FilmIndia (1946)

FILM INDIA November, 1946 leased for want of evidence. Later the girl dies in an accident and the tramp is sentenced to death for her murder. The tramp gets the penalty for his crime all right but this retribution hardly takes three hundred feet of celluloid at the end and all the remaining footage of the film is devoted to this story of grim murder with protracted designs constantly under discussion revolving round the incidental romance. These type of pictures hardly entertain. The idea of taking a sweetheart to bed through planned murder of her husband is not only grotesque but very harmful from the social point of view. If the Hollywood producers wanted their Indian film fans to hear the soft and lustily-delivered dialogue of Lana, they could have done it doubly well in the usual entertaining story with a stereotyped pattern of love and happiness that we see so often on the screen. How the so-much boosted Production Code of Hollywood allows these type of stories for picturization is a wonder. The Yankees who often show extreme sensitiveness about the dialogue in British pictures are themselves expected to maintain some decency in the presentation of their stories. Our Censors here, of course, are not expected to object to such stories, because they can hardly distinguish between what is good and bad for the masses. In future, however, with a strict Production, Code for India in the making, Hollywood would do well to avoid these themes. If a motion picture entertains the people, it would have more than served its purpose, without teaching them to plan a heartless murder to consummate love. YOU'LL HARDLY BELIEVE:— That the latest discovery of the matronly film actress Shobhana Samarth is the painless delivery of her umpteenth baby. A local medico put her under gas and the child dropped out without a bother. So thrilled was Shobhana that she went and told everything about it to Russi Karanjia of "Blitz" and Russi yelled about it in the paper. Now Shobhana will have a dozen more painless babies, thanks to the medico. Even "Ram Rajya" was more painful, but that's because Vijoo doesn't use gas. He keeps it all in his own head. That this new baby gas will now be stored in every film studio for stars in labour. Nur Jehan, however, came to know about it all too late in the day. She had to bring out Shaukat II without gas. That boy is going to be a good director, we think. That Director Shantaram will have to buy some black-market stock of the baby gas for his affectionate wife Jayashree. She will need it during picture making with Shantaram acting romantic. The gas will make the sequence painless. Some gas should be reserved for the audience too. That our champion mother film-actress Leela Chitnis burst out laughing — not due to the laughing gas— when she read of Shobhana's painless-gas delivery. She has had so many deliveries that she doesn't remember now which was more painful. And after all what is a little pain after a lot of pleasure 1 That this painless gas, used on Shobhana, is going to be really useful as a first aid measure for independent producers delivering pictures out of hired studios. It can also be used for the audiences to make our pictures less painful. That with such an universal demand for the painless gas. Tarachand Atawalla will corner the present stocks and sell them on the footpath opposite Kamdas Sampat's house. It is a protected area because Daddy Dwarkadas has all the gun licenses in Bombay. That the story that Daddy Dwarkadas was approached by Bhendi Bazaar goondas for hiring out his guns can hardly be true. He had no guns to give, having already hire,! 'hem out to the film goondas. That some Punjabi "gentleman" called at Producer Kardar's house and threatened to set fire to his studio. Kardar referred the matter to the members of the "Paradise" and they sent Daddy Dwarkadas' guns to do the needful. The goonda is reported to have gone back to the Punjab without even meeting Xanda and Jagdecsh, the two Punjab's ambassadors in Bombay. That with riots in Bombay and cinemas closed, film producers have suddenly become conscious of their bank balances. No wonder bank clerks are asking for wage increase, the way they arc bothered by the producers. With that Bela-Lugosi look, David is not going to be popular with Rajkumari in "Dur Chalen" a social story of Durga Pictures.