BOLLYWOOD… (In the Entertainment industry. What is Bollywood?)

Fox Star Studios India / Photo Credit: Hollywood Reporter - Nyay Bhushan

BOLLYWOOD… (In the Entertainment industry. What is Bollywood?)

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Bollywood

Even if you’ve never actually seen a film from India, the word Bollywood immediately conjures up images of sumptuous, brightly colored productions shot in exotic locales featuring beautiful stars partaking in impressively choreographed song and dance numbers. But what is the history of India’s national cinema, and how did it grow to become one of the country’s most powerful and financially lucrative industries, and the world leader in both the number of films produced each year as well as audience attendance?

Origins

The word Bollywood is (obviously) a play on Hollywood, with the B coming from Bombay (now known as Mumbai), the center of the film world. The word was coined in the 1970s by the writer of a magazine gossip column, though there is disagreement as to which journalist was the first to use it. However, Indian cinema dates all the way back to 1913 and the silent film Raja Harishchandra, the first-ever Indian feature film. Its producer, Dadasaheb Phalke, was Indian cinema’s first mogul, and he oversaw the production of twenty-three films between 1913-1918. Yet unlike Hollywood, initial growth in the industry was slow.

The history of Indian Cinema goes back to the nineteenth century. In 1896, the very first films shot by the Lumiere Brothers were shown in Mumbai (then Bombay).

But history was actually created when Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatavdekar popularly known as Save Dada, the still photographer, was so much influenced by the Lumiere Brothers’ production that he ordered a camera from England. His first film was shot at the Hanging Gardens in Mumbai, known as ‘The Wrestlers’. It was a simple recording of a wrestling match which was screened in 1899 and is considered as the first motion picture in the Indian Film Industry.

Beginning of Bollywood

Father of Indian Cinema, Dadasaheb Phalke released the first ever full-length feature film ‘Raja Harishchandra’ in 1913. The silent film was a commercial success. Dadasaheb was not only the producer but was also the director, writer, cameraman, editor, make-up artist and art director. Raja Harischandra was the first-ever Indian film which was screened in London in 1914. Though Indian Cinema’s first mogul, Dadasaheb Phalke supervised and managed the production of twenty three films from 1913 to 1918, the initial growth of the Indian Film Industry was not as fast as that of Hollywood.

Numerous new production companies emerged in the early 1920s. Films based on mythological and historical facts and episodes from Mahabharata and Ramayana dominated the 20s but Indian audiences also welcomed Hollywood movies, especially the action films.

Hindi cinema, often metonymously referred to as Bollywood, is the Indian Hindi-language film industry, based in the city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Maharashtra, India. Bollywood the term being a portmanteau of Bombay and Hollywood. Bollywood is a part of the larger cinema of India (also known as Indywood), which includes other production centers producing films in other Indian languages. Linguistically, Bollywood films tend to use a colloquial dialect of Hindi-Urdu, or Hindustani, mutually intelligible to both Hindi and Urdu speakers, while modern Bollywood films also increasingly incorporate elements of Hinglish.

Indian cinema is the world's largest film industry in terms of film production, with an annual output of 1,986 feature films as of 2017, and Bollywood is its largest film producer, with 364 Hindi films produced annually as of 2017. Bollywood represents 43% of Indian net box office revenue, while Telugu and Tamil cinema represent 36%, and the rest of the regional cinema constitute 21%, as of 2014. Bollywood is thus one of the largest centers of film production in the world. In terms of ticket sales, Bollywood sells an estimated 3.6 billion tickets annually across the globe, compared to Hollywood's 2.6 billion tickets sold.

Beginning of the Talkies

The first ever talkie ‘Alam Ara’ by Ardeshir Irani was screened in Bombay in 1931. It was the first sound film in India. The release of Alam Ara started a new era in the history of Indian Cinema. Phiroz Shah was the first music director of Alam Ara. The first song which was recorded for Alam Ara in 1931 was ‘De khuda ke naam par’. It was sung by W.M. Khan.

Thereafter, several production companies emerged leading to an increase in the release of the number of films. 328 films were made in 1931 as compared to 108 in 1927. During this time, huge movie halls were built and there was a significant growth in the number of audiences.

During the 1930s and 1940s many eminent film personalities such as Debaki Bose, Chetan Anand, S.S. Vasan, Nitin Bose and many others emerged on the scene.

Growth of Regional Films

Not only did the country witness the growth of Hindi Cinema, but the regional film industry also made its own mark. The first Bengali feature film ‘Nal Damyanti’ in 1917 was produced by J.F. Madan with Italian actors in the leading roles. It was photographed by Jyotish Sarkar.

The year 1919 saw the screening of the first silent South Indian feature film named ‘Keechaka Vadham’. The movie was made by R. Nataraja Mudaliar of Madras (Chennai). Dadasaheb Phalke’s daughter Manadakini was the first female child star who acted as the child Krishna in Phalke’s ‘Kaliya Mardan’ in 1919.

The first ever talkie film in Bengali was ‘Jamai Shashthi’, which was screened in 1931 and produced by Madan Theatres Ltd. ‘Kalidass’ was the first Tamil talkie which was released in Madras on 31 October 1931 and directed by H.M. Reddy. Apart from Bengali and South Indian languages, regional films were also made in other languages such as Assamese, Oriya, Punjabi, Marathi, and many more.

‘Ayodhecha Raja’ was the first Marathi film which was directed by V. Shantaram in 1932. This film was made in double version. ‘Ayodhya ka Raja’ in Hindi and ‘Ayodhecha Raja’ in Marathi was the first ever Indian talkie produced by Prabhat Film Company in 1932.

Birth of a New Era

The number of films being produced saw a brief decline during the World War II. Basically the birth of modern Indian Film industry took place around 1947. The period witnessed a remarkable and outstanding transformation of the film industry. Notable filmmakers like Satyajit Ray, and Bimal Roy made movies which focused on the survival and daily miseries of the lower class. The historical and mythological subjects took a back seat and the films with social messages began to dominate the industry. These films were based on themes such as prostitution, dowry, polygamy and other malpractices which were prevalent in our society.

In the 1960s new directors like Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, and others focused on the real problems of the common man. They directed some outstanding movies which enabled the Indian film industry to carve a niche in the International film scenario.

The 1950s and 1960s are considered to be the golden age in the history of the Indian cinema and saw the rise of some memorable actors like Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari, Madhubala, Nargis, Nutan, Dev Anand, Waheeda Rehman, among others.

This article will be incomplete if the contribution of music in Indian cinema is not mentioned. Songs are an integral part of Indian movies. Presence of songs has given Indian films a distinctive look as compared to international films. The Indian film industry has produced many talented lyricists, music directors and artists.

Bollywood – The Pioneer of Masala Movies

The 1970s saw the advent of Masala movies in Bollywood. The audiences were captivated and mesmerized by the aura of actors like Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, Hema Malini, and many others.

The most prominent and successful director, Manmohan Desai was considered by several people as the father of Masala movies. According to Manmohan Desai, “I want people to forget their misery. I want to take them into a dream world where there is no poverty, where there are no beggars, where fate is kind and god is busy looking after its flock.”

Sholay, the groundbreaking film directed by Ramesh Sippy, not only got international accolades but also made Amitabh Bachchan a ‘Superstar’.

Several women directors like Meera Nair, Aparna Sen and others showcased their talents in the 1980s. How can we forget the extraordinary and splendid performance of Rekha in the film Umrao Jaan in 1981?

The 1990s saw a whole new batch of actors like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Aamir Khan, Juhi Chawla, Chiranjivi, and many more. This new genre of actors used new techniques to enhance their performances which further elevated and upgraded the Indian Film Industry. 2008 was a notable year for the Indian film industry as A.R. Rahman received two academy awards for best soundtrack for Slumdog Millionaire.

Indian cinema is no longer restricted to India and is now being well appreciated by international audiences. The contribution of the overseas market in Bollywood box office collections is quite remarkable. Around 30 film production companies were listed in National Stock Exchange of India in 2013. The multiplexes too have boomed in India due to tax incentives.

Indian cinema has become a part and parcel of our daily life whether it is a regional or a Bollywood movie. It has a major role to play in our society. Though entertainment is the key word of Indian cinema it has far more responsibility as it impacts the mind of the audiences.

Etymology

The name "Bollywood" is a portmanteau derived from Bombay (the former name for Mumbai) and Hollywood (in California), the center of the American film industry. The naming scheme for "Bollywood" was inspired by "Tollywood", the name that was used to refer to the cinema of West Bengal. Dating back to 1932, "Tollywood" was the earliest Hollywood-inspired name, referring to the Bengali film industry based in Tollygunge (in Calcutta, West Bengal), whose name is reminiscent of "Hollywood" and was the centre of the cinema of India at the time. It was this "chance juxtaposition of two pairs of rhyming syllables," Holly and Tolly, that led to the portmanteau name "Tollywood" being coined. The name "Tollywood" went on to be used as a nickname for the Bengali film industry by the popular Calcutta-based Junior Statesman youth magazine, establishing a precedent for other film industries to use similar-sounding names, eventually leading to the coining of "Bollywood". "Tollywood" is now also popularly used to refer to the Telugu film industry in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

The term "Bollywood" itself has origins in the 1970s, when India overtook the United States as the world's largest film producer. Credit for the term has been claimed by several different people, including the lyricist, filmmaker and scholar Amit Khanna, and the journalist Bevinda Collaco. Bollywood does not exist as a physical place. Some deplore the name, arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood.

History

Early history (1910s–1940s)

Raja Harishchandra (1913), by Dadasaheb Phalke, is known as the first silent feature film made in India. By the 1930s, the industry was producing over 200 films per annum. The first Indian sound film, Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara (1931), was a major commercial success. There was clearly a huge market for talkies and musicals; Bollywood and all the regional film industries quickly switched to sound filming.

The 1930s and 1940s were tumultuous times: India was buffeted by the Great Depression, World War II, the Indian independence movement, and the violence of the Partition. Most Bollywood films were unabashedly escapist, but there were also a number of filmmakers who tackled tough social issues, or used the struggle for Indian independence as a backdrop for their plots.

In 1937, Ardeshir Irani, of Alam Ara fame, made the first color film in Hindi, Kisan Kanya. The next year, he made another color film, a version of Mother India. However, color did not become a popular feature until the late 1950s. At this time, lavish romantic musicals and melodramas were the staple fare at the cinema.

Prior to the 1947 partition of India, which was divided into the Republic of India and Pakistan, the Bombay film industry (now called Bollywood) was closely to the Lahore film industry (now the Lollywood industry of Pakistani cinema), as both produced films in Hindi-Urdu, or Hindustani, the lingua franca across northern and central India. In the 1940s, many actors, filmmakers and musicians in the Lahore industry migrated to the Bombay industry, including actors such as K.L. Saigal, Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand and singers such as Mohammed Rafi, Noorjahan and Shamshad Begum. Around that time, filmmakers and actors from the Bengali film industry based in Calcutta (now Kolkata) also began migrating to the Bombay film industry, which for decades after partition would be dominated by actors, filmmakers and musicians with origins in what is today Pakistani Punjab, along with those from Bengal.

Golden Age (late 1940s–1960s)

Following India's independence, the period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s is regarded by film historians as the "Golden Age" of Hindi cinema. Some of the most critically acclaimed Hindi films of all time were produced during this period. Examples include Pyaasa (1957) and Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) directed by Guru Dutt and written by Abrar Alvi, Awaara (1951) and Shree 420 (1955) directed by Raj Kapoor and written by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, and Aan (1952) directed by Mehboob Khan and starring Dilip Kumar. These films expressed social themes mainly dealing with working-class life in India, particularly urban life in the former two examples; Awaara presented the city as both a nightmare and a dream, while Pyaasa critiqued the unreality of city life.

Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957), a remake of his earlier Aurat (1940), was the first Indian film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, which it lost by a single vote. Mother India was also an important film that defined the conventions of Hindi cinema for decades. It spawned a new genre of dacoit films, which was further defined by Gunga Jumna (1961). Written and produced by Dilip Kumar, Gunga Jumna was a dacoit crime drama about two brothers on opposite sides of the law, a theme that later became common in Indian films since the 1970s. Madhumati (1958), directed by Bimal Roy and written by Ritwik Ghatak, popularised the theme of reincarnation in Western popular culture. Some of the most famous epic films of Hindi cinema were also produced at the time, such as K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam (1960). Other acclaimed mainstream Hindi filmmakers at the time included Kamal Amrohi and Vijay Bhatt.

Nargis, Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar in Andaz (1949). Kapoor and Kumar are among the greatest and most influential movie stars in the history of Indian cinema, while Nargis is one of its greatest actresses.

Successful actors at the time included Dilip Kumar, Pradeep Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, and Guru Dutt, while successful actresses included Sumitra Devi, Nargis, Suraiya, Vyjayanthimala, Meena Kumari, Nutan, Madhubala, Sadhana, Waheeda Rehman and Mala Sinha. The three most popular male Indian actors of the 1950s and 1960s were Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, and Dev Anand, each with their own unique acting style. Kapoor followed the "tramp" style of Charlie Chaplin, Anand modelled himself after the "suave" style of Hollywood movie stars like Gregory Peck and Cary Grant, and Kumar pioneered a form of method acting that was similar to yet predated Hollywood method actors such as Marlon Brando. Kumar, who was described as "the ultimate method actor" by Satyajit Ray and is considered one of India's greatest actors, inspired future generations of Indian actors; much like Brando's influence on Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, Kumar had a similar influence on later Indian actors such as Amitabh Bachchan, Naseeruddin Shah, Shah Rukh Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui.

While commercial Hindi cinema was thriving, the 1950s also saw the emergence of a new Parallel Cinema movement. Though the movement was mainly led by Bengali cinema, it also began gaining prominence in Hindi cinema. The movement emphasized social realism. Early examples of films in this movement include Dharti Ke Lal (1946) directed by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and based on the Bengal famine of 1943, Neecha Nagar (1946) directed by Chetan Anand and written by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, and Bimal Roy's Do Bigha Zamin (1953). Their critical acclaim, as well as the latter's commercial success, paved the way for Indian neorealism and the Indian New Wave. Some of the internationally acclaimed Hindi filmmakers involved in the movement included Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Ketan Mehta, Govind Nihalani, Shyam Benegal and Vijaya Mehta.

Ever since the social realist film Neecha Nagar won the Grand Prize at the first Cannes Film Festival, Hindi films were frequently in competition for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, with some of them winning major prizes at the festival. Guru Dutt, while overlooked in his own lifetime, had belatedly generated international recognition much later in the 1980s. Dutt is now regarded as one of the greatest Asian filmmakers of all time, alongside the more famous Indian Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray. The 2002 Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll of greatest filmmakers ranked 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 No. 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) and K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam (1960) all tied at No. 346 on the list.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the industry was dominated by musical romance films with "romantic hero" leads, the most popular being Rajesh Khanna. Other actors during this period include Shammi Kapoor, Jeetendra, Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, and Shashi Kapoor, and actresses like Sharmila Tagore, Mumtaz, Saira Banu, and Asha Parekh.

Sources, References & Credits: Google, Wikipedia, Wikihow, Pinterest, IMDB, Linked In, Indie Wire, Film Making Stuff, Hiive, Film Daily, New York Film Academy, The Balance, The Numbers, Film Maker, TV Guide Magazine, Media Match, Quora, Creative Skill Set, Investopedia, Variety, No Film School, Daily Variety, The Film Agency, Best Sample Resume, How Stuff Works, Career Trend, Producer's Code of Credits, Producers Guild of America, Film Connection, Entertainment Careers, Adhere Creative, In Deed, Glass Door, Pay Scale, Merriam-Webster, Job Monkey, Studio Binder, The Collective, Production Hub, The Producer's Business Handbook by John J. Lee Jr., Andrew Grant, Thought Company, Phalke Factory,

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