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, Oxford University Press, revised and expanded, 1999.
  • An article on Bollywood, National Geographic issue: February 2005.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Indian actors.
General guides
Plagiarism
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