FilmIndia (1948)

SUBSCRIPTION RATES The annual subscription, for 12 issues of "filmindia", from any month Is : INLAND FOREIGN: Rs. 24/Shillings 50/ Subscriptlon is accepted only for a collective period of 12 months and not for a smaller period. Subscription money should be remitted only by Money Order or by Postal Order but not by cheques. V. P. P.j w||| not be sent. filmindia PROPRIETORS FILMINDIA PUBLICATIONS LTD. 55. SIR PHIROZESH AH MEHTA ROAD, FORT. BOMBAY. Telephone : 26752 Editor: BABURAO PATEL Vol. XIV. APRIL 1948 No. 4. ADVERTISEMENT RATES: The advertisement rates are as follows : Per Insertion Full Page inside Rs. 400 Half Page inside Rs. 210 J Page inside Rs. 120 J Page inside Rs. 150 2nd & 3rd Cover Rs. 500 4th Cover Rs. 600 1st Cover Rs. 1,000 The cost of the advertisement should be submitted in advance with the order. The advertisement will be subject to the terms and conditions of our usual contract. Von V 'Mutdet 9 Makatma ^ain I ■QWatnuy % TL tfodtei' Of) %e Tllm (JnclulttLf The news that several film producers are conniplating the production of films on the life of (lahatma Gandhi has given us a shock. And when IV are told that of all of them, even the Ranjit Bovietone is making preparations for filming the le of Gandhiji, we feel actually horrified. The honest truth is— and every decent and sinjje person in the Industry will admit it— that pre is not a single producing concern in India toty capable of picturising Gandhiji's life. There is r actor in the country who can portray that great ent on the screen and there is not one director to can do justice to such an epoch-making film. ; Our film producers have already scandalised hdreds of the great Indians of the glorious past ■aints, poets, philosophers, kings, emperors, warps and others— whom history has immortalised 0 mythology has glorified by making them look al act like clowns and mountebanks or loafers and fasites. They have not spared the Hindu gods Mi goddesses nor even the incarnations of God Jnself hkc Rama and Krishna from their onJJglit. ( Xor have the Muslim heroes like Ghazi ■anuddin or the Muslim emperors, all the way ■rn Babar to Shahjehan, escaped this 'film mur [' .*V, 18 munier that these producers have ■imitted, for they have mercilesslv killed the beauII conception that we had formed of such great hons from what we learned about them in history, rthology, folk-lore or legend. k Ji1CKfi,hn 1,,;(,,,h,I('ers gave us a Vikram who lookland behaved like a cowherd, a Vidoor who actkin Br, ' a" Akbar *ho ^embled an opium 7, CTll,n?'™n, a Babar like a doorkeeper, Ka v yf ■ T S** I(,0ked di8siP*^ hashish n ?r l] M,('htas and Namde0s ^at acted 1 professional cooks and gluttons living on fune h rr l Z ' ^ , tHat l0°ked Hkc extraS «"* t\ nrd-rate actors, and Narads like circus clowns They have given us Savitris, Seetas and Damayantis who resembled dancing girls and vamps. „n onhere,is hai'dly any 0nc out of India's incomparable galaxy of Rishis, mahatmas, Saints and Sas and great men and women whom the film has faithfully represented and there is not a single picture made so far which has correctly interpreted the message or the ideas of any one of 'them Tr has even adhered wholly to historical truth Most of the Indian film poducers ha,ve not yet qualified themselves for producing anything better ver andCk7i?d. ""5 a thousand fnd stuffed silly sequences, vulgar songs and dances and almost obscene jokes. And moFe often than not, they have met with colossal FaihSes whenever they have tried to produce biographical or documentary pictures. «*P"«-di UnV,HVC are hmvfVC1;. Prepared to forgive them their belittling and ridiculing those mythological and legendary characters inasmuch as we have never personally seen them and we cannot find fault wTth the producer for having his own low conception of the personality of any one of them. But we can never forgive a producer portraying Gandhiji in the same shoddy manned for we have lived with Gandhiji, have heard him and seen him, and we know that a man has yet to be born who can represent him on the screen or the stage At present there is no one who can pose for a moon picture with even the remotest semblance with the worlds greatest man of the millennium. Apart from that, knowing as we do our present producers, it would be impossible for anv one of them to infuse the picture with the spi i/of Gan 3