Short History of Indian Cinema Hindi Cinema History of Bollywood Cinema

Short History of Indian Cinema Hindi Cinema History of Bollywood Cinema
Movie Industry which is in Mumbai which makes Hindi Cinema or Hindi Language Movies is called as Bollywood.

Meaning of Bollywood – A movie made in Mumbai that is Bombay in a Hindi Language.

Bollywood does not include the movies made in other languages.

But Bollywood rules on the heart of India and Indian citizens or NRIs.

Year 1970 - Bollywood name is inspired from Hollywood and Tollywood.
Hollywood is the center of the American film industry.
Tollywood year 1932 – Name for the cinema of West Bengal


July 7, 1896 –
Lumiere Brothers' Cinematographe unveiled six soundless short films, on July 7, 1896, at the Watson Hotel in Mumbai.
This was just one year after the Lumière brothers (inventors of cinematography) had set up their company in Paris .

Year 1899 –
Indian Save Dada shot two short films and exhibited them under Edison's projecting kinetoscope.
The first Indian on record to make a movie was Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatvadekar (nickname: Save Dada).
He made one short film on a wrestling match at the Hanging Gardens in Bombay , and another on the playfulness of monkeys.
Both these shorts were made in 1897 and were publicly exhibited for the first time in 1899 using Edison 's projecting kinetoscope inside a tent which the film maker had himself erected.

The 1920s saw the growth of Indian cinema, as well as the introduction of legal censorship.

What is the name of the First movie made in Bollywood or Hindi Cinema?
Year 1913 –
Raja Harishchandra (1913), by Dadasaheb Phalke [ Dhundiraj Govind Phalke ] was the first silent feature film made in India. Raja Harishchandra movie was inspired from the story of Mahabharata.
The film had titles in Hindi and English, and was released on May 3, 1913 at the Coronation Cinema in Mumbai.

Dadasaheb Phalke was a very intelligent before turning to movies he got experience or career as a painter, photographer, playwright and magician.
Phalke was inspired to make a film about Indian mythology after seeing a film about the life of Christ.

Thus Indian cinema Hindi Cinema started its journey , a never ending journey
Dadasaheb Phalke, whose real name was Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, is considered the founder and the 'father' of Indian cinema.
He was born on 30 April, 1870 at Trimbakeshwar, near the Maharashtrian city of Nasik. He was from a family of priests and had a strong religious upbringing.

At the age of 15, he joined the JJ School of Art in Bombay and, after passing his exams there, went on to study at Kalabhavan (now a part of the University) in the Gujarat city of Baroda. There he studied sculpture, engineering drawing, painting and photography.

He met Carl Heinz, a German who worked for the Lumière Brothers. Then he grabbed the opportunity to work with the Archaeological Survey of India as a draftsman.
But he couldn't settle in the job, and turned to the business of printing, going on to specialise in lithography and oleography. He also worked for a certain Raja Ravi Varma as a painter.

But with his experience in printing, he went on to establish his own press and made his first trip abroad to Germany to learn about the latest technology and machinery.
But then he gave up his business after a dispute with his partners and after watching a silent movie, The Life of Christ, turned to moving pictures and envisaged Indian gods on the screen. With this in mind, he began to make India's first silent feature-length movie, Raja Harishchandra in 1912, and released it the following year.

With five partners from Bombay, Phalke went on to form Hindustan Films.

The 1930s have been recognised as a decade of social protests and saw the rise of three big banners: Prabhat, Bombay Talkies and New Theatres.

Ardeshir Irani, whose full name was Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Irani, produced his first silent movie, the feature-length Nala Dayamanti, which was released in 1920.
Two years later, Irani joined former manager of Phalke's Hindustan Films, Bhogilal Dave, and they established their own company, Star Films.
But after over a half a dozen films, the partnership was dissolved and in 1924, Irani established another company, Majestic Films, and was joined by two talented people, BP Mishra and Naval Gandhi. This was also short-lived.

In 1925, Irani established Imperial Films and with that he went on to make 62 films.
He stopped his film-making during the Second World War and his last film, Pujari was released in 1945. He passed away on 14 October, 1969.


The first Indian sound film, Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara (1931), was a major commercial success.
1930 - Achhut Kaniya, meaning 'Untouchable Maiden'. Great Movie
This introduced the famous actor, Ashok Kumar from Bhagalpur, Bengal, whose full name was Sanjay Ashok Kumar Ganguly. The leading female role, as the untouchable maiden, was played by Devika Rani, wife of the producer, Himanshu Rai, and joint owner with him of Bombay Talkies.

Achhut Kaniya is a love story between untouchable female and Brahmin Boy.

Fearless Nadia, the Stunt Queen

The 1930s saw another change in the film industry and that was the introduction of a stunt woman, known popularly as 'Fearless Nadia'. Born as Mary Anne Evans on 8 January, 1908 in Perth, Australia, she first appeared in the movie Lal-e-Yaman in 1933.

She became an instant hit after she was introduced to Hindi movies by JBH Wadia, the founder and owner of Wadia Movietone.

But in 1935, her most memorable movie, Hunterwali, was released. In it she dressed in tight, revealing clothes and tall boots, while wielding a whip – this image became iconic in the 1930s. The following year, another movie was released, Miss Frontier Mail, in which she played the role of Savita, also known as Miss 1936, an amateur hunter.

The follow up to her famous iconic image did not appear until 1943 with the release of film entitled Hunterwali Ki Beti ('Daughter of Hunterwali').

Fearless Nadia continued to work in the films until 1970, when her last film, Ek Nanhi Munni Ladki Thi, was released. The cast included Prithviraj Kapoor and Shatrughan Sinha, who had debuted in the movie Sajan in 1969.

Mary Anne Evans, 'Fearless Nadia', passed away on 9 January, 1996.

The 1940s

Movie Name - Anmol Ghadi

One of the best remembered films of the 1940s was Anmol Ghadi ('Precious Time'). It was released in 1946, directed and produced by Mehboob Khan and starred Surendra, Suraiya and Noor Jehan. The songs were also memorable: Suraiya and Noor Jehan sang their own songs. Surendra sang some of his songs but others were lip-synched to playback artist Mohd Rafi. Shamshad Begum provided playback for the other songs in the film

The story is that of a man called Chandrabahan (Surendra), who as a child falls in love with Lata (Noor Jehan) but she leaves the town and the only thing he has to remember her by is a small clock. Years later, he finds work in a music shop; he becomes fascinated by the poetry of Renuka Devi, and longs to meet her. He meets Devi's friend Basanti (Suraiya), who falls in love with him, but he can't return her love as he is not able to forget Lata. Later, he does indeed meet Renuka Devi, who turns out to be none other than his childhood sweetheart Lata, but she is already engaged to the owner of the music shop.

The three most memorable songs of this film, which went on to become popular hits, were 'Jawan Hai Mohabat' (Young love), 'Mere Bachpan Ke Saathi' (My Childhood friend) and 'Aaja Meri Barbad Mohabat Ke Sahare'. Lip-synching by the actors at the time was not perfect but it still managed to work properly on screen.

Anmol Ghadi set the trend for new films relating to triangular love stories.

One of the most memorable films of the early 1940s was Kismet, which means 'luck' and which starred Ashok Kumar and Mumtaz Shanti. This film set a trend in the film industry with its theme of the separation of brothers

Throughout the 1950s, Dilip Kumar was one of the biggest stars, along with Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand.


The first Indian talkie, Alam Ara was a 124-minute feature produced by the Imperial Film Company in Mumbai and directed by Ardershir Irani.
Advertised as an all talking, all singing, all dancing film

The first International Film Festival of India was held in Bombay , Madras and Calcutta by the Films Division in 1952. Western classics like De Sica's Bicycle Thieves shown in the film festival

The period from the late 1940s to the 1960s is regarded by film historians as the "Golden Age" of Hindi cinema.
In this period Best Movies of Bollywood were made for which today also we do not find any match. Few to mention are
1. Guru Dutt films Pyaasa (1957)
2. Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959)
3. the Raj Kapoor films Awaara (1951)
4. Shree 420 (1955)
5. Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
6. K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam (1960).
7. Madhumati (1958), directed by Bimal Roy and written by Ritwik Ghatak
8. Bimal Roy's Two Acres of Land - 1953
9. Vijay Bhatt's Baiju Bawra - 1952

Guru Dutt his fame is still rising in his own life time he did not see the fame today which he enjoys.
Now days Guru Dutt is regarded as the one of the top most movie maker of all time from Asia.

The 2002 Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll of greatest filmmakers ranked Guru Dutt at No. 73 on the list.
Some of his films are now included among the greatest films of all time, with Pyaasa (1957) being featured in Time magazine's "All-TIME" 100 best movies list
and with both Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) tied at #160 in the 2002 Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll of all-time greatest films.

Several other Hindi films from this era were also ranked in the Sight & Sound poll, including
Raj Kapoor's Awaara (1951),
Vijay Bhatt's Baiju Bawra (1952),
Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957)
K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam (1960) all tied at #346 on the list.



First there was a studio system where everyone was servant of the studio owners but after 1960 , Stardom started to grow and producers and directors started to run behind stars and many made their own groups and made movies.

The Film Training Institute of India (FTII - presently Film and Television Institute of India) was set up in Pune in 1961
The National Film Archives of India (NFAI) was established in 1964.
The Film Finance Corporation (FFC) was set up by the Government in 1960, with the objective of giving loans to directors who wanted to make feature films not commercial movies.

Satyajit Ray founded a film society in Calcutta in 1947.

Indian Parallel Cinema:
Pather Panchali (1955) Satyajit Ray
Ritwik Ghatak made his first film Nagarik in 1952, he became well known by his film Ajantrik (1958) and became a strong presence in parallel cinema.
Mrinal Sen made his first film Raatbhor in 1955.

Mrinal Sen's Bhuvan Shome (1969) and Mani Kaul's Uski Roti (1969), both sponsored by State owned Film Finance Corporation (FFC), inspired by the French nouvelle vague,

There have been many stars, such as Prithviraj Kapoor, Ashok Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, and Dev Anand, just to mention a few, but the title 'superstar' first time enjoyed by Kundan Lal Saigal .
Kundan Lal Saigal, more famously remembered as KL Saigal, was born in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Saigal had acted in a total of 36 feature films before he passed away in 1947. He moved to Bombay in 1941 and worked for the company Ranjit Movietone

In Hindi Cinema Amitabh Bachchan is known as Angry Young Man and now he is known as Big B.

Period 1960 to 1975 – We can call this era ,era of romantic movies.

1975 – Sholay was released which broke records and made records.
Sholay – Actor - Amitabh Bachchan
Deewar – Actor Amitabh Bachchan

Jai Santoshi Maa was released in 1975.

After this one man Big B started to change everything and still today he is ruling the Bollywood and khans are fighting to replace him.

But no one can match the Big B and his stardom.

After Year 2000 Bollywood started to spread globally very fast.

I am not mentioning the names of all the Bollywood Stars and producers and directors who are popular in India or who once ruled the Bollywood.

Indian Actors worked in Hollywood movies also.
Indian Actress also worked in Hollywood.

Shashi Kapoor appeared in Conrad Rook's Siddhartha and in Ruth Prawer Jhabwala's Heat and Dust.

The late IS Johar was in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia.

Simi Garewall appeared in Conrad Rook's Siddhartha.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan starred in The Last Legion, The Pink Panther 2, Gurinder Chaddha's Bride and Prejudice and Provoked as well as being a former Miss World.

Om Puri was in East Is East, Charlie Wilson's War and Gandhi.

Movie director Shekhar Kapoor, who directed the famous Bollywood movie Mr India, also directed the movie Elizabeth and received an Academy Award for it.

Indian Actress
Madhubala
One of the most memorable actresses has to be Mumtaz Begum Jehan Dehlavi, remembered as 'Madhubala'.
She starred in many films now known as classics, such as Mughal-E-Azam, Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, Howrah Bridge and Mahal.

Born in 1933, in a conservative Muslim and ethnic Pathan family in Delhi, she was the fifth out of eleven children of Ataullah Khan.

After her father lost his job, the family endured many hardships, including the death of four sisters and two brothers.
Eventually they moved to Bombay in search of a better life but struggled to survive and frequently visited film studios for work.

She got her first film at the age of nine, entitled Basant (1942), in which she played the role of a daughter with a very popular actress at the time, Mumtaz Shanti.

She then went on to act in several films while still a child.
It was one of the owners of Bombay Talkies, Devika Rani, who advised her to change her name to 'Madhubala', being very impressed with her acting.

Madhubala's real break came in 1947, at the age of 14, when film-maker Kidar Sharma cast her opposite Raj Kapoor in his film, Neel Kamal.
Though the film was not a success, her talent was recognised and she soon went on to become a star: in 1949 she appeared in Mahal under the Bombay Talkies banner, which was directed by Kamal Amrohi and starred Ashok Kumar.

The film was a success and the song 'Aayega Aanewala' made Madhubala superstar

Madhubala had been born with a heart defect – a 'hole in the heart'
Her illness was kept quiet from those within the industry for many years.

Madhubala And Hollywood –
Madhubala got offers from the Hollywood to act in movies but her father refused them.
But She appeared in many American magazines - the most notable being 'Theatre Arts' (1952), in which there was an extensive article on her with a full page photograph. The heading was: 'The Biggest Star in the World (And she's not in Beverly Hills)'. The article went on to present her as a mysterious, delicate woman with mythical beauty and with a legion of fans.

The journey and history of Bollywood is never ending and fascinating

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Thursday, September 15, 2011

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