FilmIndia (1948)

J 948 FILM INDIA J rious profession have so far escaped due to the ■ nee of a specific law. No one knows what happened to the bill and Qg the time that has elapsed since its introducthe racketeering in cinema tickets is steadily he increase and has been ruthlessly robbing the and middle c'ass picture-goer of his harded money. It is very easy to advise cinemagoers not to tickets from unauthorized persons at a premium heir price. In fact it is as easy as to ask passes not to try to board crowded tram cars or [tr?ins. But such advice never holds any water. In a city like Bombay all people cannot be exed to find time to see pictures on any day of the L There are busy men who crn only find to see ;■. picture' on a certain day and at ertain hour which they can conveniently e out of their normal working programmes. y have a right to get tickets for that particular • without having to pay any premium if they careful enough to book in time. But when they h the theatre even in good time they arc told tickets were "sold out"', and yet they find ticketd g sold out — out of the booking office— by hawk< Kt anything from double to four times the print \ irice. These people do not like to go back withseeing the show for which they may have come i a long distance, may have cancelled other gements ;\nd may have also spent some convc■e fare. They must needs pay the premium rected by Raj Kapoor. through their nose. It is no good advising such people not to buy blackmarket tickets. Xo one ever wants to pay for a thing any price higher than its legitimate value, just for the fun of spending money. People are always compelled to pay higher prices for various reasons. Advising them not to do so is no effective remedy for the evil of black-marketeering and profiteering in any commodity or luxury as also in the cinema tickets. Wake up, Law-Makers! The only remedy lies in bringing to book the people carrying on this illegal and immoral trade and those abetting them therein. And while the sufferers of the evil and their sympathizers have gone on crying hoarse for so many veins, the authorities concerned have contented themselves by suggesting all futile ways of minimising the evil except the only one which alone is capable of proving effective to some extent at any rate. The evil cannot be checked in any other way. It must be checked by punitive laws. The Bombay Legislature is well-known for the speed with which it often passes bills and turns them into acts and laws. There are instances of the legislature having passed bills from all the readings in a twinkling of the eye. One fails to see, therefore, why such an important bill is still allowed to rot, and the racketeering still allowed to persist and grow day by day and still escape scot free. WHITHER BOMBAY TALKIES? Affairs of the Bombay Talkies Ltd., do not appear to be in a«ny way heartening for the last five years. It is very long since the old days of the company's glory were over. The successive silver, golden ami diamond jubilees of the company's pictures, the huge annual profits r.nd the comparatively fat dividends to the share-holders are now matters of forgotten history. The present position of the company is anything but satisfrctory. Ever since the split in the Managing Agency of the company in 1943, its administration has kept on frequently changing hands with the result that most of those who handled it in turn paid greater attention to the purchase commissions, black market deals and private profiteering from the sales of the company's pictures than to the production of pictures and progress of the company. For the most part during the last five years the company's administration has remained in the hands of odd jobbers and market manipulators who knew as much about film production as the Bombay Mini-try knows about horse racing. But they knew a lot of other things and got away, one after another, with as much money as they could make from the various transactions, deals and bargains. The company did not produce a eingle picture after "Kismet" that could yield any money, while lavish amounts were spent on the production and publicity of the few pictures that were not able to pay even the cost of production. The result was II