FilmIndia (Feb-Dec 1949)

rch, 1949 FILM INDIA Uract and Suraiya is less to blame because in spite of J pitching the price higher and higher with every new Bitract, producers are tailing over one another to secure Jr services in the hope of extracting finance from the jltributors. It is no secret that all the distributors love ajraiya. «j It is no wonder, therefore, that Suraiya has become Jsuperstition with weak minds like Baburao Pai of ' mous Pictures, J. K. Nanda of Haldia-Nanda Produces and M. Sadiq. They seem to have lost faith in 4,kr own luck and intelligence and adopted Suraiya as J;ir main mascot of success in production. But such shivering producers do not seem to realize \.t after paying Suraiya 50 or 60 thousand rupees for ingle picture and shooting her five days in a month Iy have to sit on pins and needles for a full month get another five days and so on for 9 months till her shooting days are over. By this time the cost of pro:tion has increased unnecessarily by at least 2 lakhs rupees and the picture which was originally scheduto cost 2£ lakhs now costs just 4£ lakhs. Which means that every producer pays for Suraiya as much 3 lakhs on a single picture including her contract ney. Is Suraiya worth all that? We say, No! And why? 1. Though Suraiya induces the distributors to /ance money on her picture that money is a loan on picture and the producer has to pay it back with erest and royalty, both of which are prohibitive. 2. That no star in India guarantees the box-office cess of a picture merely on his or her name. A nber of Suraiya pictures have failed miserably. The ent ones being "Vidya", "Kajal", "Dak Bun°ridow" 0 Dil", "Aaj-ki-Raat" etc. 3. That people still rush to see good stories whosr the players and only good stories with popular entainment value click at the box-offices. 4. That when 10 producers sign up Suraiya in a ir, she is boringly multiplied on the screen and there no novelty left in presenting her. And novelty is the ice of all entertainment. 5. That no artiste in the world, however talented, 1 work in six simultaneous pictures and six different es. To do so is prostituting opportunity and mermdising art. No producer can claim himself to be artist if he has only a one-sixth share in hb leading 6. That ten producers a year vie with one another giving Suraiya more and more publicity. All this blicity helps Suraiya to put up her price and produrs have to pay for both, the price and the publicity, lis payment is made by borrowing money at exorbitant erest making the producers poorer and Suraiya richer. 7. That appearing in pictures after pictures Suraiya getting typed and far from being the ideal village girl ring her early screen career, she has now become a lage bore and filmgoers have now come to hate both, ; villages and the village girls. 8. That Suraiya's terrific limitations in music have Hide the different music directors repeat themselves in nes and at present Suraiya seems to sing only one mmon tune throughout ten picture* every year. Geeta Bali gets another lead in "Nai Reel", a social theme produced by India Film Corporation. There are many more reasons, commercial and artistic, why this overworking of stars must be stopped. Other girls who are also overworked in the same manner are Nargis, Munnawar Sultana and Rehana. We don't grudge the girls their huge earnings but in accepting too many contracts every year they are cutting short their artistic career and fast heading for a blackout. The producers are following a suicidal policy in repeating these stars in their pictures. No audience in the world is prepared to see ten pictures of a single star in a single year and such pictures are already cutting one another out of popularity. The ultimate stalemate resulting from this idiotic production policy is bound to shake the stability of the industry and once again producers will be shouting themselves hoarse over another slump. TO THEIR ETERNAL DISCRACE ! Film producers who shed rivers of crocodile tears over Candhiji's death last year and who are now busy cashing his name in one grotesque picture after another seemed to have clean forgotten the day of his death anniversary, in spite of the newspapers publishing, long in advance, the different programmes for the Sarvodaya Day. The Government of Bombay advised the people to observe the 30th of January as a day of mourning and prayer and requested stoppage of all public entertainment. But the film producers and exhibitors, wha care a 13