Bombay Before Bollywood: Film City Fantasies (Horizons of Cinema)

Traces the development of Indian cinema from the 1920s to the mid-1990s, before “Bollywood” erupted onto the world stage. Bombay before Bollywood offers a fresh, alternative look at the history of Indian cinema. Avoiding the conventional focus on India’s social and mythological films, Rosie Thomas examines the subaltern genres of the “magic and fighting films”—the fantasy, costume, and stunt films popular in the decades before and immediately after independence. She explores the influence of this other cinema on the big-budget masala films of the 1970s and 1980s, before “Bollywood” erupted onto the world stage in the mid-1990s. Thomas focuses on key moments in this hidden history, including the 1924 fairy fantasy Gul-e-Bakavali; the 1933 talkie Lal-e-Yaman; the exploits of stunt queen Fearless Nadia; the magical neverlands of Hatimtai and Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp; and the 1960s stunt capers Zimbo and Khilari. She includes a detailed ethnographic account of the Bombay film industry of the early 1980s, centering on the beliefs and fantasies of filmmakers themselves with regard to filmmaking and film audiences, and on-the-ground operations of the industry. A welcome addition to the fields of film studies and cultural studies, the book will also appeal to general readers with an interest in Indian cinema. “In this powerful account, Rosie Thomas opens out filmic artifacts to an array of dazzling reflections shedding new light on the movement and circulation of popular culture in India. With a remarkable body of research conducted over a period of time, Bombay before Bollywood decisively challenges certain assumptions about India, its cinemas, and its audiences.” — Ranjani Mazumdar, author of Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City “This is the archaeology of media performed with intellect, wit, and passion. Rosie Thomas pioneered this field and she remains its most brilliantly iridescent critic and advocate. If only all film studies were this revelatory and this enjoyable!” — Christopher Pinney, author of Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs “Rosie Thomas’s body of research over the last twenty-five years has set up key discourses in the study of Indian popular cinema. This book brings together her pioneering fieldwork into film industry categories and practices, and her more recent bid to resurrect a history made well-nigh clandestine by official narratives: the significance of Arabian Nights fantasies, stunt films, and visceral attractions in Bombay cinema. Pleasurably crafted and provocatively argued, Bombay before Bollywood is an important intervention in Indian and world cinema studies.” — Ravi Vasudevan, author of The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema Contents List of Tables and Figures Credits Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Bombay before Bollywood: Film City Fantasies The Challenge Bombay Before Bollywood Towards Some Alternative Histories Looking Back: The Longer View Notes Part One: Introduction to Part One Notes Chapter 2 Thieves of the Orient: The Arabian Nights in Early Indian Cinema The Arabian Nights in India: Circulation and Adaptation Lal-E-Yaman (1933) and Noor-E-Yaman (1935) Orientalism and the Islamicate The Appeal Notes Chapter 3 Distant Voices, Magic Knives: Lal-e-Yaman and the Transition to Sound in Bombay Cinema Background Production Success The Disembodied Voice Sound and Vision Modernities Notes Chapter 4 Not Quite (Pearl) White: Fearless Nadia, Queen of the Stunts Early Years of Bombay Cinema Wadia Movietone and Nadia Nationalist Politics Two Visions The Nadia Persona Diamond Queen Mimicry Notes Chapter 5 Zimbo and Son Meet the Girl with a Gun Introduction Remakes and Hollywood Basant Studios Toofani Tarzan: India's 1937 Super Hit 'Indianisation' Tarzan and Leela Tarzan's Appeal in India Girls, Guns and the Basant Brand Notes Chapter 6 Still Magic: An Aladdin's Cave of 1950s B-Movie Fantasy Magical Worlds Arabian Nights A Fabulous Orient Brute Strength An Enchanted Gaze Notes Part Two: Introduction to Part Two Notes Chapter 7 Where the Money Flows, the Camera Rolls Introduction Financing Film Production Credit Financiers World Rights Control Territorial Mortgage Hundi or 'Time Bill' Distributors Minimum Guarantee Advance Outright Territories Exhibitors Organisation of Film Production Terms of Employment The Producer Setting up a Production Consequences of the Bombay System of Production Consequences of the Black Economy Distribution/Exhibition Strangleholds Consequences for Film Form and Content Notes Chapter 8 Indian Cinema: Pleasures and Popularity Narrative Verisimilitude The Spectator Notes Chapter 9 Sanctity and Scandal: The Mythologisation of Mother India The Film Background Reading The Star Notes Chapter 10 Mother India Maligned: The Saga of Sanjay Dutt Introduction Sadak The Star–Sanjay Dutt Khalnayak Coda Notes References and Select Bibliography Newspapers & Magazines Index