FilmIndia (Jan-Jul 1943)

Editor Horniman Supports Sushila Rani "Kissing Is The Thing" Sags The Ueteran Journalist ( By A Special Correspondent ) "Give us a real kiss! That's an excellent slogan for the Indian screen. I fully support it." These are not the words of convention-defying Editor Baburao Patel or of a hot-headed youth with new-fangled ideas or of a fire-eating college girl champing at the bit and out to create a brave new world after her own heart. They are the cool, considered words of Bombay's journalist No. 1, elegant-looking Benjamin Guy Horniman, the dreaded editor of the dreaded Bombay Sentinel, spoken in an interview. B. G lives in a tastefully furnished flat with an oriental odour about it. This odour, I soon discovered, came from a bunch of Mysore agarbathis burning on the table. B.G., as Editor Horniman is popularly known, has not only adopted India as his own home, but likes to live in Indian style. An Englishman, he often used to appear in just a Khaddar lungi and shirt in his more stormy past, even now wears that costume at home, can squat on the floor for an Indian meal and can speak with authority on the relative merits of 'Dosai', 'Bhajias', 'Samusas' and many other choice things from the Indian kitchen . But I did not quite expect him to speak with equal authority on Indian films though I knew that B.G., like his more famous countryman Bernard Shaw living six thousand miles away, was once a music and dramatic critic. I knew too that he loved art. But I was doubtful whether he had ever taken any interest in Indian films, beyond the rumour that he was. once or twice, found dozing through an Indian picture. At most, I had hoped for a few casual criticisms on films in general, a few vitriolic remarks on the subject of Indian films and a few suggestions, based mostly on secondhand knowledge, but served up with the usual Horniman punch . Here I had reckoned wrongly. And, for the first time, I felt a little shaky in the presence of an Englishman who had seen about 75% of the pictures produced in this country, who was himself a film critic in the 'silent' days, and a director, to boot, on an Indian film-producing company . REMEMBERS THE FIRST PICTURE B. G. was in a pleasant, reminiscent mood . As the smoke from his cigar went up in spirals and formed quaint designs in the air, his mind travelled back, back through years of ceaseless struggle, clashes with the bureaucracy, fight for the underdog, his deportation and the last war, back to the period when pioneer Phalke was showing his first silent picture, "Harishchandra" in the city. "That was the first Indian picture, I saw," said B.G. "It produced a deep impression on my mind . I can never forget it." He saw another picture too at about the same time, wherein there was a demon-god or somebody equally pre-historic, who ran amuck and scared people with his power to destroy people with fire. One particular scene he could not forget. He had heartily laughed over it, then and he could not help laughing over it again as he recalled how a group of washermen and women, face to face with the demon, started scurrying away with unwieldy loads on their backs; what was known in those days as a "screen chase" . Editor B. G. Horniman. "It was a very funny sight," he added, "though not intended to be". PRAISES DEVIKA RANI The 'speechless' pictures of the early days seemed to have exercised a great fascination over him. He had nothing but praise for them, if only for the simple reason that they were speechless and did not therefore inflict on the audience the "bad diction and enunciation" of either the stage or the later innovation, the talkies. But the Indian talkie, he hastened to add, was a minor sinner in this respect when compared to its foreign prototype. "I am no pandit in Hindustani," B. G. remarked, "but I can make bold to say that the dialogues in the Indian pictures are clearer than, for instance, in the American pictures or the English. Speaking a foreign tongue, in the English picture "Karma" Devika Rani outshone many American and English stars in the matter of enunciation and there is none who can excel her." But B.G. finds too much seriousness and tragedy in Indian pictures. He would like to have more comedies of the type popularised by Bombay Talkies. "India," he said, "has a peculiar attitude in these matters. And that is why I wonder, sometimes, whether Indian pictures can appeal to a foreign audience. 35