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Wednesday, 9 November 2011

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Film Appreciation:

The birth of silent cinema in Tamil

Serious students of Cinema in this part of the world especially should know something about the South Indian Cinema, particularly Tamil Cinema because of its wide viewing not only in Tamil Nadu or Lanka but also world wide. Tamil Cinema of India (I am not speaking of Lankan Tamil Cinema). It is linked with the Nationalist Politics and the Entertainment Media.

In fact, there is an excellent book on the subject covering the period 18880-1945 by S Theodore Baskaran titled The Message Bearers. The book published 30 years ago by Cre-A in Chennai is yet a valuable source book on the subject.

In this week’s column I am freely borrowing some of his observations on the subject.

Says the scholar: Tamil Cinema “ by-passed the need for literacy on the part of the audience and opened up a new world of vicarious experience to larger masses of people whose span of experience was severely limited by poverty and by restriction on physical travel. In that way, films influenced public opinion in Tamil Nadu on matters relating to war, social reforms and nationalism in a manner that no other medium had done. This process set in motion during the silent days of Tamil cinema continues to the present day in a much more ramified form.”

How true even today. S T B’s observation on another topic should also be noted: “Popular songs and popular theatricals did not affect the South Indian Cinema to any great extent until the coming of sound in 1980s.in its infancy.

“Continuing, the author talks about the Features of the early film industry.

Films were shot in an enclosed area. No artificial lighting. Natural lighting aided by reflectors. Some studios had glass roofs. Some other studios controlled lighting with white and blue perforated cloths spread overhead to diffuse the light and reduce the glare. No sets. Scenes were shot in outdoor locales. Films were processed by the hand-washing method. Hand colouring was used. Women were reluctant to act in films.

“The belief that exposure to the camera lens would impair one’s health was strong enough to keep women away from the cinema in the first few years.”

Anglo-Indians later took the lead.

Another moot point that Baskaran makes is applicable even today. Says the scholar: “Since the audience was mainly illiterate, particularly in the rural areas, every cinema house engaged a narrator who read the title cards aloud for the benefit of the audience, spoke the lines for the main characters, and gave a running commentary on the happenings on the screen. Very often the performance of the narrator itself acquired an independent value and films which would have otherwise been unsuccessful were often saved by the narrators.”

Thus you see why the South Indian films do not make a mark in international film festivals. As pointed out the literacy rate in most Indian states including the South in India is not great when compared with Bengal and Kerala and Sri Lanka.

The tradition of running commentaries by some unrefined spectators during the screening of Tamil films particularly is an obstacle and annoyance to elite cinegoers.

In Lanka it is minimal. However Kodambakkam (in Chennai) has of late right now in a process of change due to educated and trained people entering the film world. A few Tamil films of late cater not only to the tastes of the educated middle class but also to the rural poorer classes with the advent of ultra modern electronic devices.

In India, both Bollywood (Mumbai) and Kollywood (Chennai) and even Tollywood (Hyderabad) stand out as the regions that produce most number of films while the Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada, Marati, Assamese, Oriya and other states that produce fewer films concentrate on individual cultural traits in their films although the audiences in these regions are still enamoured by the Hindi and Tamil and Telugu films.

Why the Indian films are more or less American influenced than European was due to the fact that the audiences were accustomed to the style of American films which were shown before the blossoming of Indian Cinema.

 Theodore Baskaran informs that “Film - making had begun much earlier in Bombay (Mumbai) and Calcutta (Kolkatta) and these two film-producing centres in the country also influenced and aided the growth of cinema in South India. Another observation by Baskaran deserves notice when he says: “It is in the silent phase of the cinema that cinematic vocabulary is established. In the absence of sound, the film-maker gas to depend entirely on visual communication.”

The films made in the silent era were mostly mythological. This was because the audiences were familiar with all mythological episodes. The Mahabaratha, Ramayana and other Indian epics and even the major and miner epics in Tamil were productively exploited in Tamil films.

“H R Desai’s Bhaya Chakara (1932) was the last silent film to be made in South India and it marked the end of an era in the history of Indian Cinema’, concludes Theodore Baskaran.

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