FilmIndia (1939)

March 1939 FILM INDIA hopelessly incompetent) actor was starred opposite the world's most competent (though plain looking) film actress was somehow an epoch-making event. I disliked "Camille" because it was boring and because I prefer to see courtesans behaving like courtesans and not like imitation Madonnas. But, to return to "Adhikar", I do regard it as a good film, in no way inferior to many of the "hits" that have recently come out of the "big houses" of Hollywood. Even if Mr. Karaka did not like the film, he should have at least admitted that it is superbly photographed. Doesn't it prove, technically to be a great advance over "The Vamp" which he saw many years ago "somewhere on the Girgaum Road". THE "BURRA SAHIB" ATTITUDE But, no, Mr. Karaka was determined to dislike "Adhikar" and he must be given credit for consistency! Most of the things of which he makes fun, however, reveal the attitude of "completely helpless men", who may know a lot about the world but very little about India! Almost with the contemptuous indifference of a 'burra sahib' he admits that the 'vernaculars' are not his strong point. I will not quarrel with him over that though I do wish he had read a little less of Lejeune and a little more Hindusthani. The point, however, is that clearly Mr. Karaka did not fully follow the dialogue and naturally missed the point of the picture altogether. His approach was purely visual. He saw sets with chromium plated fittings and decided that the sophisticated atmosphere is "against all the environment, upbringing, culture and the life of the Indian people." What he did not realize was that that is exactly the point that the Director tries to make out. Pardonable artistic liberties and occasional individual whims apart, Barua has presented a successful •exposure of the life of the idle rich— their pride and their prejudices, their romantic preoccupations and emotional obsessions, their futile luxuries, their pathetic subservience to conventional morality. Mr. Karaka objects to "balloons in a glass case" and thinks you cannot find them in "any ncuse of any rich man who can anord to have the things which the owner of the basement had". I am really surprised. Mr. Karaka's intimate acquaintance with the Bombay "society" should have proved to him long ago that even much greater aesthetic monstrosities exist in the house of almost any rich man. I have personally seen steel-and-glass tables standing side by side with Louis XIV settees, rare Chinese vases rubbing shoulders with cheap Japanese nick nacks, an exquisite bronze Buddha under the shadow of the framed photograph of an American chorus girl, obviously torn from a fan magazine! Mr. Karaka is quite right when he says that "Social life of the type portrayed ip. Adhikar is almost entirely absent in India. Not point zero zero one per cent of three hundred and odd million people ever live or think like that." But, then, this is what the Director was all the time trying to say through the character of Radha, the girl brought up in slums, burning with proletarian bitterness to the extent of being irrational and exposing with devastating sarcasm the hollow pretensions of the rich and the mighty. "The Private Life of Henry VIII" was not unrepresentative of mediaeval England simply because not point zero zero zero zero one per cent of Englishmen ever had seven wives! The drabness and poverty of an average Indian's life can be successfully expressed on the screen only by depicting the contrasting luxuries of the idle rich. Mr. Karaka obviously makes an argument in favour of realism by talking about the "three hundred million odd people". And yet in the next breath he complains "All the women dressed the same whether it was morning, noon or night." He forgets that for the millions of Indian women, the sari is the only dress for "morning, noon or night". It is rather paradoxical that at the same time he says that "at no time did one know in "Adhikar" whether it was night or day." At least twice I still remember to have noticed the break of dawn being beautifully depicted in the film while usually lights burning in a room are regarded as sufficient to indicate that it is night time! Like the boards in old Shakespearean plays announcing "This is a forest", shall we now have sub-titles in films to remind Mr. Karaka "This is day time, please?" It is quite apparent that having missed the vital content of the film through his not following the dialogues (it is a pity they were in the vernacular), Mr. Karaka spent all his time looking for minor flaws which are not absent from even the best films — Indian, English, or American— and magnifies them to no purpose. "DRIFTING AWAY'" But the real reason for Mr. Karaka's impatience with "Adhikar" is his intellectual and emotional aloofness from the Indian psychology— that 'drifting away from the thought and opinion that dominate my country' of which he himself speaks in his book. I don't blame Mr. Karaka for this. Historical causes beyond his own control are responsible for a state of affairs in our country when highly educated young men know more about Shakespeare than Kalidasa and though they may be able perfectly to execute a Lambeth Walk they are often found asking whether kathakali is a dance or a disease ! They can talk intelligently about the comparative merits of Rudy Vallee and Bing Crosby but have never heard of K. C. Dey, Saigal or Kananbala. They are amused by the crazy antics of Marx Brothers but are unable to appreciate Indian comedians as the latter crack jokes in the "vernacular"! (By the way Mr. Karaka may describe Kapur's acting in "Adhikar" as "a feeble attempt at comedy" but I heard peals of laughter at almost every word he uttered). THE TEA CUP EPISODE As an illustration, take Mr. Karaka's objection to what I might 39