Filmindia (1941)

Proprietors : FILMINOIA PUBLICATIONS Ltd Sir PheronhahMehta Pd., Fort BOMBAY filmindia Editor: BABURAO PATEL VOL. 7 NO. 10 OCTOBER, 1941 A NATION'S ENVOY PRODUCER JAMSHED WADIA has gone out and done it. For years several Indian producers have been talking tall about producing the first Indian picture in English. We had heard of familiar plans of bringing over some of the Hollywood stars and technicians, of engaging special script writers and dialogue coaches, of taking up stories with universal appeal, of millions being ready to be released for a stupendous expenditure. And yet out of this huge mountain in an imaginative labour not even a rat turned up. Producer Jamshed Wadia went about quietly and with his proverbial modesty did it. And in doing so has given India its first picture in English — "The Court Dancer". We welcome "The Court Dancer'' — India's first picture in English. "The Court Dancer" is not merely another picture. It is an event in the Indian motion picture industry. It is the beginning of our cultural contact with the Western world. For, "The Court Dancer" will be going to strange lands carrying with it the evidence of India's ancient glory and the proofs of its present progress. This cultural aspect of the film has immense propaganda value for India in countries like America and England where the self-complacent white man, blinded by the intoxication of his own freedom, arrogates to himself a superiority of intellect and denies even a living space to the coloured man. And yet in this God's own world, designed to be blessed with peace and love, the white man today is solely responsible for creating an inferno of human carnage goaded by his greed and lust of power. To the white man civilization has become an excuse and democracy has become a slogan. In his temple, below the two sham domes of "civilization" and "democracy" is erected a deified guillotine with which human liberty, individual freedom and equality amongst hum?.n races are every day slaughtered with an easy conscience and the temple priests, parading themselves as heralds of democracy, use up all their intelligence while haranguing to justify the white man's deeds of blood and arson. They call it "war" and thus lend a respectability to their unending campaign of murder. But murder it is, all the same whether the apology is Fascism, Nazism, Socialism or Democracy. To the land of such men will go India's first picture in English talking to them, for the first time, in the language they understand and giving to them the first real glimpse of this great and ancient land. In a little over an hour, the white man of across the seas will be surprised out of his skin not with the technical excellence of "The Court Dancer" but with the thought that India, which has been to him a land of primitive, uncivilized people — as painted by imperialistic propaganda pamphlets — can produce such a picture and in a language of the rulers of the world.