FilmIndia (1946)

April, 1946 FILM IN D I A What a wonderful code of behaviour is prescribed for i married Hindu woman! We wonder whether the producer's or the director's wife did the same in their early lays of wedlock. In die producer's home when this educated girl from rood society dances she advises all the members to drink o their hearts' content giving short life as an excuse and ouch as a passing phase. She asks them all to fill their yes with her youth and get intoxicated. What a pattern it behaviour is thus prescribed for the educated girls ol ndia! One has only to see these lewd and filthy sequences etwcen the film producer and the film star to be com detelv disgusted with the Indian films, the Indian film in lus.rv and the Indian film stars. These sequences constiute the most disgusting slander on the Indian film industry. In producing "Din Raat" what do the Navyug Chirapat seek to portrav? Do they mean to tell us that the ndian film industry is full of debauched producers who are laily demoralizing girls from good society by lewd overures during working hours.3 Do the \a\jyug Chitrapat lare to suggest that all the educated girls from good so iety, who are working in the films today, are of the type ►ortrayed in the picture3 And yet whai else can the public conclude seeing the ingle film producer and the single film star, as shown in he picture, become representative |iortr.iv.ils ol the film ndustry ? We challenge the Navyug Chitrapat Ltd. to point out o us a single producer in our film industry today doing he dirty things as shown in the picture. It they can't do o what type of realism were the NTavayug people trying to Hasrat," a story of New India Pictures, Rani Bala plays the lead. show? Such putrid imagination divorced from all sense of decency deserves to be condemned by all decent people. To what extent can the filthy imagination of a producer be permitted to stretch to earn some filthy lucre? Should the child bite the breast of the loving mother that feeds it? We wrote about this to Rai Bahadur Chuni Lall, the President of the Indian Motion Picture Producers' Association. Responding to our urgent call from a sick bed, he went to see this picture and now writes to us: "I quite agree with you that the picture as it stands at present disgraces everybody connected with the Indian film industry and particularly the producers and the artistes." And yet this disgusting slander against his community has been forged by a film producer. Can perversion go lurther.3 And can the producers blame those members of yellow journalism who keep on shouting to the world that all film producers are unpunished scoundrels, when a film producer himself depicts vividly before millions the debauched life of a film producer? In "The Journal of the Film Industry", the official organ of the Producers' Association, Editor k. M. Multani shouts himself hoarse throwing blame at the door of the journalists for running down the producers in and out of season. What has he to say now about the 11,000 feet of celluloid slander exposed before millions by a member of his own brotherhood.3 Though tragic, the situation has in it some cruel humour from which it is difficult to escape. For twelve long years, "filmindia" has been shouting itself hoarse asking boys and girls from good society to join the film industry. After years of hard work, propaganda and argument we have been able to induce numerous educated persons, men and women, to take up the film as a career. Today we have hundreds of graduates working in different departments ot our film industry. All these people s.and condemned today because of the cowardly slander of a single producer who thinks that the film industry is still crowded with demoralized persons. If "Din Raat" is allowed to continue on its merry career in its present shameful form, no decent man or woman will care to associate with the Indian film industry. A producer like Rai Bahadur Chuni Lall who insists on employing educated and cultured talent may well give up his future hopes of getting such persons to work in the industry. Millions are going to laugh at our industry after seeing "Din Raat". Those who are in the industry today and have slaved for years to build it into a national industry .ire likely to go down in the esteem of the good people of die world when they meet others in different walks of life. And all this because one dastardly producer has the impudence to condemn a whole community of film producers. We shall wait and see what action the august association of our producers takes against this picture. The least that should be done, and immediately, is to stop circulation of this picture and revise it suitably before releasing u again for mass entertainment. If the Producers' Association lails to do this, it must accept, willingly or unwillingly, a complete condemnation of all its members and ot those working in the industry — and at the hands of a film producer. 5