The script has changed in Bollywood within the last 60 years – the ladies are more worldly, the lads more macho and the cinema itself more techno-savvy, almost pretty much as good as Hollywood, says veteran cinema writer and critic Bhaichand Patel.
“The women in Hindi cinema are more assertive though no less beautiful (than yesteryear ones), they sometimes smoke on screen and they're equal to men. Mainstream cinema was a fair trend-setter for equality of gender – it's happening now,” Patel told IANS in an interview.
“The hero, however, has not changed up to women though they – the crop represented by Salman Khan, Ajay Devgn and Amitabh Bachchan – are a bit more physical and action-oriented than the early superstars like Dilip Kumar and Raj Kumar”.
A former UN official, Patel studied filmmaking at The big apple University.
His new book, “Bollywood’s Top 20: Superstars of Indian Cinema”, launched Monday, has captured the entire structure of Indian cinema and its changing face with essays about 20 top stars at the basis in their popularity and talent.
“The 20 stars we've chosen don't seem to be necessarily essentially the most talented. But they were – a few of them still are – the most well liked in their times…Some of them have also created spectacular flops, the largest dud of all times, but that comes within their territory,” he said.
“The three stars I'D have loved to incorporate was Nadia, Nutan and Vyjayanthimala. Nadia was a perfect actor – she was jumping from train to train, hitting villains with whips and her horse was referred to as ‘Punjab ka beta’,” he said.
The writer, who was baptised into cinema as a child with ‘Fearless’ Nadia’s “Bombaiwalli” in 1941, says belying the notion that the anti-hero in Hindi cinema is a brand new trend, “the dark heroes have always been there – even within the old days”.
“I recall a movie, ‘Amar’, by which Dilip Kumar rapes a woman played by Nimmi after which marries her. However the movie flopped as it was prior to its time…Now heroes like Saif Ali Khan and Sanjay Dutt play villains and negative characters. Rishi Kapoor plays a foul man in ‘Agneepath’,” Patel said.
“But heroines are reluctant to play mothers. After 35-40 years, they're past their prime and it’s over for them,” Patel said.
Today’s cinema could be very different from those 30-40 years ago, music isn't pretty much as good because the music of the golden era of Indian movies within the 1950s.
“I miss the nice actors,” Patel said.
“From 1931, when sound was introduced in cinema, till 1952, they shot movies with the similar camera because through the Nehru era, they may not import anything. Indians have a practice for repairing everything. But now they're technically superior. Films like ‘Peepli Live’ and ‘Dhobi Ghat…’ are pretty much as good as anything made in Hollywood,” he said.
He said “his three favourite movies within the recent times include ‘Delhi Belly’, ‘Peepli Live’ and ‘Dev D’”.
The writer said “the 1970s and 1980s were terrible decades for Hindi cinema”. The muses were in retreat and the movies were uniformly bad, he said.
“Cinema halls built 50 or so years earlier had decayed, with rats taking over…Amitabh Bachchan played the angry young man while Dharmendra’s favourite phrase gave the look to be ‘kutte kamine’,” he said.
There was a large number of fisticuffs, little or no by means of plots; Bappi Lahiri was a successful music director, he said. “Need I say more? As a result, the center class gave up going to the theatres and watched pirated videos of foreign films at home,” he said.
Bollywood was “up and running again for many years now…the multiplexes that experience arise have comfortable seats and there's no shortage of screens”, he said.
The book, published by Penguin India and divided into 20 chapters, covers “K.L. Saigal, Devika Rani, Ashok Kumar, Nargis, Suraiya, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, Madhubala, Meena Kumari, Shammi Kapoor, Waheeda Rehman, Hema Malini, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Madhuri Dixit, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Kareena Kapoor” by the very best contemporary writers on cinema. – IANS
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