FilmIndia (1939)

FILMINDIA richman's home with elaborate sets and vast underground apartments and chromium plating and all that goes with it. It has a moral which it tries to force somewhat artificially out of the story. It says or tries to say that there is no contentment in riches and as a side moral that the poor are really happy in spite of all the misery that you see portrayed. There are some glaring defects in this conglomeration of disjointed ideas, morals, and settings. In the first place you are intensely conscious of the fact that neither the director nor the actors nor any one else responsible for the picture believe in one word they say. It is not convincing. And when morals which are preached do not convince those to whom they are addressed, it is only natural that the picture should fail in what is its main purpose. India is not and never will be sophisticated in that sense of the word in which we know it in Europe and America. There is not the urge nor the education to be sophisticated. When you grant that, you must also grant that a picture that is made in India against all the environment, upbringing, culture and the life of the Indian people can never be, whatever its quality, a picture of any distinction in this country. The theme of the picture is enough to condemn it in India. Social life of the type portrayed in "Adhikar" is almost entirely absent in India. Not point zero zero one per cent of three hundred million odd people ever live or think like that. No one can feel comfortable in a setting which is so obviously artificial. The Indian people expect other things from its budding industries. What would happen for instance if the mill industry of this country suddenly changed its policy and started producing kilts instead of dhoties. They just would not sell in this country and that goes for the film industry as well. In a country where education plays so small a part one has to bear in mind the limitations of the average picture goer and in consequence give him something which is within his powers of understanding. TIME STANDS STILL! Let us even take the sets. That ridiculous basement set elaborately decorated. I noticed for instance that with all the money spent on it, the director had not bothered to change the hands of the clock at any stage of the picture. February 195 It was obviously a painted clocl and you don't have painted clock in sets like these, Mr. Director. A far as I can remember, they stoo still at a quarter to eight a through that picture. In fact, s no time did one know in "Adhikar whether it was night or day c mid-afternoon. Nor was ther| anything else in the picture ti give any one a clue. All the wc men dressed the same whether : was morning, noon or night. An as for the girl who was an invali and was put on a surgical bed, thought it was the limit when sh was made to wear the sort of dres which one would wear when goin. out. No sir, you just can't do tha not even if she is playing the pai, of a girl of unsound mind. Also I have never seen any thin look so horrible as the sight < those balloons which were put ir; to a glass case for decoration 1 that same basement set. Where i any house of any rich man wM can afford to have the thin|, which the owner of the basemer had, would you find balloons in glass case? And you call that fill? direction? And there was muc more in that picture in that san; vein all of which I cannot remerr ber now.