FilmIndia (Jan-Nov 1942)

Producing Pictures For Half -Wits Sorry Tale Of Unreal Heroes And Dream Heroines ! The trouble with our film makers is that they underestimate the brain power of their public. When the Indian equivalents of Tom, Dick and Harry go to the pictures they do not go as critics, but on the other hand they do not leave their intelligence at home. They are not so under the spell of the Silver Screen that they can be fooled into believing every impossible thing they are shown. The average man in the street though he may not be a college graduate has sufficient intelligence to know a fairy tale from a real life story. So many Indian film stories are fairy tales. No one minds the producers filming fairy tales but every intelligent man must object to them being passed off as adult screen fare. Just consider the impossible situations depicted on the screen. We are shown a muscular hero lifting several men above his head and are expected to believe that he did it all with his own little muscles and that it is not just a trick played on us by the 'dickey bird' in the camera. Then too we are tired of seeing our manly hero stand up alone against at least twenty cut-throats, tear them asunder, practically throw their bodies to the winds and come out of the brawl without having lost an eye-lash. It would be refreshing and certainly seem more human if the hero occasionally got punched on the nose and the villain or villains got away with their villainy as they so often do in real life. The public likes its heroes to be real he-men but it does not expect them to perform super-human feats. Unconsciously every man in the audience sees himself in the hero'a place. But not even an exceptional The vamps are the last ivord in snaky allure. First girl pulls out hair of second girl and vice versa. ly imaginative man can picture himself jumping from roof-tops and hanging from cliffs by his toe-nails like many of our impossibly daring screen heroes. Then think of all the ridiculous love stories the producers expect the public to get sentimental over. Boy meets girl, they fall in love and then boy's love wanes. Eventually boy falls in love with another girl. First female sticks knife into her heart or swallows poison so that boy is free to marry second female. Very, very pretty no doubt, but incongruous in these days of sophistication. A real life story nowadays with Hanging from cliffs by his toe-nails. the same complications would read very differently. Boy meets girl; they fall in love; then boy falls out of love. Then boy falls for another woman. First girl pulls out hair of second girl and vice-versa. Boy marries neither. In the sentimental and impractical world of yesterday the film heroine who killed herself for the sake of her wandering lover would have seemed a noble and wonderful creature. But the practical audiences of today would consider her foolish and her act of sacrifice unnecessary and embarrassingly melodramatic. The present generation is embarrassed by sticky sentiment. Notice how an audience reacts to a prolonged love scene. They try to relieve the tension and hide their embarrassment with whistles and cat-calls. The trouble with film stories is that the characters are overdrawn. The heroines are too good to be true and too terribly honey-sweet and virtuous and the heroes are usually unbelievably noble and saintly. The vamps are the last word in snaky allure and the villains are so bad you can almost see Satan goading them on. Adult audiences want adult entertainment. A rattle won't entertain a child of ten. A fairy tale won't entertain a man of forty. Give us the real thing. Give us life as it really is. Give us producers who know that film audiences are not composed of half-wits. 33