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The Rise of Bombay Cinema
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On the structural front, Phalke—a student, teacher, and performer of the
Sanskrit drama, or the Nātyaśāstra—was heavily influenced by its guidelines
regarding conception and presentation. These ranged from the choice of subjects,
the look of the actors, and the nature of storytelling—and always with the
intent of elevating film as an art form. The Sanskrit drama tradition is evident
by the integral role of the song-and-dance interlude as a narrative tool; the
need to evoke multiple emotions (or the navarasas); and the importance of the
happy ending, wherein good always contains, reforms, or eliminates evil. Such
“ideal” drama has, consciously and subconsciously, influenced Indian films
to uphold moral virtues through righteous protagonists, conveying readily
understood messages presented in an entertaining manner.
The major difference between the Indian studio system and its Hollywood
counterpart was its vertical line of decision making, with one person at the
top, contrary to the latter’s horizontal approach. Even in the case of a “limited
company” studio like Bombay Talkies, all decisions were made by its founder,
Himanshu Rai. Film journalist and scriptwriter K. A. Abbas notes in the May
1939 issue of FilmIndia: “Few persons have any idea of the amount of work
he does—from the writing of the scenario and dialogue to the printing of
publicity posters, there is nothing to which he does not give his personal attention.
Indeed, I feel he does too much work and in his own interests and in the
interests of the studio he should share it with others.”
Thus, the Auteur Theory had arrived in Indian cinema decades before the
debating of the term by critics André Bazin and Andrew Sarris in the 1940s
in France and the United States, respectively. In the studio era (1913–1947),
that auteur was the producer, who often doubled as the film’s director, not
unlike Phalke and his immediate successors. As studio heads took a backseat
creatively, and eminent directors started working for studios based on
the individual appeal of projects, it was they who became the auteurs. By
the end of the 1950s, following the closure of most early-talkie era studios, a
star-driven filmmaking system financed by independent producers emerged,
with film projects increasingly planned around the image and individual
genre-specific appeal of its stars. That’s when the reign of the stars began to
consolidate the role of a film’s hero (and, on fewer occasions, the heroine), as
the film’s primary attraction.
Pioneering Studios and Visionary Filmmakers
Bombay became associated with the filmmaking destiny of the Indian nation
when Phalke made his first film in the city in 1913, as a cottage industry venture
under the Phalke Films Company. The film was literally made at home,
with his kitchen doubling as his development lab, and his wife, Saraswatibai