FilmIndia (1940)

FILMINDl A May, 1940. sis was, I felt, on the background of a life lived amid leisure and privilege; the appeal for the four anna public lay clearly in these glimpses of a higher existence, devoted to fast cars, picnics, and amateur theatricals, not in the comforting fact that these beings intended to work for them in future. ACHHUT — Genuine Social Film "Achhut," on the other hand, was a genuine social film of the "Dead End" type. It dealt squarely with the problem of the Untouchables as a class, not as isolated oppressed individuals, and no false happy ending was introduced to obscure the moral issue; the ending on a symbolic question mark -was an index of the film's honesty. I imply by all this that the first necessity for a film of social propaganda must be the intention on the part of the director to make the social issues clear, and to state definitely that the leisured and the privileged should devote more attention to them. These slick Bombay and Calcutta films do something towards that; at least they point out that the wealthy have a duty towards the less fortunate. But precisely what that duty is, beyond vaguely "working for the poor," or precisely what the exis tence of the very poor is like, they fail to convey. In that sense, they cleave more to the "You Can't Take It With You," than the "Dead End" school: they prefer to base their appeal rather on pictures of upperclass life than on the condition of the poor; to that extent they compromise with the box office. As entertainment these pictures are first class; as propaganda they can be only moderately good. REAL UNDERSTANDING NECESSARY! It is a feature of the rapidly changing structure of present day society that change in the conditions of the lower classes must come by concession from the more wealthy; if they don't, they have a habit of coming by force. The gulf of outlook between the upper and lower classes must be bridged by a real understanding on the part of the wealthy as to what the lives of the poor are really like. (It was only when books and pamphlets were produced on the subject of child labour in Victorian England that a change in their treatment arose) . If the wealthy prefer to move solely in their own orbit, and to look at the working classes through rose-tinted spectacles, the gulf widens, and change may come ultimately by force. It is one of the duties of the film producer to see that this gulf is bridged; that, by seeing the facts of the "other world's" existence the middle and upper classes can be stimulated to do something about them. It can be objected that educating the film public is a slow process; that these films go as far as is possible in their presentations of the "pity the poor rich" angle. The public, it is said, would not, at present, go and see a film about themselves and their humdrum daily lives. That used to be a sound tenet in Hollywood; a director, fifteen years ago, would have laughed at the idea of putting the New York slums plainly and nakedly on the screen. Yet "Dead End" was made and was an enormous success. One thing the pundits of the film world have realised is that there are no hard and fast rules about film subjects; even the love interest, that sine qua non of the early Hollywood, has been found sometimes unnecessary (vide Mutiny on the Bounty, and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer). As Paul Rotha said, in Celluloid, The intellectual value of a film should be slightly above the grasp of the average member of ROSE, PRITHVIRAJ, and DIXIT make many a situation interesting in "India To-Day", a Ran jit Ticture.