Filmindia (1941)

Cjcc^l:f\je Cn^lan ----------- lln Englishman books Back Rod Remembers Our Rttractive Heroines-Praises filmindia Rnd Tells Some Home Truths I Gives Tim sly Tips To Producers'-^ — 1, I am leaving India this month exactly a year after my arrival here. I have never seen an Indian film cutside this country, and I doubt if I shall for a long, long, time. So this is goodbye to Indian films— and a few parting words. I remember very vividly my first visit to an Indian cinema. It was in Kathiawar, five days after I stepped off the boat. The Rajkot cinema was showing a Flash Gordon serial, and, in England, I had been a great Flash Gordon fan; to find one of his films in this exotic Oriental centre struck me as a worthy achievement for Western culture! The cinema was in a narrow street, like all the streets in Rajkot, and I found great difficulty in manoeuvring my car anywhere near entrance. There I saw a flaunting placard— "Orchestra here— U p p e r Classes here." Feeling superior to the Orchestra, I went into the Upper Classes. After the opulence of the British picture houses, I was impressed by four things; one was the fans (I was not yet used to their ubiquity) ; the second was the poorness of the lighting in the auditorium; the third was the interval, sprung on me in the middle of the film; and the fourth was my arm chair— admittedly the springs had fought the good fight and had expired some years ago — but still an arm chair. Most of these remarks could have been applied to the Indian cinemas I subsequently visited elsewhere, mostly in Madras. Only in Bombay (at the Roxy, the only Bombay cinema showing Indian films I have visited) have I found a standard of comfort approximating to the Euro By: John Alexander pean. On the whole even the best seats in the Madras cinemas were singularly uncomfortable, and considerations of leg room, particularly, seemed to be ignored. THE OUTRAGEOUS INTERVAL Now the interval. Personally I approve the principle very much ■ — one of the excellent things about that excellent M G M film, "The "Great Ziegfeld" was that it was made to be interrupted by a three minute interval. I find the pause gives one time to collect cne's thoughts, to analyse the film todate, and to guess at its ultimate value. (And I have found myself, during Indian pictures which shall be nameless, positively praying for the brief respite ! 1 Sardar Akhtar gives a beautiful performance in "Puja" an A. R. Kardar production of National Studios. But sc ms managers choose their moments oddly for cutting into the film. I remember in the Flash Gordon epic; Flash was cornered; he had lost his magic pistol: the Cave Dwellers were advancing on him with menacing gestures — then, just as I was tremb'ling with anxiety, the lights went up, and I was told, from the screen, what sort of "beedi" I would love to smoke. Others put the trailers (and what a lot of them at a time! Surely it's enoug'h merely to have one of the next attraction, not of the attractions for weeks to come!) in the interval — and that seems to me a great m.istake. Not all. though, will reach the heights of the following bit of exhibiting brilliance I saw in Madras. I was watching a Hindi picture, and, not knowing Hindi, I was following it with the most rapt attention. I was, getting along all right and had gathered who tlie heroine was expected to marry and other such important details, when suddenly the film took an incomprehensible turn. Characters appeared that I had never seen before; the locality changed, and from being a comedy, the film became the darkest of tragedies, in which flood, fire and murder followed each other with bewildering rapidity. I enquired timidly of the manager, thinking my cinema sense must have been at fault; he tcld me genially that the trailer of next week's attraction had got mixed up with the feature! Fortunately these mistakes seem to be infrequent. Showing trailers in the intei'val is due, perhaps, to the exhibitor, like the producers (of which more later) underrating the intelligence 59