FilmIndia (May-Dec 1938)

FILMINDIA May 1938 At present the Indian cinemas have 23 shows in a week. Under the revised plan they will have 21 shows in a week, including a matinee every day. Our theatre proprietors are not known for their intelligence or wisdom in business and they are not expected to adopt any sensible plan of business, but the police authorities can enforce this plan and once for all standardize all the shows in the town. If the shows are standardized as suggested above the traffic porblem before and after the shows will be considerably less acute. STORY THE PIVOT OF SUCCESS! During the last twelve months only 6 Indian pictures proved successful. All the rest failed and some miserably so. The most outstanding success was "Tukaram" produced by Prabhat. "lagirdar" by Sagar, "Jeevan Prabhat" by Bombay Talkies, "Lutaru Lalna" by Wadia, and a couole of others were other successful pictures. And on these six pictures, exhibitors all over India, had to recover their losses suffered in the other productions that failed. Some of the pictures which failed presented several high paid 'stars' like, Sulochana, Madhuri, Sabita Devi, Ratnaprabha, Chandramohan, Motilal, etc., and yet they drew poorly at the box-offices. All these failures spell one big question: What is the first essential of a successful picture? The reply is definite and admits no doubt, viz., a good story. Our producers have not been able to give good stories which produced into pictures would keep Amina in "Pati-Patni", a picture by General Films. 10 audiences spell bound. Those producers who succeeded in doing reaped a rich harvest, others just lost big money. Judging the exact merits of a story is a very difficult job. Several of our producers as we find them today are not at all qualified for this job. They are so foolish and blind that they simply cannot find faults with their stories. Most of the subjects for our pictures are copied from American films or from authors like E. Phillip Oppenheim and Edgar Wallace. Only once in a way we get some original stories written by an Indian author and such stories which are full of Indian sentiment are more often successful than the stories from Western authors. A producer can rarely judge a story correctly, but a film critic can always do so. It is therefore necessary that producers should call for more and better stories and get them perused and criticised by prominent critics. That is the only way of producing a successful story and as long as our producers do not realize' this all-important aspect of film production, our pictures will keep on failing. A SAMPLE OF AMERICAN COURTESY! Some Distributors of foreign pictures have as yet to learn a lot of modern business methods. And before learning new things, they must unlearn a lot and learn just ordinary courtesy. Some of these boobies do not yet know how to conduct press shows of their pictures. Indian producers can give them pointers in this department, as the press shows given by the local producers are heavily sprinkled with courtesy and there is that human element in MARCH BRAIN TWISTER The Solution "The Ranee was 17 at her engagement and 24 at marriage." Prize of Rs. 10 is given to: Mr. S. R. CHANDRAKAVI, 28 Mohan Mansion, Telang Road, MATUNGA.