The Silent Era of Indian Cinema

Indians are known to follow three things religiously namely cricket, cinema and religion itself. Among these, cinema has influenced their life more than anything else. And this love for cinema is old as cinema itself and people used to flock the theatres to see the silent movies. The history of Indian cinema is more than 100 years old. The first silent movie to be released in India was on 7th July 1897 at Hotel Watson in Bombay by the Leiumour Brothers who produced the film. The film had only six scenes in all and was 10 minutes long. The first Indian to produce a film was H.S.Bhatwdekar. He got a camera from London and shot 2 scenes of 3 minutes each. He titled them as Do Pahalwanon Ki Kushti  and Bandar Kho Nachata Hua Madaari, which was released in December 1889. On 1^st January 1900, a Britisher by the name of Mr Taivello released a silent movie at Novelty Cinema at Lamington Road, Bombay. Fatima, an Indian dancer was the star of the movie. Ram Chandra Gopal Torne, N.G. Chitre and Stevenson, a cinematographer jointly produced a 22 minutes silent film named Pundalik. This film was based on a life of an actual saint from Maharashtra. But the year 1913 saw the real evolution of Indian cinema. A full length silent movie was produced by one Mr Dadasaheb Phalke, who later on earned the title of the father of Indian cinema. The name of the movie was ‘Raja Harishchandra’ and it was based on the Sanskrit epic of a famous mythological king of India. The total length of the movie was 40 minutes. A unique feature about this movie was that there were no female artists in it as working in a movie was a taboo and the male artists enacted the roles of female characters. It was a taboo to such an extent in the society that Dadasaheb Phalke had to tell his artists to tell everybody that they were working in a factory of a man named Harishchadra. The movie had English and Hindi subtitles and was released at the coronation Cinema in Bombay. Dadashaeb made many other movies after this. He made Mohini Bhasmasur in 1913, Satyavan Savitri in 1914 and Lanka Dahan in 1917. Lanka Dahan went on to become India’s first box office hit. Many silent movies were made in the 1920’s. Dhiren ganguly made Bilat Ferat, a love story in 1921. Madan made Nala Damayanti in 1921, Pati Bhakti in 1922 and Noor Jehan in 1923. The famous Baburao painter made Maya Bazaar in 1923, Kaala Naag in 1924 and Cinema Queen in 1926. Other  notable silent movies were Bhaneli Bhamini, Anarkali, Gopal Krishna, Chandramukhi, Hatim Tai, Diler Jigar, Raajrani Meera. Though these movies were known as silent movies, they had music which was made by certain instruments like a tabla, flute or a sitar which would accompany the scenes. As there were no dialogues, they had subtitles mainly in English and one regional language. In the year 1931 Ardeshir  Irani made India’s first talking movie that is movie with sound and dialogues, Alam Ara. With this a new chapter in cinema started. Silent movies were still produced at this time but within a short span of time it eventually died out as it could not meet with the competition of talking cinema as people preferred the later. Many artist who did very well during the silent era struggled as they were not good in dialogue delivery but at the same time artist with excellent voice and acting power came to the limelight. Songs were an addition feature added to the cinema. Nearly half a century later, in 1988 S.Sreenivas Rao experimented with a silent movie named Pushpak which had no dialogues or subtitles. Well known actor Kamal Hasan was the lead actor of the movie. The movie was made very well and went on to become a big box office hit.